Philly Catholic foster agency loses appeal to discriminate against gay people

Quartermaine

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Except towards people who wish to express themselves via their work. For instance, an artist who takes commissions should be unable to refuse any request from an LGBT person, right? Especially if he is personally opposed to it, right?
A racist who wished to express himself at work should be able to refuse any request from a black person, right?
 
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Ignatius the Kiwi

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Discrimination is the prejudicial or disadvantageous treatment of an individual based on his or her membership - or perceived membership - in of a minority. Discrimination restricts members of a minority group from opportunities or privileges that are available to the majority group, leading to the exclusion of the individual based on minority membership and not on an individual’s behavior or character.


So, yeah it is always bad.

That's the point of discrimination. Doesn't make it wrong. The Catholic Church discriminates against married men in choosing who will be its priests. Artists discriminate between clients. Publishers of certain genres discriminate against artists who don't fit what they're looking to publish.

How curious, only Christians must be compelled to provide specific services. You would never see this argument applied to homosexuals in a similar position. Perhaps teh LGBT person in question has a deep antipathy towards Christianity and refuses to provide any product or service in favour of it. Why should he or she be compelled if she's in a profession which allows her that creative freedom, to be forced to make something that goes against her conscience?

My only point with regards to discrimination is that the argument used by progressive secular moralists like yourself Quater, is that it is highly targeted. It is not universally applied. You are okay with discrimination, as long as it is towards the groups you don't like. You for instance, don't like Christians. Thus you want to force compliance.

But on a deeper level, discrimination is not only done by majority groups but minority groups also. This keep the minority group together in a potentially hostile population and allows them to continue existing as an intact whole. This is true of any minority group. When Christians lived under Islamic control they had to control their communities in what way they could do internally, and they did as much as possible so as to prevent people from being assimilated into Islam. This is true of Spain, Greece, Armenia and the like. This is especially true of the Jews who in order to maintain their identity in a hostile Europe had strict measures of control within their own communities. This held the community together.

So why does the majority have to cater to the whims of the minority? Is the majority not allowed to preserve itself? Take in mind, Christians of my persuasion are effectively a minority in the USA and the west in general now a days.
 
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Ignatius the Kiwi

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A racist who wished to express himself at work should be able to refuse any request from a black person, right?
I guess it depends on the job. Why should a Hebrew Black Israelite be forced to work with a white person who he considers a caveman and future slave?
 
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Quartermaine

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That's the point of discrimination. Doesn't make it wrong. The Catholic Church discriminates against married men in choosing who will be its priests. Artists discriminate between clients. Publishers of certain genres discriminate against artists who don't fit what they're looking to publish.
Having qualifications necessary for employment is not discrimination no mater how hard you to to spin it. The qualifications are based on behavior and character not on who the applicants are


How curious, only Christians must be compelled to provide specific services. You would never see this argument applied to homosexuals in a similar position. Perhaps teh LGBT person in question has a deep antipathy towards Christianity and refuses to provide any product or service in favour of it. Why should he or she be compelled if she's in a profession which allows her that creative freedom, to be forced to make something that goes against her conscience?
The services in question are already being provided so no one Christian or otherwise is being compelled to do something that they don't do.

[/quote]
My only point with regards to discrimination is that the argument used by progressive secular moralists like yourself Quater, is that it is highly targeted. It is not universally applied. You are okay with discrimination, as long as it is towards the groups you don't like. [/quote] That is actually your position.

I'm not in favor of anyone being anyone being on the receiving end of prejudicial or disadvantageous treatment based on his or her membership - or perceived membership - in of a minority.


But on a deeper level, discrimination does not only done by majority groups but minority groups also. This keep the minority group together in a potentially hostile population and allows them to continue existing. This is true of any minority group. When Christians lived under Islamic control they had to control their communities in what way they could, so as to prevent people from being assimilated into Islam. This is true of Spain, Greece, Armenia and the like. This is especially true of the Jews who in order to maintain their identity in a hostile Europe had strict measures of control within their own communities.
You do realize that the levels of control you are speaking of happened no matter where the individuals lived. And in most cases such groups were forced together by the majority. The word Ghetto comes from the borough in Venice Italy were Jews were forced to live.


So why does the majority have to cater to the whims of the minority?
being treated equally is not a whim

Is the majority not allowed to preserve itself? Take in mind, Christians of my persuasion are effectively a minority in the USA and the west in general.
Actually no you are not a minority nor are you discriminated against.
 
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Ignatius the Kiwi

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Having qualifications necessary for employment is not discrimination no mater how hard you to to spin it. The qualifications are based on behavior and character not on who the applicants are

It's sexual discrimination based on a person's marriage status that prevents most Catholics from attaining the priesthood. It is discrimiantion because it's choosing between two things and preferring another. You're using the word discrimination in a purely negative sense whereas as far as I can see, it's a perfectly neutral term to describe community practices and standards.

The services in question are already being provided so no one Christian or otherwise is being compelled to do something that they don't do.

So you don't want to force CSS to hand out children to gay foster parents? They don't want to do this and you've been arguing the whole time against them.


I'm not in favor of anyone being anyone being on the receiving end of prejudicial or disadvantageous treatment based on his or her membership - or perceived membership - in of a minority.

Yes you are. You prefer Christians like myself not be in charge of charitable institutions or be allowed to run them to our own standards.

You do realize that the levels of control you are speaking of happened no matter where the individuals lived. And in most cases such groups were forced together by the majority. The word Ghetto comes from the borough in Venice Italy were Jews were forced to live.

You should look into Jewish law of the communities they had control of. Very strict, very discriminatory and very harsh towards Jews who dissented. The Kairates in Spain suffered persecution under Sephardic Jewish control because the Caliph there only recognized the that community. Marriages between Christians and Jews as forbidden and anyone who violated the community standards was liable to punishment.

Just because you're a minority doesn't mean you cease having group interests or are more egalitarian. Minorities will naturally form strong alliances and commitments to each other without being forced together if they're bound by a common ideology. Look at the degeneracy of the furry movement. No one's forcing them together yet they have close ties, online communities and the ability to organize freely despite their limited numbers. They do this because they have a common goal of practicing their common degeneracy.

You won't see the furry community let someone like me into their group because I or someone like myself would undermine it with my opinions.

being treated equally is not a whim

Except it is a whim. No one is treated equally in society and there are movements and powers that advocate for certain goals over another. You would force someone like jack Phillips to provide a gay wedding cake. You would not force a homosexual to provide a Christian themed cake or something they have personal opposition too.


Actually no you are not a minority nor are you discriminated against.
News to me that traditionalists aren't in the minority position.
 
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Quartermaine

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It's sexual discrimination based on a person's marriage status that prevents most Catholics from attaining the priesthood. It is discrimiantion because it's choosing between two things and preferring another. You're using the word discrimination in a purely negative sense whereas as far as I can see, it's a perfectly neutral term to describe community practices and standards.


Discrimination is the prejudicial or disadvantageous treatment of an individual based on his or her membership - or perceived membership - in of a minority. Discrimination restricts members of a minority group from opportunities or privileges that are available to the majority group, leading to the exclusion of the individual based on minority membership and not on an individual’s behavior or character.

So you don't want to force CSS to hand out children to gay foster parents? They don't want to do this and you've been arguing the whole time against them.
Children aren't gift baskets to be passed out to anyone who wanders past.


Yes you are. You prefer Christians like myself not be in charge of charitable institutions or be allowed to run them to our own standards.
they can run themselves however they please. If they choose to discriminate then they shouldn't get contracts for services from the government.


You should look into Jewish law of the communities they had control of. Very strict, very discriminatory and very harsh towards Jews who dissented. The Kairates in Spain suffered persecution under Sephardic Jewish control because the Caliph there only recognized the that community. Marriages between Christians and Jews as forbidden and anyone who violated the community standards was liable to punishment.
you mean the Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula in the 1400's?


Just because you're a minority doesn't mean you cease having group interests or are more egalitarian. Minorities will naturally form strong alliances and commitments to each other without being forced together if they're bound by a common ideology. Look at the degeneracy of the furry movement. No one's forcing them together yet they have close ties, online communities and the ability to organize freely despite their limited numbers. They do this because they have a common goal of practicing their common degeneracy.

You won't see the furry community let someone like me into their group because I or someone like myself would undermine it with my opinions.
i can imagine many groups not wanting you in their community.

Except it is a whim. No one is treated equally in society and there are movements and powers that advocate for certain goals over another.
if you believed this then you wouldn't be defending Catholic Charities as they have no guarantee of being protected under the law.

You would force someone like jack Phillips to provide a gay wedding cake.
if he is making wedding cake then he gets to provide such cakes and not discriminate.

You would not force a homosexual to provide a Christian themed cake or something they have personal opposition too.
like what?


News to me that traditionalists aren't in the minority position.
you aren't a minority, deal with it.
 
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Ignatius the Kiwi

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Discrimination is the prejudicial or disadvantageous treatment of an individual based on his or her membership - or perceived membership - in of a minority. Discrimination restricts members of a minority group from opportunities or privileges that are available to the majority group, leading to the exclusion of the individual based on minority membership and not on an individual’s behavior or character.

I've already responded to this copypasta.

Children aren't gift baskets to be passed out to anyone who wanders past.

I agree.


they can run themselves however they please. If they choose to discriminate then they shouldn't get contracts for services from the government.

They absolutely should. What matters is the mission of the organization over your principles.


you mean the Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula in the 1400's?

I mean Jews living in Islamic Al-Andulus and Europe in general. This is basic sociology in how groups act and maintain their coherence. The early Christians operated in a similar position when they are minorities within the Empire. They kept their sacred feasts secret to close members, they regulated marriage within the community and preferred when possible to elevate other Christians rather than Pagans.

The early Christians were wildly intolerant of many practices of the wider society.


i can imagine many groups not wanting you in their community.
That's not really an argument against what I said, nor does it reinforce your conception of what the minority is and does within a society they are alien too.

if you believed this then you wouldn't be defending Catholic Charities as they have no guarantee of being protected under the law.
I defend CSS because it's in the interests of Christians. Not because I believe in liberal secularism like you do.

if he is making wedding cake then he gets to provide such cakes and not discriminate.

Right, but what about the homosexual creative who offers commissions? Should they be allowed to discriminate against certain groups? There are plenty of LGBT and pro-LGBT artists online and they would refuse out of disgust to do anything with a Christian message. Should they be forced to provide that work?

you aren't a minority, deal with it.

Traditionalists are a minority, we are not in the majority anymore and do not have the institutions of power (Law, Media and University) behind us.
 
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Quartermaine

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I've already responded to this copypasta.
no you just ignored it


then what reason would you have for CSS doing just that


They absolutely should. What matters is the mission of the organization over your principles.
the government should be forced to enter into contracts with organizations that won't hire black people or those that advocate for the extermination of Jews?


I mean Jews living in Islamic Al-Andulus and Europe in general.
then why did you bring up an entirely different group?

I defend CSS because it's in the interests of Christians. Not because I believe in liberal secularism like you do.
But if , as you say no one is treated equally in society why should CSS expect to be treated equally?

Right, but what about the homosexual creative who offers commissions? Should they be allowed to discriminate against certain groups? There are plenty of LGBT and pro-LGBT artists online and they would refuse out of disgust to do anything with a Christian message. Should they be forced to provide that work?
like who?

Traditionalists are a minority, we are not in the majority anymore and do not have the institutions of power (Law, Media and University) behind us.
not a minority
 
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dzheremi

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By what metric is it claimed that those who hold to traditional Christian anthropology (which does not recognize LGBTQIA+ as being what people 'are' to begin with) are not a minority? This is news to me. In a world where major Christian churches like the Anglicans have practicing homosexual bishops and such, and in polls conducted by religiously-themed research institutes it is found that 7 in 10 Americans support gay marriage, I think I'm going to need to see some data to the contrary before I can take such a dismissal seriously.
 
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FireDragon76

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There are foster agencies that will foster to same-sex couples and they are government financed as well. I don't have any problem with them receiving tax dollars even though I don't agree with their rules. Because I don't agree with fostering to same-sex couples should I be fighting against them getting funding?

It's an issue of the state having a legitimate, defensible interest in protecting minorities from unjust discrimination, not about what private citizens do or don't want to pay for.
 
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Clare73

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A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the city of Philadelphia can sever its contract with a Catholic foster care agency that refuses to place children with same-sex couples.

In its opinion, a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Philadelphia held that Catholic Social Services’ religious beliefs do not entitle it to an exception from the city’s nondiscrimination policy. The Philadelphia Inquirer, NPR and Courthouse News Service have coverage.

“The city stands on firm ground in requiring its contractors to abide by its nondiscrimination policies when administering public services,” Judge Thomas Ambro wrote in the opinion.

“While CSS may assert that the city’s actions were not driven by a sincere commitment to equality but rather by anti-religious and anti-Catholic bias … the current record does not show religious persecution or bias,” Ambro said. “Instead it shows so far the city’s good faith in its effort to enforce its laws against discrimination.”

---

Important to note how the judges are distinguishing this from 'the' cake case. There, the cakeshop won because the local government commission acted in a biased way - the court did not really rule on whether religious objections generally trump the government's legitimate interest in opposing discrimination.
The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 Thursday that Philadelphia can't tell a Catholic foster-care agency to violate its faith as a condition of its city contract.

--Wall Street Journal "Review and Outlook," Friday, June 18, 2021.
 
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Quartermaine

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By what metric is it claimed that those who hold to traditional Christian anthropology (which does not recognize LGBTQIA+ as being what people 'are' to begin with) are not a minority? This is news to me. In a world where major Christian churches like the Anglicans have practicing homosexual bishops and such, and in polls conducted by religiously-themed research institutes it is found that 7 in 10 Americans support gay marriage, I think I'm going to need to see some data to the contrary before I can take such a dismissal seriously.
start with the definition of a minority.

A minority is a culturally, ethnically, religious or racially distinct group that has a shared sense of collective identity and community that coexists with but is subordinate to a more dominant group with socially shared rules about who belongs and who does not.

You are talking about a undefined subset of individuals who don't share a common belief or opinion of the general public. The common belief may be religious but it isn't a religion itself even if it were a common belief doesn't make them a distinct group.

There is no shared identity just a loose collection of different people.

There is no community especially in the physical sense. Your group has no neighborhoods in larger communities for example.

You don't have a collective identity.

You aren't subordinate to another more dominant group, you may like to play the victim card here but no one is trying to take away your right to marry or to fire you from our job. No one is working to allow business to refuse to sell you their good and service
 
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dzheremi

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start with the definition of a minority.

A minority is a culturally, ethnically, religious or racially distinct group that has a shared sense of collective identity and community that coexists with but is subordinate to a more dominant group with socially shared rules about who belongs and who does not.

This is not a very good definition of minority. There is no sense by which you can get from Ignatius' posts that he is referring to Christians as ethnoreligious minorities, since there's no mention of the numerous Christian ethnoreligious minorities (e.g., Copts, Assyrians/Syriac people, Chuvash and other Christian Turkic tribes, etc.) that exist in any of the posts, and I know he knows about at least some of them because he's posted about Coptic people before, and Coptic people are the largest single Christian ethnoreligious group in the Middle East.

You appear to be simply trying to shift from the much more common numeric definition of minority (as in "less than half"), which is the much more sensible definition to assume is being used here, on to some other, ethnic definition. I don't really understand why, except maybe that it makes it easier to carry on posting things that are demonstrably false. Like this:

You are talking about a undefined subset of individuals who don't share a common belief or opinion of the general public.

No. I'm asking that you back up your assertion that Christians who hold to traditional Christian anthropology are somehow not in the minority. Can you do that, please?

The common belief may be religious but it isn't a religion itself even if it were a common belief doesn't make them a distinct group.

No one is claiming that the belief is a religion itself (you don't need to be Christian to not buy into the claims of sexual essentialism whereby you are what you repeatedly do), so that's immaterial, but again, if we take the much more common/not needlessly ethnicized definition of "minority", I don't know how you can claim that they're not a distinct group. They're a distinct group, just as those who hold to other anthropologies that are more amenable to the redefinition of humanity inherent in LGBTQIA+ advocacy are likewise a distinct group.

There is no shared identity just a loose collection of different people.

How is there not, if the question is "Are you pro or anti-X?"? Everyone who is pro-X goes in the pro-X group, and everyone who is anti-X goes in the anti-X group, and then bam, you have your answer as to which is a minority and which is a majority, assuming they aren't split 50/50. This is really not that complicated.

There is no community especially in the physical sense. Your group has no neighborhoods in larger communities for example.

There are distinct Christian quarters of Jerusalem, there is Coptic Cairo (and distinct neighborhoods like Shoubra in modern Cairo), there are all the settlements in Lebanon in and around the Qaddisha valley (as well as distinct areas of Beirut, like Achrafieh), there are the Nineveh plains and distinct Christian areas of Baghdad in Iraq, there is historical Beth Nahrain (Iraq/Syria/Turkey/Iran), Tur 'Abdin in Turkey (Mardin), Qamishli and the other Syriac settlements in Syria (in addition to the Armenian villages of Kessab and Yakubiya), New Julfa (Armenian quarter of Isfahan, Iran), the Christian areas of southern India (Kerala) which are home to the majority of Orthodox Indians, as well as the Roman Catholic stronghold of the Indian state of Goa, etc., etc., etc.

These would all be examples where traditional Christians live where they are distinct from the larger non-Christian societies.

I suspect you mean to only be referring to America, which is sort of pointless because the entire point of the American experience is that such divisions aren't necessary to maintain since we are officially a secular country, but that doesn't mean that you can't find places where particular religious or even ethnoreligious groups predominate. The Assyrians (Christian ethnoreligious group from Iraq/Iran/Syria) have certainly claimed certain parts of Chicago, and there are over 50,000 Copts in New Jersey alone.

You don't have a collective identity.

Not cross-communally, no, but there is still a shared anthropology among traditional Christians by virtue of their being traditional Christians, so I'm not sure how true that is, at least in this narrow sense.

You aren't subordinate to another more dominant group, you may like to play the victim card here but no one is trying to take away your right to marry or to fire you from our job. No one is working to allow business to refuse to sell you their good and service

Again, I believe that the point in saying that traditional Christians are a minority is not to make these kinds of claims to begin with, but to simply point out the likely numerical reality as concerns this issue.
 
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Pommer

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The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 Thursday that Philadelphia can't tell a Catholic foster-care agency to violate its faith as a condition of its city contract.

--Wall Street Journal "Review and Outlook," Friday, June 18, 2021.
Do you get into reasoning behind the decision?
Philadelphia was wrong because it had a “religious exemption” available in it’s regulations but choose not to grant one the CSS.

That’s as far as it went. This did not sit well to Justice Alito who (while concurring with the decision) wrote a blistering “concurrence” (in name only) that spans about 150 pages.

This isn’t the “victory for faith” you seem to think it.
 
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Clare73

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Do you get into reasoning behind the decision?
Philadelphia was wrong because it had a “religious exemption” available in it’s regulations but choose not to grant one the CSS.

That’s as far as it went. This did not sit well to Justice Alito who (while concurring with the decision) wrote a blistering “concurrence” (in name only) that spans about 150 pages.

This isn’t the “victory for faith” you seem to think it.
I know that. . .my point was Philly did not win.
 
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