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I personally have no little or no problem with a secular "gay marriage" as long as pastors are not forced to marry them (assuming they don't promote their church as a secular place to get married), but this is a difficult issue because it can potentially lead to a slippery slope in either direction. Because of this, I do have questions to ponder slightly more extreme but relevant nature:
"What if these owners where asked to write something like "Support Satanism, Jesus is a (expletive or other negative word)" or something crazy like that and then got sued? Where does the line get drawn in the beliefs vs secular business laws?"
...Btw, if anyone here wants to immediately equate gay marriage or support of any kind of gay rights to satanism, I'm sorry but in my opinion, you're a "holier than thou" extremist and/or probably an...lets see, how do you say idiot in a forum acceptable manner?...
Absolutely! My point is any line needs to be broadly applicable.
In general I think a cinema owner already has the right to choose what they screen. Now, many may be contractually obligated to studios or distribution entities, and I don't think they should be able to reneg on a contract because of religious beliefs, but in general an owner does, and should, have the right to choose what they screen for whatever reason.
What they can't do is choose their patrons. Which I also think is probably the right stance.
If I owned a theater, I should not be forced to screen the Passion of the Christ, but I cannot kick people with Hijabs, Crosses, or Yarmulkes out of my Monty Python marathon... What? Its my theater, I can show what I want! [1]
-NoCapo
[1] And if you disagree, I shall say, "Ni!" a second time!
I would not dare disagree - especially if you say "Ni" at me.
P.s but..
What I was trying to say was, "It is ok to refuse to sell a Bert and Ernie gay cake and not ok to refuse to sell a Bert and Ernie birthday cake to a gay person."
At the risk of a "Ni" What I was trying to say was, "It is ok to refuse to sell Creationist books in your bookshop and not ok to refuse to sell whatever books you have to a black person." Ni-say me if you like, but my alarm bell went off.
I suspect that, if we substituted refusal to sell porn books for refusing Creationist ones we could sympathize with their refusal and also with their not making so much money. So the sub -question (assuming the one about refusing services to this or that person on religious grounds) is about what services a business can legally be obliged to provide despite religious views.
We have surely decided on the employee who wants to be excluded from this or that job on religious grounds. let them find another job, and scream 'persecution' all they like. But can a prvate pharmacy refuse to sell the Pill? Can a private bookshop stack his shelves with Darwin and Dawkins and refuse to sell any Creationist literature?
Perhaps you and Sir Patrick are right and the Line is somewhere there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Finn_Jarber
Creating laws which enable people to use the strong arm of the law to harass people for their religious views is police state mentality indeed.
Translated from Theist to English "To Hell with man -made law."
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 06-07-2015 at 02:24 AM..
I personally have no little or no problem with a secular "gay marriage" as long as pastors are not forced to marry them (assuming they don't promote their church as a secular place to get married), but this is a difficult issue because it can potentially lead to a slippery slope in either direction. Because of this, I do have questions to ponder slightly more extreme but relevant nature:
"What if these owners where asked to write something like "Support Satanism, Jesus is a (expletive or other negative word)" or something crazy like that and then got sued? Where does the line get drawn in the beliefs vs secular business laws?"
...Btw, if anyone here wants to immediately equate gay marriage or support of any kind of gay rights to satanism, I'm sorry but in my opinion, you're a "holier than thou" extremist and/or probably an...lets see, how do you say idiot in a forum acceptable manner?...
For the last few days I have been back filling some down time reading posts here and have come to the conclusion most people do not actually read other people's posts.
No baker would be forced to put any objectionable saying on a cake UNLESS that baker does put those sayings on cakes for other people. Many have already explained that in this any similar threads. The USA bakers got in trouble because they refused to sell any wedding cake at all to a gay. A baker could refuse to sell a cake to a black that has a saying to kill whites but could not refuse to sell to a person because they are black. The only slippery slope is that created to confuse the issue.
it still seems to me that the anti gay crowd want special rights for religious store owners, rights not granted to non religious store owners or to employees of either the public or the private sectors.
For the last few days I have been back filling some down time reading posts here and have come to the conclusion most people do not actually read other people's posts.
No baker would be forced to put any objectionable saying on a cake UNLESS that baker does put those sayings on cakes for other people. Many have already explained that in this any similar threads. The USA bakers got in trouble because they refused to sell any wedding cake at all to a gay. A baker could refuse to sell a cake to a black that has a saying to kill whites but could not refuse to sell to a person because they are black. The only slippery slope is that created to confuse the issue.
it still seems to me that the anti gay crowd want special rights for religious store owners, rights not granted to non religious store owners or to employees of either the public or the private sectors.
"Good word" as they say.
"A baker could refuse to sell a cake to a black that has a saying to kill whites but could not refuse to sell to a person because they are black."
But I think we already refuted the 'Nazi cake' argument as a red herring because Nazi symbols and racist slogans are themselves not legal. So the baker is well within their rights to refuse to provide such a "service".
So where we are trying to find the line is in a legal service which a private individual is disinclined to provide because of personal religious views. It seems to me coming back to something I touched on in another thread and harks back to the row about hotel owners who would not rent rooms to black or Gays. Providing a service to the public means that you cannot discriminate about that service, and religious reasons is not a good pretext and is misuse of the 'respect' unwritten blasphemy law.
I suspect we are trying to find a line between private thoughts and public expressions. And I suspect Private stops at the shop window.
P.s
JJ Maxx put his finger on it
"Originally Posted by JJ_Maxx View Post
This is no different than a t-shirt maker refusing to make an custom shirt with obscenities, or a photographer politely declining to do a nude portrait, or a vegan restaurant declining to cater a barbeque."
and your response "Sorry, I don't do those".
The obscenity thing gives wide discretion because of official/legal wabbling about what is obscene.The law has intervened here to have porn mags removed from public news -shelves even where the owners were willing to offer them. Though they seem unable to touch those who still do. So there is a certain amount of personal choice.
But the gay issue is not about what is a bit rude, but what is sexually discriminatory. I have no doubt that a newsagent who refused to sell a gay edition of 'Wedding' magazine would be offending. But if he didn't want to sell Wedding magazines (or she because she thought marriage was rape) that would be ok. Because declining to provide wedding cakes may seem odd, but legal. But refusing to do gay (or lesbian) wedding cakes is not. Except in Northern Ireland, it seems.
And, again, I wonder whether Stewart was right to identify the nature of the message as having gone over the line to where private thoughts are being put in their mouths. It's not providinga cake for a gay wedding but getting people to say that they personally support gay weddings, when they don't. "Gosh who made that cake?..really? I thought they were against..."
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 06-07-2015 at 03:06 AM..
If you did mean that it should be acceptable to deny service based on sexual orientation, please jump in and correct me. I would not want to put words in your mouth...
-NoCapo
yeah, I leave out words. sorry about the adhd and dyslexia. Back in my day they call called us lazy and stupid and didn't help us fix it. They just kicked us ... lol
I didn't, and I am not, going to read the article. Its meaningless to me. This is just the cake to me. The baker has a right to say "I am not putting that on a cake". And its fifty shades of grey.
Not selling to gays crosses the grey gay line. lol ... "grey gay", I busted a ryhm. It just that simple.
not an issue at all. they are allowed to. Like I said, its for the locals to decide. There are some tough choices to be made and some innocent people are going to get insulted. We get to choose who. Picking the vast majority seems wrong to me.
Bert and Ernie gay pride cake? at a political event? that is a perfectly acceptable refusal. On any level.
I agree that the case in Ireland is an example of acceptable refusal, but then again it was about the actual design and wording on the cake. So far none of the WEDDING cake cases in the US have had anything to do with the decoration or any wording, since the design of the cakes were not since the couples were denied ANY wedding cake.
Be like everybody else. Make money off of stupid. open a gay bakery and claim how righteous you are. For 5$ extra you get a pin with gay bakers pride on it.
bakers can and should be allowed to sell to who they want. tell the gays to open their own bakery.
There's a limit to this. Denying service is unacceptable. Refusing to create custom products that the creators don't personally agree with is fine.
In my view, a Christian baker can refuse to create a cake with a pro-gay message or refuse to cater a gay person's wedding, but they cannot deny service to a gay person on only the basis that they are gay.
When I look closely at that, I can't tell how they are different.
"I am not refusing to cater your wedding because you are gay. I am refusing to cater it because it is a gay wedding".
P.s if anything, it's even worse. Just being offended by Gays is a personal thing; refusing a service they provide to others is ...well it may be seen as discriminatory.
p.p s but I am inclining to agree that drawing the line as being asked (effectively) to endorse views that they don't is crossing the line.(1)
N.b if it should even need to be said. Being Christian is not the issue; it is the being Gay and how it offends the Christianity of that person that is the issue.
(1) Yep. My bookshop should stock 'Genesis is true' and 'The failure of Darwinism' (or order it if requested - that's the service I should provide). Though I would much rather see them recycled as garden mulch. But I would draw the line at being required to place a placard in the window declaring that this bookshop supports Creationism. And while I can't speak for the shop, its owner (as will maybe not come as a shock to those who follow my posts) does decidedly not.
so ppps. I am coming to agree with Sir Patrick (that Starship Academy training is pretty sound) that the particular portent of that message would (even if Gay Marriage was government approved in der sux cowntys) be crossing the line to a placard in the bakery window.
Happy now Jeff?
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 06-07-2015 at 08:15 AM..
There's a limit to this. Denying service is unacceptable. Refusing to create custom products that the creators don't personally agree with is fine.
In my view, a Christian baker can refuse to create a cake with a pro-gay message or refuse to cater a gay person's wedding, but they cannot deny service to a gay person on only the basis that they are gay.
An opinion by Potter Stewart would mean something, an opinion by Patrick Stewart... not so much.
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What? Its my theater, I can show what I want! [1]
