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Welcome to the Republican idea of Freedom... where if the majority of the white male private citizenry so decides, they can subjugate and mistreat minority citizens at will! Gosh, it sounds so Afghanistan and all that. I'm glad these people are working so hard to take society back to the caveman days.
Usually when I stumble upon a "senseless" debate, I keep right on scrolling through the threads. I don't stop to tell everyone how senseless the debate is just to act as though I'm above it all.
If I walked into a gay owned and operated store wearing a tee shirt stating "I support traditional marriage", are they forced to serve me? Or should they have the freedom based on their beliefs not to serve me?
Welcome to the Republican idea of Freedom... where if the majority of the white male private citizenry so decides, they can subjugate and mistreat minority citizens at will! Gosh, it sounds so Afghanistan and all that. I'm glad these people are working so hard to take society back to the caveman days.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few people out there who will never feel good about themselves unless they are denigrating someone else. These people are the adult equivalent of a playground bully.
This is also the reason why Republicans are always complaining about what the poor might own. Many of them will only be satisfied until the poor and disabled are living in the same kind of squalor and filth that might be found in the slums of India or the tropics of Africa. They become rather insecure if someone of lesser means manages to conjure up a minor luxury or two because (*gasp*) without the dirt poor to compare themselves with, how are they going to feel superior?
At any rate, the things being said by the political right has gotten way out of hand. Whether it's Ann Coulter saying women shouldn't have the right to vote, or if it's a North Carolina preacher telling everyone that gays should be locked up in a concentration camp, or whether it's an Alabama supreme court judge saying (and later affirming) that atheists should have no Constitutional rights, or whether it's a push to enact voter ID laws to squelch the poor vote, one thing remains crystal clear:
Whenever I hear the word "freedom" coming out of the mouths of right-wingers, I understand it to mean the freedom to take away other people's freedom. In this case, they are now using religion as the excuse to grant freedom only to white Christian men as they are the demographic group least likely to be affected by this primitive Indiana bill.
Funny how he won't give the name of his business. He should be proud to stand up for his beliefs.
So he, no doubt, finds the sex acts of gays to be incredibly repugnant and wanted nothing to do with them. Too bad,. I would have welcomed them. I feel it's not any of my business how two consenting adult couples like to have sex. Their money is a green and good as the next couple's.
If I walked into a gay owned and operated store wearing a tee shirt stating "I support traditional marriage", are they forced to serve me? Or should they have the freedom based on their beliefs not to serve me?
Should they by law be forced to?
Yes, a gay store should be forced to serve you. Every bit as much as a baker should be lawfully required to bake a cake for a gay couple's wedding, even though the baker may find their sex acts to be grossly offensive.
It must be horrible for you to have to live in a country where your perspective is directly contrary to the nation's stated principles.
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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The purpose our nation's government exists is specifically to collectively protect each others rights.
Even if you don't like it.
Even if you wish the world was different from how it is.
Don't get me wrong: You're welcome to have such personal preferences. However, you aren't welcome to use your personal preferences as an excuse for behaving badly in public, such as by refusing to treat all customers fairly.
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Originally Posted by jjrose
Please look up what public accommodations are, then look up what private clubs are. They are different entities legally.
Actually, the dividing line is sometimes unclear. A private club that membership in holds substantive, unique value beyond the social arena, can be found to be a public accommodation, and can be compelled to (for example) admit women, minorities, etc.
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Originally Posted by Natnasci
Surely you can extrapolate, or perhaps you can't.
Denial of the obvious is perhaps the easiest of all rationalizations for this offensive law.
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Originally Posted by jjrose
There are federal laws that make discrimination based on race, religion, age, sex, disability illegal. What is left?
I'm sure my mother said the same thing. The reality is that we won't know for several generations. The people who committed the associated offenses in the past generally did so due to ignorance - a belief that what they were doing was righteous. That's why we see the conservatives dragging behind - because they tend to remain mired in the corrupted perspectives of the past longer, due to dogged reluctance or fear of progress. For most of them it isn't that they're deliberately evil, but rather transgressive due to ignorance, which in turn is attributable to their reactionary nature.
It is actually quite rare to see (as we sometimes see here in C-D) right wingers proudly admitting that they know the offensive nature of what they support and support it anyway because they consider their own personal preferences are more important than fairness and justice. That is the kind of thing that generally makes a reasonable person progress, grow in compassion and consideration, rather than become dug in, intent on continuing to practice immoral behavior.
I have no idea whether we'll someday change our society's current stand on the matter, but perhaps we'll realize that the next group of people toward whom society has discriminated against on an institutionalized basis are introverts. Again, there's no way for us, sitting here in the present, living in caves and beating each other over the heads with mammoth bones, as compared to our great-great-grandchildren, to know what offensive discrimination we blithely practice as a matter of course, but there's one guess for you.
Laws that are deliberately morally offensive, rationalizing discrimination instead of compassion, are bound to have unintended consequences. Non-violent protest would naturally, and should naturally, include exposing the failings of the law in this manner.
1. If I cook a bunch of hamburgers for myself and refuse to sell to anyone, is that wrong? I'm discriminating against everyone else on earth...that doesn't sound very nice.
Discrimination against all is discrimination against none. You aren't discriminating. You're being greedy and selfish. That's actually something that is perfectly legal and given the nature of the right wingers in our society probably among the last offensive behaviors that would be regulated.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
If ... others want to buy some and I charge them for it, is that wrong?
You've taken deliberate action that makes you a public accommodation. However, in your story, you haven't discriminated against anyone. You went from being selfish - keeping everything you have for yourself - to selling what you have to whoever wants to pay for them. No problem.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
They're my hamburgers...I paid for them and made them...shouldn't I be able to use them how I want?
No. Where did you get the idea that you can do whatever you want? You live in a society with other people. It isn't always just all about you. So far, you haven't said anything indicating that you've violated the standards of conduct in society, but if you're insinuating that you have, without explicitly admitting it, then indeed you're in violation and should be punished.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
2. The law is just an opinion with a gun.
The law isn't an opinion. It is that which every citizen implicitly agrees to abide by, even if they don't like it. Agreeing to live in accordance with laws one doesn't like is a mature response. Presuming that society should establish its laws in accordance with one's preferences is not.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
You're claiming that we need to threaten people with violence to MAKE them trade with every person that wants what they're selling.
Actually not: The point is that reasonable, responsible and honorable people abide the law without threats. The enforcement of the law only applies to violators. That's actually what makes those who refuse to abide by society's laws even more offensive - the failure to voluntarily abide by the law distinguishes a person as transgressive. Society has an obligation to the vast majority who are reasonable, responsible and honorable to protect them from abuse by people who are not.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
If I'm acting peacefully and non-violently, just making hamburgers, giving them to some people, trading them for money with others, and deciding not to trade my hamburgers for money in certain cases, you advocate forcefully locking me in a cage or killing me?
Not for violating anti-discrimination laws. Rather, if one violates anti-discrimination laws, society's sanction is generally a fine. Some of the money earned through despicable contempt for society is no longer owned by the transgressor and is instead owned by society itself. Society, when necessary, dispatches officers of the law to arrange for transfer of the money. If the transgressor refuses to comply, the discrimination offense now takes second position. Their primary offense becomes refusal to comply with the duly authorized instructions of society's officers of the law. And if the transgressor seeks to "protect" the property that they no longer own with force, then it is the transgressor now has committed a third offense, and this time an unforgivable offense - threatening to use force against an officer of the law. Now the trangressor has become an armed combatant against the nation itself. And if the transgressor kills an officer of the law in an attempt to escape society's rightful sanction for threatening an officer of the law, then we can say to the transgressor, "Congratulations you've declared war on society itself and fired the first shot."
You choose to not admit the details of the situation, and instead jump from the beginning to the end without being willing to acknowledge all the steps that get the transgressor into a cage. That way, I suppose, you can insulate yourself from all the transgressions that you want to rationalize - all the violations you want to be allowed to engage in with impunity. It is a distinctly insidious way to disclaim your obligations to society.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
Forcing them to "play nice" isn't going to change that.
Incorrect. When the law refuses to protect people being exploited by transgressors that communicates to people that transgression is acceptable. I do acknowledge, though, that you cannot allow yourself to admit it because you know how it undercuts the narrative you want to use to rationalize the corrupt perspectives you want to support.
Unless a place requires a paid membership, I wanna have access to every business that you have access to. I'm not trusting the market to sort things out. After all, the market didn't sort things out during Jim Crow.
LOL!
You are referring to Jim Crow laws. Are you unaware that those laws were implemented by government and nobody in the private market, then or now, has the authority to change legislation?
Discrimination against all is discrimination against none. You aren't discriminating. You're being greedy and selfish. That's actually something that is perfectly legal and given the nature of the right wingers in our society probably among the last offensive behaviors that would be regulated.
Discrimination, before the definition colloquially became the same as the definition as bigotry because people are too weak at English to use the proper word, simply meant the action of distinguishing differences between multiple things.
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No. Where did you get the idea that you can do whatever you want? You live in a society with other people. It isn't always just all about you.
A free society, you are allowed to do anything with your hamburger as long as you do not do harm to another person.
Not engaging in business with another person is not doing harm, it is simply declining to interact. This is a peaceful action. In a truly free society, all peaceful actions are allowed.
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The law isn't an opinion. It is that which every citizen implicitly agrees to abide by, even if they don't like it. Agreeing to live in accordance with laws one doesn't like is a mature response. Presuming that society should establish its laws in accordance with one's preferences is not.
Bullcrap.
Good people disobey bad laws, period. Just because a law got passed by a government with confidence ratings (for all three branches) under 25 percent, does not make it just or good.
Plenty of terrible laws exist today and have in the past, a good example being the Fugitive Slave Act. Good people hid slaves from slave catchers, and it was against the law. It is absurd to say that their actions hurt society, even though they blatantly and intentionally broke a law.
Just because I was born on a land-mass, and have not left my homeland, does not mean I agree with the government's actions or dictates, implicitly or otherwise. I do agree with some obvious ones, like murder being illegal.... but that doesn't mean that every law is good, just, or should be followed.
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Actually not: The point is that reasonable, responsible and honorable people abide the law without threats.
Wrong. Again, I refer you to the Fugitive Slave Act, Jim Crow Laws, the drug war, etc... the people who followed/follow these laws and enforce them are morally corrupt, dumb, or have no backbone.
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The enforcement of the law only applies to violators. That's actually what makes those who refuse to abide by society's laws even more offensive - the failure to voluntarily abide by the law distinguishes a person as transgressive. Society has an obligation to the vast majority who are reasonable, responsible and honorable to protect them from abuse by people who are not
Following laws does not make one responsible or reasonable. Bad laws always have, and continue to exist, so your entire premise should be dismissed.
It seems that you don't understand that laws are backed with violence to the people who follow them "voluntarily" too. It is not "voluntary" if choosing not to obey is met with violence. Duh. Read some definitions.
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