Religious conscience and providing services

TLK Valentine said:

This far, I've gotten a lot of insults, but no answer.

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My irony meter just exploded off the wall again.

My answer is that I don't care about the lies hateful people tell. I know the truth, and even if I gave them the benefit of the doubt, the truth would still not be in them.

Deacon001 said:

Wedding cakes are all special order, they are a lot of work and a lot of money. No one should be forced to make one.

If it's just a cake you want, there will be one for sale, I promise, and anybody can buy it, and do with it what you want when you leave the shop.

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That's the point. Cake decorators wouldn't refuse me, or anyone else on unreasonable grounds.

Simply because they "are gay" isn't a reasonable ground to refuse to make a cake for someone.

Money and work isn't the issue here as I am assuming gay people still pay their bills.

I wouldn't expect say, an contractor to not build someone a house because they were going to be gay and living there either. Houses are a lot of work.

variant said:

That's the point. Cake decorators wouldn't refuse me, or anyone else on unreasonable grounds.

Simply because they "are gay" isn't a reasonable ground to refuse to make a cake for someone.

Money and work isn't the issue here as I am assuming gay people still pay their bills.

I wouldn't expect say, an contractor to not build someone a house because they were going to be gay and living there either. Houses are a lot of work.

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If the issue were bakers refusing to make birthday cakes for gay couples, your point would be better taken. But, it is dishonest to say that these bakers are saying "we won't bake your cake because your gay". Rather, they are saying, "we won't make your cake to celebrate something in your life that we believe is immoral." I don't agree with the bakers who take this stance, but I can understand their point and the importance of protecting the right to have and exercise views that I disagree with.

dies-l said:

If the issue were bakers refusing to make birthday cakes for gay couples, your point would be better taken. But, it is dishonest to say that these bakers are saying "we won't bake your cake because your gay". Rather, they are saying, "we won't make your cake to celebrate something in your life that we believe is immoral."

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The two statements are identical. They are gay, and that is why they won't bake the cake for them.

This would be similar to the contractor refusing to build a house because someone was going to practice homosexuality in the bedroom.

Making bedrooms is certainly not immoral but the objection here would be the same.

I don't agree with the bakers who take this stance, but I can understand their point and the importance of protecting the right to have and exercise views that I disagree with.

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Again in this case they are making a cake, the further attachment of morality to the process is up to them, but I don't see why society needs to respect it.

If you have a good reason for refusing service people are probably going to respect it.

Deacon001 said:

Wedding cakes are all special order, they are a lot of work and a lot of money. No one should be forced to make one.

If it's just a cake you want, there will be one for sale, I promise, and anybody can buy it, and do with it what you want when you leave the shop.

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The court case in question was involving a bakery that bakes wedding cakes, but refused to bake a wedding cake for someone because they were gay.

You're misrepresenting the facts of the situation.

In concluding that Masterpiece Cakeshop acted unlawfully, a CCRC investigation also showed evidence that Phillips was willing to bake a cake for the "marriage" of a pair of dogs, but not for two women.

Deacon001 said:

My irony meter just exploded off the wall again.

My answer is that I don't care about the lies hateful people tell. I know the truth, and even if I gave them the benefit of the doubt, the truth would still not be in them.

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You speak of truth as a tangible thing. As something someone can possess, hold, and place inside them. Something that someone can take from one person and give to another.

Truth is an abstract concept, not a tangible thing.

Bit of a tangent we're going on here, but I just wanted to point out this idea that you have "the truth" and anyone who disagrees with you or challenges your statements does not have "the truth" is a fundamentally flawed way of viewing truth and falsehood.

In this country, when you decide to open a business to the public, you open it to all of the public. You do not get to pick and choose. If you can't handle that, don't go into business.

dies-l said:

If the issue were bakers refusing to make birthday cakes for gay couples, your point would be better taken. But, it is dishonest to say that these bakers are saying "we won't bake your cake because your gay". Rather, they are saying, "we won't make your cake to celebrate something in your life that we believe is immoral." I don't agree with the bakers who take this stance, but I can understand their point and the importance of protecting the right to have and exercise views that I disagree with.

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The court determined that baking cakes does not constitute religious expression. If the case goes to an appeal, this is the decision they should challenge if they want to have any hope of winning their appeal.

I stand by my position - what the purchasers of a cake do with the cake they purchased is no business of the one who created it. They can eat it, throw it at each other, or throw it away. Whatever they want.

The baker is in the business of baking and selling cakes. The customer has money and desires a cake. The baker has cakes and desires money. When the transaction is complete, the cake is no longer owned by the baker and he has no business telling customers what they can or can't do with their property.

Deacon001 said:

My irony meter just exploded off the wall again.

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If you can show me where I have insulted you -- not criticised your ideas, not commented in the character of those who would exploit your faith to support their bigotry -- I will be happy to apologize.

However, I have done no such thing.

My answer is that I don't care about the lies hateful people tell. I know the truth, and even if I gave them the benefit of the doubt, the truth would still not be in them.

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If you don't care, why were so upset at what you saw as my "fighting words"?

You would have me believe that if the nation -- perhaps even the world -- saw the Christian religion as a sanctuary for bigots and homophobes of all stripes because they saw an opportunity and took it, and associated you with that rabble because of your complicity and complacency, you would not be bothered by that in the least?

Pardon my skepticism.

variant said:

If it's a buisness that serves the general public then it serves everyone. It's not the place for personal condemnations.

Otherwise, any group sufficiently in control of wealth would be able to enforce their will on the public as per the civil rights era.

If your reasoning wouldn't have been the excuse of bigots attempting to relegate black people to second class citizens in the recent past it might go over better.

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Should there be laws against racial discrimination in employment? Most Americans think so. They have been persuaded to forget that discrimination is a form of freedom — and an important one.

The essence of freedom is choice. People choose their employers, their neighborhoods, their pastimes, and their spouses for whatever reasons they like. They needn’t justify those choices to anyone, and certainly not to some busybody from the government.

A decision to take employment, like the decision to take a spouse, is a private one. A man can turn down a job, just as a woman can turn down a marriage proposal, for absolutely any reasons. Those reasons may seem irrational to someone else, but they are certainly not illegal.

Why should people who offer employment have their choices circumscribed by law? Why must an employer justify his choices to the government or to anyone else? Most people are not employers, so they never think about the freedoms that employers have lost. A company can no longer simply hire the people it wants; it must hire only those people whom the government permits it to hire.

The same is true for dismissing employees. In most cases, a worker is free to quit at any time for any reason. Equal freedom for the employer would be the right to fire a worker at any time for any reason. Employers lost that freedom long ago.

In conditions of real liberty, an employer is free to hire only left-handed people over six feet tall, if that is what he wants. And, of course, in conditions of real liberty an employer may hire only whites or only blacks, if that is what he wants. Americans had that freedom until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.

Did they exercise it? Some did, and some did not. The laws of supply and demand have a remarkable power to match workers with jobs, without regard to race. The reason Jim Crow laws were passed to ban blacks from certain jobs is that was the only way to keep them out. Even in the South of 50 or 60 years ago, whites could not be counted on to put racial solidarity ahead of profits if they could find a black man who could do the job.

More recently, South Africa has had similar laws for similar reasons. Until they were dismantled along with Apartheid, job reservation laws had to be strictly policed. White employers routinely broke them and were fined for doing so. The vast majority of employers are more interested in getting the job done than in keeping the work force white.

Therefore, although popular mythology has it that blacks got white-collar jobs only after the passage of anti-discrimination laws, that is not true. There were innumerable black entrepreneurs and professionals, and some held high positions. Franklin Roosevelt appointed the first black federal judge in 1937, and a black congressman became head of the Government Operations Committee in 1949. In 1940, Richard Wright’s Native Son was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and in 1950 Gwendolyn Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. During the Second World War, four Merchant Marine ships had black captains who commanded white crews, and in 1945, a black officer was given command of an American military base for the first time. [National Research Council, A Common Destiny, Blacks in American Society (Washington: National Academy Press, 1989), pp. 64ff, 101, 241.]

In pre-Civil Rights days, whites hired blacks and associated with them only if they wanted to. Some did and some didn’t. That is called choice. Blacks rose to high positions because they were capable, not because they were black. Some blacks were doubtless shut out of opportunities because they were black, but at least there was freedom — the freedom to discriminate.

Anti-discrimination is now a national obsession. What we have forgotten, in the Land of the Free, is that discrimination is a form of choice, and that choice is the essence of freedom.

"Free to Choose" American Renaissance, May 1992

SoldierOfTheKing said:

Should there be laws against racial discrimination in employment? Most Americans think so. They have been persuaded to forget that discrimination is a form of freedom — and an important one.

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I'm not going to provide a detailed argument against segregation as a form of freedom.

No point in rehashing an argument that was lost by your side before I was ever born.

morningstar2651 said:

You speak of truth as a tangible thing. As something someone can possess, hold, and place inside them. Something that someone can take from one person and give to another.

Truth is an abstract concept, not a tangible thing.

Bit of a tangent we're going on here, but I just wanted to point out this idea that you have "the truth" and anyone who disagrees with you or challenges your statements does not have "the truth" is a fundamentally flawed way of viewing truth and falsehood.

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All right, I am going to go slow here.

I know the truth about me. Nothing anybody says can change what I know about myself, what I think, what I am, what I believe. Nobody on earth knows more about me than me. Got that?

Deacon001 said:

All right, I am going to go slow here.

I know the truth about me. Nothing anybody says can change what I know about myself, what I think, what I am, what I believe. Nobody on earth knows more about me than me. Got that?

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But you still get upset when others falsely claim to know you -- you get understandably defensive.

TLK Valentine said:

But you still get upset when others falsely claim to know you -- you get understandably defensive.

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These are exciting times: gas is over $3.00 a gallon and pointing out the truth is being "defensive".

Deacon001 said:

These are exciting times: gas is over $3.00 a gallon and pointing out the truth is being "defensive".

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Speaking of the truth...

What do you call this statement now?

Deacon001 said:

My answer is that I don't care about the lies hateful people tell. I know the truth, and even if I gave them the benefit of the doubt, the truth would still not be in them.

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You care a lot more than you claimed...

variant said:

The two statements are identical. They are gay, and that is why they won't bake the cake for them.

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No. They're not. I can't tell whether you actually cannot see the difference between, "I won't serve you because you are gay" and "I won't serve you in a way that celebrates your choice to 'marry' a person of the same sex".

This would be similar to the contractor refusing to build a house because someone was going to practice homosexuality in the bedroom.

Making bedrooms is certainly not immoral but the objection here would be the same. [/quote]

You are really stretching here!

Again in this case they are making a cake, the further attachment of morality to the process is up to them, but I don't see why society needs to respect it.

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Society doesn't need to respect it, per se. But, until we amend the Constitution to get rid of the little trifle called the 1st Amendment, then making a person do something that violates their beliefs, even if done for the most benevolent of reasons, is unconstitutional.

If you have a good reason for refusing service people are probably going to respect it.

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You cannot be serious! I find it interesting that a few years ago, when the ssm debate came to light, many of forums like these were claiming that once ssm gained some traction, the gay rights groups would force Conservative Christian business owners to serve the ssm industry even in violation of the consciences. I was one, among many at the time, who insisted that this charge was ludicrous, that if we respect gay couples' right to marry, they are not just going to turn around and force their views on conservatives in such a tacky as that. I remember conservative Christians using examples like innkeepers and bakers forced to accommodate same sex weddings. And, the overwhelming response from the gay-friendly community was, "we'd never do that!"

Fast forward to today, and we see that I was wrong to be so naive. I have come to realize that any group, once they gain enough traction will gladly suppress the rights of those they disagree with. We live in a moment now where, on this particular issue, each side has a fair amount of traction in their respective parts of the country, and each side is zealously working to suppress the rights of the other, insisting that the other side is so evil that their rights ought not be protected. Am I the only one who can see how dangerous this is?

Nowadays, I still support same sex marriage, and I even have a business that markets specifically to the gay community. However, I find it sad how the very same community that just over a decade ago was not allowed to marry anywhere in the United States because a a repressive majority saw them as unworthy of this basic human right is now a part of a new repressive majority actively trying to take away an equally basic right from another group that is now slowly becoming a distinct minority (Christian conservatives). Perhaps, this is the chickens coming home to roost, but the idea that we can suppress the rights of the other, so long as the we has the power, remains a dangerous idea.

But, to respond to your idea, "as long as you have a really good reason, people will respect that" is absolute nonsense!

dies-l said:

No. They're not. I can't tell whether you actually cannot see the difference between, "I won't serve you because you are gay" and "I won't serve you in a way that celebrates your choice to 'marry' a person of the same sex".

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I don't see any real distinction. The fact that they are gay and want to live as if that is OK is the problem.

Not baking a cake for them isn't going to change their mind it is just a good way of being a jerk.

You are really stretching here!

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How so? How does the baker and the contractors argument differ? He's making a bedroom for people to celebrate their sin in.

Anyone can really say anything is a "violation of their conscience".

Society doesn't need to respect it, per se. But, until we amend the Constitution to get rid of the little trifle called the 1st Amendment, then making a person do something that violates their beliefs, even if done for the most benevolent of reasons, is unconstitutional.

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Then the civil rights act of 1964 was unconstitutional, have fun selling that one.

You cannot be serious! I find it interesting that a few years ago, when the ssm debate came to light, many of forums like these were claiming that once ssm gained some traction, the gay rights groups would force Conservative Christian business owners to serve the ssm industry even in violation of the consciences. I was one, among many at the time, who insisted that this charge was ludicrous, that if we respect gay couples' right to marry, they are not just going to turn around and force their views on conservatives in such a tacky as that. I remember conservative Christians using examples like innkeepers and bakers forced to accommodate same sex weddings. And, the overwhelming response from the gay-friendly community was, "we'd never do that!"

Fast forward to today, and we see that I was wrong to be so naive. I have come to realize that any group, once they gain enough traction will gladly suppress the rights of those they disagree with. We live in a moment now where, on this particular issue, each side has a fair amount of traction in their respective parts of the country, and each side is zealously working to suppress the rights of the other, insisting that the other side is so evil that their rights ought not be protected. Am I the only one who can see how dangerous this is?

Nowadays, I still support same sex marriage, and I even have a business that markets specifically to the gay community. However, I find it sad how the very same community that just over a decade ago was not allowed to marry anywhere in the United States because a a repressive majority saw them as unworthy of this basic human right is now a part of a new repressive majority actively trying to take away an equally basic right from another group that is now slowly becoming a distinct minority (Christian conservatives). Perhaps, this is the chickens coming home to roost, but the idea that we can suppress the rights of the other, so long as the we has the power, remains a dangerous idea.

But, to respond to your idea, "as long as you have a really good reason, people will respect that" is absolute nonsense!

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I said if you had a good reason, I don't think you do.

I think refusing to do wedding cakes because you disagree with the person who is marrying over morality is petty and rude.

variant said:

I don't see any real distinction. The fact that they are gay and want to live as if that is OK is the problem.

How so?

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"How not?" is the better question, since you proposed the analogy that appears not in the slightest way analogous.

[/quote]Then the civil rights act of 1964 was unconstitutional, have fun selling that one. [/quote]

I love what the CRA accomplished. If not for the CRA, I doubt that my family would be allowed to exist as it does now, at least not without a fair amount of persecution.

Nonetheless, I have to admit that it probably is unconstitutional, both as an overreach of federal power and as a violation of the First Amendment. And, as much good as it's done for race relations in this country, I fear what its continued expansion will do to this country over the next 50 years.

I said if you had a good reason, I don't think you do.

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I'm guessing you didn't read any of what you're responding to here.

dies-l said:

"How not?" is the better question, since you proposed the analogy that appears not in the slightest way analogous.

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And you showed this where exactly?

Cakes are for eating and celebrating marriage and bedrooms are for sleeping and what exactly?

I love what the CRA accomplished. If not for the CRA, I doubt that my family would be allowed to exist as it does now, at least not without a fair amount of persecution.

Nonetheless, I have to admit that it probably is unconstitutional, both as an overreach of federal power and as a violation of the First Amendment. And, as much good as it's done for race relations in this country, I fear what its continued expansion will do to this country over the next 50 years.

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If you think it's your first amendment right to use your buisness to try to hurt people you don't like or as a spiteful enforcement tool to those who stray outside your moralizing.

I'm guessing you didn't read any of what you're responding to here.

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Your diatribe didn't respond to me either so I didn't finish it.

A journey along the history of the topic doesn't address the point that these are simply bad objections to servicing homosexuals.

variant said:

And you showed this where exactly?

Cakes are for eating and celebrating marriage and bedrooms are for sleeping and what exactly?

If you think it's your first amendment right to use your buisness to try to hurt people you don't like or as a spiteful enforcement tool to those who stray outside your moralizing.

Your diatribe didn't respond to me either so I didn't finish it.

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Not going to bother continuing to respond to someone who can't bother to read my posts before responding to them. You are making assumptions about me that are just plain wrong.