Liberal and Conservative

[JackRT]

You are aware the having immorality forced on you and not being able to stop others from what you perceive to be immorality are two different things?

Mario Cuomo --- "We know that the price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that they might some day force theirs on us."

 

[Paidiske]

Not so sure about this. I think about people in the USA who indiscriminately sell guns.

I take the point, and I'm no fan of guns in general. But I maintain that past the point of sale, the seller has no moral responsibility for the choices the buyer makes in using what was sold. The seller's responsibility ended at the transfer of ownership.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

Being heterosexual I have never disobeyed it, but even so I do not consider it binding on Christians today. I also eat clams, scallops, mussels and shrimp and have been known to wear clothing of two fabrics. Oh, crab and oysters too.

The cultural and ceremonial laws that pertained to Israelites before the New Covenant are not applicable after the veil was torn. We aren't sacrificing sheep either or celebrating the Feast Days in the same manner. We aren't unclean after sex or after birth or after an illness or infection. We don't do a number of things that Israel did that were cultural. All of these expired after Jesus fulfilled the law.

Sexual immorality is proscribed for all time, for everyone, not just Jews before the New Covenant. They were and remain abominations. Leviticus 18 proscriptions are all mentioned again in the New Testament.

According to your logic, it would now be equally fine to engage in bestiality, incest, and offering children to Molech, all proscribed in the very same sections that proscribe homosexuality.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

When looking at loving relationships between same gender couples, the prohibitions are simply not in the scriptures. The clobber passages that are cited in our bible do not address same gender relationships as we know them today. To continue to cite these passages to discriminate and do harm to LGBTQ persons is uninformed at best and disingenuous at worse. To continue to cite two thousand to four-thousand-year-old understandings and writings without consideration of twenty first century education, science, reason, and experience is ludicrous and unfaithful.

This assertion is completely false and unsupportable. The proscription against same sex behavior is indeed in scripture, both old and new testament, as well as the reminder that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of sexual immorality, not "inhospitality" as the revisionists like to argue.

Jude 1:7 In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

What is simply not found in scripture is some exception to this proscription if the couples are "loving". That has been added by modern day heresy.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

I think seeing your tenant, or your customer, as "imposing" their morality on you is an example of poor boundaries. You're not morally implicated in what your tenant or customer does.

No, but the boundaries cut both ways. Your tenant or customer should not be able to impose his will on you either, against your own conscience.

 

[Paidiske]

No, but the boundaries cut both ways. Your tenant or customer should not be able to impose his will on you either, against your own conscience.

If you sell or rent widgets, and you're not prepared to sell or rent widgets to any customer who walks through the door, you shouldn't be selling or renting widgets. It's not someone else imposing their will on you, if they patronise the business you chose to enter!

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

If you sell or rent widgets, and you're not prepared to sell or rent widgets to any customer who walks through the door, you shouldn't be selling or renting widgets. It's not someone else imposing their will on you, if they patronise the business you chose to enter!

Definitely correct...if you sell widgets. Any item off the shelf can and will be sold to anyone.

However, the cake case was about the service of artistic creation, not selling a widget (cake). The guy in Colorado was willing to sell any widget (cake) in the store to the guys that sued him, which was abundantly clear in the evidence.

He simply wasn't willing to artistically create for an event that violated his conscience (and was not even legal in the state at the time, by the way). He also didn't do a few other holidays and events, as it was not something he wished to support (i.e. the divorce cake).

 

[Paidiske]

I don't see any significant difference between a widget and a cake. If you'd make a cake for a straight couple, then you need to be prepared to make an identical cake (not a cake with explicit messages with which you disagree) for a gay couple. Or admit that you're not in the right business for your conscience.

 

[JackRT]

Can the engineer who designed the widget have the right to demand that it not be sold to left-handed green-eyed people because his/her religion regards them as an abomination?

 

[Tigger45]

A cake is not always just a cake. Its not the fact that a gay couple wanted to purchase an item from the shop but that they wanted a specific message put upon that cake. Ultimately there are statements that would violate anyone’s sense of decency and we, if we have intestinal fortitude, would reject such a request to participate in the advancement of that message.

The gay couple could of easily bought a cake from that shop and either completed the message themselves or had someone else complete it for them.

 

[Belk]

A cake is not always just a cake. Its not the fact that a gay couple wanted to purchase an item from the shop but that they wanted a specific message put upon that cake. Ultimately there are statements that would violate anyone’s sense of decency and we, if we have intestinal fortitude, would reject such a request to participate in the advancement of that message.

The gay couple could of easily bought a cake from that shop and either completed the message themselves or had someone else complete it for them.

Do you have a citation? Most of the cases I am aware of this was not correct. They were simply refused a cake.

 

[Dave-W]

The cultural and ceremonial laws that pertained to Israelites before the New Covenant are not applicable after the veil was torn.

Not so. If you were gentile, the never were applicable to you.
If you are Jewish, they still are applicable.

We don't do a number of things that Israel did that were cultural. All of these expired after Jesus fulfilled the law.

You do not do them because you are NOT Israel.

BTW - show me chapter and verse which makes the distinction between moral, ceremonial and civil laws in the Mosaic covenant.

James 2:10
For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.

 

[Dave-W]

I take the point, and I'm no fan of guns in general. But I maintain that past the point of sale, the seller has no moral responsibility for the choices the buyer makes in using what was sold. The seller's responsibility ended at the transfer of ownership.

In criminal law - that is true. But in civil law, the seller, the manufacturer and even the ammo manufacture can be held liable for a person's bad actions.

 

[Tigger45]

Do you have a citation? Most of the cases I am aware of this was not correct. They were simply refused a cake.

Its been a while but wasn’t it a gay wedding cake?

 

[Belk]

Its been a while but wasn’t it a gay wedding cake?

It was a wedding cake for a homosexual couple, yes. However most of the cases they were not refused due to a message but simply refused a custom cake that was the same as other wedding cakes. I do know there was a case in Ireland that was refused because of the message requested but that is the only one I am aware of.

 

[Tigger45]

It was a wedding cake for a homosexual couple, yes. However most of the cases they were not refused due to a message but simply refused a custom cake that was the same as other wedding cakes. I do know there was a case in Ireland that was refused because of the message requested but that is the only one I am aware of.

Then that would be my point in my initial post. A gay wedding cake would be making a statement that homosexual behavior is appropriate where in traditional historic Christianity it is not but if they denied service purely on the bases of the person being homosexual then I have a problem with that.

 

[Belk]

Then that would be my point in my initial post. A gay wedding cake would be making a statement that homosexual behavior is appropriate where in traditional historic Christianity it is not but if they denied service purely on the bases of the person being homosexual then I have a problem with that.

I fail to see how selling a product is making a statement about the person you are selling to. This seems a pretty big stretch. Selling someone a product is not an endorsement of their activities. The courts have tended to agree with this. At least in the US.

 

[Tigger45]

I fail to see how selling a product is making a statement about the person you are selling to. This seems a pretty big stretch. Selling someone a product is not an endorsement of their activities. The courts have tended to agree with this. At least in the US.

If you were a cake baker and the KKK came in and asked for a cake that read " Send all the n****** back to Africa" would you do it? Not me, I'd tell them to take racist business some where else but then that's just me.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

Not so. If you were gentile, the never were applicable to you.
If you are Jewish, they still are applicable.

You do not do them because you are NOT Israel.

BTW - show me chapter and verse which makes the distinction between moral, ceremonial and civil laws in the Mosaic covenant.

James 2:10
For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.

True. Sorry for the lack of clarity. You are correct. Cultural and ceremonial laws only ever applied to the Jews. However, God's moral standards apply to all and do not change, as elucidated quite clearly by Paul and every other NT writer.

Colossians 2: (Note how ceremonials things are dismissed and the law cited as temporary)
9 For in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have come to fulness of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. 11 In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; 12 and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him.a]">[a]

16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath. 17 These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, taking his stand on visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.


The law is not for the righteous (those made righteous through the Blood of Jesus, not our own works)
8 Now we know that the law is good, if any one uses it lawfully, 9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 10 immoral persons, sodomites, kidnapers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 in accordance with the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

Moral law remains for all time. The 10 commandments were not abolished simply because we are not under Mosaic law. They are the principles of God and do not change because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He wrote them on our hearts. It is still wrong to kill, steal, commit adultery, dishonor father and mother, commit idolatry, lie, etc. The New Testament doesn't have to address drugs, and gangs, and trafficking to make those wrong either. They violate the principles of God.

Romans 2:
4 When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
The Jews and the Law

17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely upon the law and boast of your relation to God 18 and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed in the law, 19 and if you are sure that you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, 20 a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21 you then who teach others, will you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? 24 For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

I fail to see how selling a product is making a statement about the person you are selling to. This seems a pretty big stretch. Selling someone a product is not an endorsement of their activities. The courts have tended to agree with this. At least in the US.

It isn't making a statement about the person to whom you are selling. It is indeed wrong to coerce creative art from someone who disagrees with the message. It's about the conscience of the one who creates the art, not the other guy. No one was ever talking about random generic items...cupcakes, cookies, cakes, whatever. Anyone can buy those all day long. No one has the right to compel someone to make something to celebrate an event his faith teaches is wrong.