The fact that so many people in the country lack the common sense, fear of God, and understanding of divine order to think two people of the same gender can be 'married' is reason to suspect that societies view of sexuality and marriage may become unraveled in other equally bizarre and perverted ways.
While I enjoy the assumption that everybody who is OK with gay marriage must either be stupid or Godless, it is a bit self-centered to assume that everybody who disagrees with your particular belief structure is not only wrong, but not also entitled basic rights of being the legal occupant of a country.
It's also very obvious that the authors and ratifiers of the 14th amendment had no desire to protect homosexual marriage, and the actual wording of the text does not support their decision.
That is the absolute, unfailing beauty of having a country with a living document at the center of its structure to rights. It doesn't matter if they were thinking of homosexuals when they wrote it. They wrote it for all people, especially people who made up an unprotected minority or a segment of society attacked by another segment in a way that invalidates their basic rights as a citizen. That means when it was written, they wanted to enforce the over-reaching protection of all citizens on the basis that, as citizens, they have certain rights that just can't be taken away. The 14th amendment was written to ensure every citizen who needed it, minority known and unknown, past, present, and future, can proudly say that they are a US citizen with unflinching rights that cannot be taken or voted away. Why? Because they are an American citizen.
If you don't thing that's absolutely freaking beautiful, then you totally do not get the core behind the foundation of our society and the point to Democracy.
So it wasn't specifically written for homosexual marriage. It also doesn't state "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; excluding the gays."
I know the courts have been legislating from the bench for some time now, but this is really a gross misuse of their power a power which isn't even explicitly stated in the Constitution. I wish three of those judges would be removed and they'd put in three more Scalias or a Thomas and two more Scalias. But much of societies thinking is still perverted, regardless of who is on the bench.
"Legislating from the bench" isn't a thing. It's a made up term used by whiny crybabies who are totally ignorant to how our government works. It's a term only used by whiny people who're upset they didn't get their way and now they have no more recourse to argue their viewpoint. It's the self-appointed experts version of "I'm taking my toys and going home."
Their job is to audit our laws to ensure that they are Constitutionally sound and by extension, if something isn't, it's struck down because every second it's left standing when it's in direct conflict to the core of our country's whole basis for being. It attacks the very fundamentals of this country to be left standing when it violates the Constitution. That's why these laws are immediately reversed. It's not judicial legislation, it's putting your money where your mouth is and enforcing the ideals of your country's beliefs.
Or do you suggest we have a SCOTUS that just reviews the Constitutionality of an issue, finds it wanting, but we leave the law standing anyway... Because we reeeeeeeally don't want the gays to get married?
The typical case is where a homosexual couple wants a baker to make a wedding cake tailor made for a homosexual wedding, and the owner declines, exercising freedom of expression by not making a work of art that goes contrary to his Christian beliefs. In one case, the bakers were fined $100k beliefs for exercising their freedom of religion and freedom of expression. These bakers actually served homosexual customers. They just wouldn't make that sort of cake. The courts persecuting them is not freedom.
Good, they should be punished. Just like a business shouldn't hang a sign that says "no negros served here," a business shouldn't have the right to not serve a segment of society because they don't like them, their lifestyle, or their impending special event. This selective morality of "I'm not making a cake for a gay wedding" is not lost on me. They're too Christian to serve homosexuals, yet the single mother coming for a baby shower gets her cake. The Atheists get their cake. The person having a celebration for their divorce gets a cake.
Discrimination doesn't stop being discrimination because you happen to not like the segment of people being discriminated against as well.
I understand there is a history behind not allowing denying of service, blacks eating at food counters in the 1960's and the like. As far as race goes, we've got the media and Yelp, and I think if any store owner did not want to serve racial minorities, there would be a backlash and the market can police itself.
Yet when the anti-gay cake company gets their well deserved backlash, it's society picking on them and forcing them to adhere to standards they don't like, it's not the persecuted gays, it's the poor Christians who feel they should do unto others what none others should dare do to them. The become the byline of a story of yours on some forum about how the poor, poor people were just following God in their desire to treat others like second class citizens (which, by the way, isn't what God advocated).
Sorry, not buying it. We live in a structured society that protects rights. We are not an "all for yourself" society that looks at a company doing very clear wrongs, shrugs our shoulders, and says "if you don't like it, influence the free market."
But really think about what you are writing. How is it freedom of a store owner does not get to decide what business he or she will take? If there was some restaurant that did not want to serve me because they hated my race, do I really want to eat there anyway? Do I want a law that forces them to serve me? They are back there with the food I am going to eat in the kitchen. I don't want to eat at some place where the cook who handles my food doesn't like me.
So the solution is for people who aren't liked to go away, not to hold the people for their irrational dislike that's illegal accountable for violating the rights of others?
What an easy compromise for the white middle aged male who makes up the least discriminated against segment in all of our society...
Usually, these cases are about situations where the owner is being asked to be involved in some way in the wedding. If I'm selling a pizza or curry, I don't mind selling to homosexuals. I wouldn't want a customer telling me their sexual preferences anyway. That's creepy. If someone wants to come up to me and talk about their sex life while buying my food, I should have the right to send them away for sharing that information if I don't want to hear it. While I don't mind selling homosexuals food, I wouldn't want to be a photographer at a gay wedding, bake a wedding cake, be a wedding planner, or perform a 'gay wedding' ceremony. Some Christians don't agree with sexual perversion, but don't care about baking a cake, and that's their own conscience on the issue. I wouldn't want to bake a 'happy abortion' cake, or a cake that says, "Way to go with 9/11" for a terrorist, either.
Your disagreement with sexual perversion is subjective. The heterosexual couple you will only marry, out of fear for accidentally endorsing some random "sexual perversion," has probably had copious amounts of premarital sex, probably even with multiple partners. They may be divorced and remarrying. They may have kids out of wedlock. They may not even be Christian. All of those are "sexual perversions" and "sins" in the Bible equal to the gay couple in the eyes of God.
Yet, because he has a penis and she has a vagina, you can look the other way.
The simple truth is that this has nothing to do with sexual perversion. It has to do with simply not liking homosexuals, feeling like you have a moral superiority to them, or focusing on their sin so that you don't have to focus on yours.
Btw, a Christian cake baker asked to bake a gay wedding cake can say he only makes one kind, one that has Leviticus 20:13 on it, and they can find their own grooms to go on top. Hopefuly that will get them out of the fines.
I hope it gets them more fines, and as a Christian, I'm offended that they'd use the Bible as a way to subversively attack a couple who came to them for a service. Unless that's what they want their cake to look like, doing something like that, defying the order of a paying customer so you can make a point, is tantamount to the diner owner serving hot sauce soaked eggs to African Americans and writing "Titus 2:9-10" on it.
Forcing people who own their own businesses to serve those they don't want to goes against the original philosophy of freedom our country was founded on. That's not freedom at all. There is a market, and if someone doesn't want to serve you, go elsewhere. Isn't there some gay baker who can bake a cake that would look absolutely fabulous?
Our country isn't founded on the principles of allowing people to antagonize each other, or for those in positions of authority to provide services to the public to use their positions to punish other segments of society.
What you're saying is just as stupid and ignorant as the people who said to Black Americans "Isn't there, like, some black place that you can go eat at that knows how to cook for you?"
Are you secure enough in your relationship with God to really care about what He reveals, what He loves, what He hates, and what is good for other people? Love does not delight in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Show is supporting gay marriage loving? If God regards homosexual behavior as abominable, how can you support it?
I support it because it's right. Because my choice to be Christian doesn't translate into me forcing all people, Christian or not, to adhere to my ideals. I support it because we are a Democracy where everybody, even the people who I don't agree with, deserve equal rights because that's their right as citizens of this country. I support it because, even if I did think it was wrong or sinful, I am not being forced to engage in it if I thought it'd compromise my salvation. I support it because that's the point to a country founded on ideals of equality regardless of who we are, and we are not a religious dictatorship.
And where do you get your knowledge about God? Didn't it come to you through the prophets and apostles who received revelation from God, the same men who revealed that homosexual behavior is sinful? I find it a bit irrational for one to make up their own version of what is acceptable to God, without even claiming some kind of revelation from God. It's like Ravi Zacharias said about the philosophy of some people in recent times, who think, "Choose the religion that is right for you, and reality is sure to follow."
You're making up your own version of what's acceptable to God... How is what you're doing any different than me? The only major difference is my alleged "making things up" means that everybody goes to sleep in a world where they have more rights now than they did a week ago. Your "making things up" means a sector of society is marginalized, the rights of non-Christians is violated, the ideals of our country are held hostage to the whims of a religion that used the Bible to justify slavery, unequal women's rights, restricted voting, land ownership, legal representation...
I'd rather the false interpretation of a document that allows more rights and leaves salvation up every individual, than the false interpretation of a document that has rationalized some of the most egregious violations of humanity in our country because that's what the majority of those who read it wanted to see at that time.
Read the history of the 14th Amendment. People used the Bible to explain why the amendment was "a rejection of the morality that so drives the people of our great nation to their unified belief in a singular God in the hands of our Bible" and "an attack on the Good Christian Believers of our fledgling Democracy" and "the point of derision and ridicule by industrialized regions beyond our shores." It's now unconscionable that anybody would have used the Bible to reject the basic rights outlined in the 14th Amendment. Just like, one day, it'll be gruesome to think people used to hold up the Bible to justify marginalizing homosexuals.
