So... If I start carving sculptures, and you ask me to carve genitalia for the genitalia festival, and I say no even though I've made you chairs before, I'm in the wrong? ... Please tell my you know they kill them in Iran? Also, cakes are apparently a human right. Thanks a lot Antoinette.
Society would be better off without Republicans because they're sick and evil in every possible way, and they defend the most corrupt and evil people imaginable. We should weed them out using eugenics! There, I think I figured out to speak in the right language for these forums!
I don't have anything against Republicans per se. I dislike plenty of socialists. Back home, we kind of have a running joke where we make fun of the socialists for whatever reason. I'm not particularly left, but we've had that debate already. It just so happens to be that the people that I think are nutjobs are republican, not really for their ideas, but for the way their ideas came to be. Nutjobs who are stuck in the middle ages and have these ludicrous ideas as "I should be able to discriminate, I shouldn't need much of a reason" aren't exactly high up on my list of people that I care to have a chat with. Modern society doesn't work that way anymore. If you're looking for that sort of freedom, go be a male in a ****** tyrannous country where you can **** women and then have her sued for cheating on her husband. Ludicrous idea, but that's the point. At this point the levels of discrimination you're suggesting should be a given are too laughable to even consider in a western first world country.
"Person with desire for genital carving" is not a legally protected category. "Person who is gay" is. Likewise, "person who dislikes gay people" is not a legally protected category; "Person who is gay" is. The problem (in the sense of constructing functional law) is that "religious belief" in American law means "any strongly held personal belief" (because to define it otherwise would open a whole slew of other complications) and so an economic agent could deny participation based on literally any criteria. If a seller is allowed to use their own religious beliefs to deny something to a buyer based not upon the buyer's personal category but on the seller's own beliefs, then the very concept of legally protected categories falls apart. More than just an issue of religious rights or gay rights, the argument over the current legal protections in economics is about all protected rights. The kind of religious defense and associated legislation currently being used to justify not selling to gay persons fundamentally contradicts the Civil Rights Act. If one exists, it seems to me that the other, logically, cannot. The main point is that this isn't an issue of what sort of activities or beliefs are cause for discrimination; it's an issue of what constitutes a legally protected category in US anti-discrimination law. The EEOC currently interprets the Civil Rights Act to also cover discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Those things, therefore, are protected categories, while other activities not expressly listed are not. While religion is a protected category, it is protected as a quality about which people discriminate, not currently as a cause of discriminating (though that may change). This topic often gets talked about without considering its incredibly important legal and constitutional context.
Just to be clear, this isn't what I was arguing. My comment had nothing to do with solutions to perceived problems. My point was that discrimination law often gets talked about in an a-legal way, which is a problem per se. I have my own opinions about the subject at hand, but neither was I intending to supply them nor, certainly, support anything that you say.
Yeah, I didn't think you had assumed that -- just making the distinction clear for anyone else who jumps in.
Guys, I'm talking about people being allowed to refuse to participate in an event they don't to participate in. Do they really need a reason you agree with for them to not be criminals because of that refusal? That's my point.
And my point is that this sort of discourse is too heavily abstracted from the material, legal constructions of discrimination in the US to be of substantive use vis a vis the issue of gay economic participation. Addressing these sorts of questions is important, but I think that we should recognize that discussion as something distinct from the political issue to which that discussion is being marshaled.
Sorry, what I said was a bit compressed. Here's the gist: "Should people be morally allowed to do this thing?" is different from "Should people be allowed to do this thing within the present law?" In the former case, neat, that's an argument about ethics and philosophy if you want to have it. There are no bounds on that discussion. In the latter case, we are asking within a set of rules -- the laws and Constitution of the United States. That context has rules and values aside from the ones we bring to it as debaters. With respect to the arguments about a cake shop serving gay people, I think that at least part of that debate has to be grounded in the latter of those two questions. By asking the former, moral question, we are going too broad and theoretical to completely address the specific legal situation. Talking about cake-shop owners and gay patrons isn't a value-neutral example for the moral question. Just as a friendly reminder for discussion to noone in particular, you don't need to be a saint, you just need to be not-a-jerk.
Morals are up to the individual. I don't agree with people refusing service to people (besides intoxicated or rude people), but it's up to the store owner. If they are being unfair to people, just spread the word and if they really are refusing service to people for no good reason then eventually their reputation will fall, and thus their business if there are enough like-minded people that will no longer use their business. /did not read the whole thread
that will result in a self segregated America. one black and one white. face it, its going to take forced interaction until enough cross breeding occurs to make it a moot point.
We're not going to revert back to segregation. I believe our country has made great progress as a culture since then.
The catch is the owners of the bakery like the gay customers and dont mind baking them cakes and goods. The owners draw the line when the gay couple wanted them to participate and "passively condone" the gay couples union by catering their wedding. The store owners felt that catering the gay couples wedding would violate their code of religious ethics. An example of the same moral equivalency to this would be a muslim butcher who is approached by a group of farmers in need of their pigs to be butchered for a pork festival. The muslim butcher has on many occasions butchered the farmers cows and sheep and is friends with the farmers, but refuses to butcher the pigs this time based on the idea that it violates the muslim bakers religious code of ethics and by butchering the pigs he would be "passively condoning" the consumption of pork which he has made a religious commitment to not do. Should the government force this muslim butcher to conform to the wishes of these farmers, because they cry "DISCRIMINATION!" ??? As a centrist it looks to me like a political agenda has become more important than freedom of religion. The bakery owners are not trying to prevent the gay couple from getting married. The bakery owners just don't want to participate in something that would violate their religion just as butchering pork or eating pork would violate the beliefs of a muslim butcher. In conclusion the gay couple are entitled asshles who publicly shamed and bullied these bakers because they have no respect for their religion. The stupidity of this situation would become more apparent if it was a muslim baker who refused to bake a cake for this gay couple. Then those in charge of this political circus would have to pick who is more important on their hierarchy of political agendas. "Tolerance for Islam" OR "Gay Marriage".
I'm all for religious freedom up until the point it puts down a group of people for something that isn't their choice, which has been scientifically established.
