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So, just like the Christian baker that got harassed for having a moral conviction, the affected party just wants to be a bully and force their will on the guy?
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Originally Posted by mensaguy
I don't think the baker issue is a fair comparison. This guy is a government appointee. The baker is not. The First Amendment applies to the officiant, but does not apply to the baker (although other things, like the Civil Rights Act, may apply).
After I posted an explanation, I really don't understand why you posted this:
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Originally Posted by Vizio
They have a religious right to obey their conviction. There were plenty of other bakeries to handle their request, but they wanted to prove a point and harass that bakery. That's bigotry at its finest.
No one is suggesting we discriminate against black people, women, or Christians. As for people whining about "discrimination" based on sexual choices? It's only a matter of time until polygamy, pedophilia, adultery, or even non-sexual things like kleptomania is brought into the discussion. What about the rights of the kleptomaniac? He "was born that way".
I'm not going to bother repeating all the times it has been posted in these forums that polygamy, pedophilia, and even bestiality have been clearly shown to be entirely unrelated to SSM. It becomes very difficult to converse with you when you omit things that have already been discussed.
Since bigotry seems to come up from time to time, I thought it might be good to have the dictionary definition.
From dictionary.com:
bigotry: stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own.
You have hit the nail on the head. I have some friends, She is Lutheran, raised Romanian Othodox, he is a mostly secular Catholic, and they would not see themselves as unequally yoked. They have very theologically liberal interpretations of the Bible and church tradition. If you survey liberal traditions, and people for whom their religion is a socio-cultural thing, I think you will find this attitude.
If on the other hand, you start at the Southern Baptist Convention, or the Assemblies of God, or a Pentacostal church and head toward the more fundementalist views, oyu will find this is a very common interpretation. Marriage is the most intimate, consuming form of "being yoked", so it it the one focused on. Some groups take it further, and feel that you should not enter in to joint business ventures or any other form of partnership with someone outside of your faith tradition, or at least a small circle around it. You see this attitude in other religions as well, Orthodox Judaism as the most obvious example here in the US.
It actually is funny to me that it is so odd to you, but I was raised with it. So even though I disagree with it, I understand the rationale.
-NoCapo
Ha ha. Yes, I'm a genuine heathen. It must be 35+ years since I last looked at a bible or heard a bible story in Sunday school. Even then I zoned out most of the time, bored to distraction, daydreaming about what was going on outside. (Maybe I just had a short attention span.. ha ha.)
That's why it is so fascinating now. Like an outsider looking in.
1) Marriage is not a "right", as the article says. It's nowhere guaranteed in the Constitution.
2) He's a wedding officiant. He has the right to refuse to officiate any marriage he wants. I have a wedding policy that states the same thing. If I do not want to marry someone, I won't. I personally don't have an issue with marrying 2 atheists or agnostics, but I won't marry a Christian to someone of any other religion/non-religion. I will not violate my conscience and marry a couple that I do not feel should be married. I also have a stated policy that says I won't marry same-gender couples.
Why do these people feel the need to make a big deal out of it? Why not just move on with life and go find someone else?
You are mistaken. Marriage is a right in common law, and has been for centuries. Any arbitrary impediment to marriage is illegal. If you will something to someone on the condition that they remain unmarried, the will will be thrown out by the first court that hears a challenge. Perhaps you have missed the fact that many courts have thrown out anti-marriage legislation on that very principle. Same-sex couples are quickly regaining their right to marry.
If you don't want to perform marriages, maybe you should get out of the business.
Given the additional fact that this officiant is not paid by the state or county, but by the couple, and that he is a minister of his church, I am not sure that constitutional rights come into play. If anything, it was the fact that the couple was not told there was a different officiant for non-religious ceremonies. I think this case is a bit more complicated than the original article made it out to be. I do think that the county should not be having an "official" officiant who only does Christian ceremonies though. I wonder if there will be a lawsuit and what the result might be.
Suppose you were a baker and an American Nazi wanted a cake with swastikas to celebrate the birthday of Adolph Hitler. Would you comply?
Suppose a KKK member wanted a cake with a burning cross and KKK on it. Would you comply?
No. Because political affiliation is not a class protected by civil rights laws. Nor should it be, in my opinion. You're free to argue that is should be. Good luck with that.
You are really reaching for an excuse to justify this discrimination. Your attempt at an analogy is rather weak - to put it charitably.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vizio
They have a religious right to obey their conviction. There were plenty of other bakeries to handle their request, but they wanted to prove a point and harass that bakery. That's bigotry at its finest.
Not in the realm of commercial activity, they do not.
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No one is suggesting we discriminate against black people, women, or Christians. As for people whining about "discrimination" based on sexual choices? It's only a matter of time until polygamy, pedophilia, adultery, or even non-sexual things like kleptomania is brought into the discussion. What about the rights of the kleptomaniac? He "was born that way".
The obtuse shtick continues, as usual - you rely on that sophomoric technique more than any other. Of course, I said nothing about that - I simply pointed out that in the same way that someone who can't handle not discriminating against those groups shouldn't be engaged in commercial activity in the U.S., so too should someone who can't handle not discriminating against gays - at least in states were such behavior or prohibited in commerce. Predictably, you pretend to think otherwise in order to create yet another strawman to attack, because actually addressing what I actually wrote is problematic for you.
And you know full well that sexual orientation is not based on sexual acts but on orientation - no one suddenly becomes heterosexual or homosexual the day they have sex for the first time. But denying this very basic fact is necessary for your excuses, so you deny it. Your excuses themselves are built on obvious, though well-known, falsehoods.
And I'm not surprised to yet again see you leap at the chance to equate consensual adult sexual activity with pedophilia. You've got every dishonest rhetorical technique down pat. The only mystery is why you think it serves any purpose other than to illustrate how you've got nothing of substance to prop up your anti-gay animus?
Well, even if there is some room to argue about the right to refuse commercial services, this case is clearly about someone acting in a governmental capacity. Regardless of your stance on an individual's right to discriminate, when that individual is acting is an official governmental capacity, the courts have generally held that he or she does not have the right to discriminate based on religion. Baker's notwithstanding, this official appears to have done something he clearly should not have, and the judge that appointed him appears to be in the wrong as well. The only way to determine that is in court, which is where I hope this goes. It would be nice to have a definitive ruling on this sort of behavior, one way or another.
If you offer cakes with burning crosses and KKK on them, then you have to offer those cakes to any comers.
If you do not offer cakes with burning crosses and KKK on them, then you do not have to sell them to anyone.
If you offer cakes with white fondant and sugar flowers, then you have to sell them to any comers. If you do not offer cakes with white fondant and sugar flowers, then you do not have to sell them to anyone.
How about if all of your wedding cakes have a male groom and female bride.
Should you have to make a cake with two females or two males on it?
This may not as cut and dried as it sounds.
Is there an as yet unexplained complication because he insisted that they get married in his church and then denied them there?
Was he then no longer acting as an agent of the state?
Did they unwittingly trade a governmental function to a religiously based one?
If on the other hand, you start at the Southern Baptist Convention, or the Assemblies of God, or a Pentecostal church and head toward the more fundamentalist views, you will find this is a very common interpretation. Marriage is the most intimate, consuming form of "being yoked", so it it the one focused on. Some groups take it further, and feel that you should not enter in to joint business ventures or any other form of partnership with someone outside of your faith tradition, or at least a small circle around it.
Yes, the actual verse (in context, as Viz would say) is not about marriage but about a more general principle of relationships with "outsiders". It is generally applied only to marriage however because there is really no practical way in modern society where division of labor is both widespread and indispensable, to achieve any such separation. It is an excellent example of how even bibliolaters "cherry" pick what they will observe / ignore and how they will apply things. They have to earn a living and most do not want to take the whole "set apart from the world" thing so far that they create that much of a social ghetto for themselves. Not everyone wants the Amish or even the Mennonite lifestyle, and even those involves compromises.
I remember traveling through an Amish community once and seeing Amish children enjoying a trampoline in their front yard. Here is a sect that finds "modern" (itself ironically a relative and not absolute term) conveniences and entertainments to be a snare of the devil and yet given apparently that no electricity is involved in its operation I guess it's okay to have a mass-produced playground item made of high-tech polycarbonate fiber for the kids to play on.
They have a religious right to obey their conviction.
Sure, no one it telling him what to believe. But being religious doesn't mean you get to ignore the law.
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There were plenty of other bakeries to handle their request
And there are plenty of businesses this religious guy could go into that don't require him to be around icky gay people. Guess which option doesn't have someone violating civil rights laws?
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but they wanted to prove a point and harass that bakery. That's bigotry at its finest.
Yeah, sure, just like black people in the 60s demanding to be served at whites-only stores were bigots and harassing the fine upstanding businessmen who ran those shops.
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It's only a matter of time until polygamy, pedophilia, adultery, or even non-sexual things like kleptomania is brought into the discussion.
If you feel the need to advocate for these causes, go ahead. Strange you'd bring them up, though, since no one else seems to be worried about them.
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(Maybe I just had a short attention span.. ha ha.)
