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Someone overweight is persecuted. Someone with bad acne is persecuted. The list is endless.
Yes. So??????
Systematic persecution is wrong. When it gets institutionalized by businesses openly committing discrimination, it can be challenged. Because businesses agree to operate according to the laws of the states and communities in which they operate. Prom queens don't agree to date according to the laws of the states and locales in which they live. I can't make the prom queen go out with Johnny who has bad acne. I can make the bowling alley rent bowling shoes to black people.
Those are rules, not laws. Do I have a problem with the NFL creating a rule that says 10 yards is a first down? No.
That guy is just a statist who thinks that anyone who wants to curb the power of the state in any meaningful way is some crazed barbaric anarchist who doesn't believe in rules and wants to "systematically" oppress blacks, Jews, and gays...somehow...without out the use of the government.
Those are rules, not laws. Do I have a problem with the NFL creating a rule that says 10 yards is a first down? No.
If their license can be revoked, that's a LAW. In fact, it's a LAW that's remarkably similar to the LAWS that have been brought to bear against bakers refusing to do sell cakes. When people get licensed by the state, or when they get accredited by some board, and they agree to comply with the rules that govern those licenses or accreditations, then when they break the "rules" they can lose those licenses or acceditations. A baker can lose his business license and have to close down. A pharmacist can lose his license and be prevented from dispensing medicine. A driver can lose his license and be prohibited from driving. We voluntarily (hey, that's a choice we have control over) apply for and get licenses. But licenses come with conditions. If you don't like the conditions, don't get the license. That's your choice.
I hate that is has become a "religious freedom" discussion because this isn't a religious issue. This is a property rights issue and about freedom for everybody. I believe that as a baker or pizza maker you have the right to refuse service to ANYBODY for ANY reason, religious or not, on your property. There is no such thing as "religious freedom" there is freedom and it should be exercised and enjoyed by everybody. There are no "black rights" or "gay rights" or "female rights" there are individual rights and they apply equally to everybody.
Okay for the TENTH time ...
You do not understand Public Accommodations Law.
I want to stick to the facts. Philosophical discussions on the necessity or ethics of various laws is something we can discuss elsewhere.
I am a businessman ... a landlord to be exact. I would be BREAKING THE LAW if I refused to rent to a gay or Lesbian person here in city and county of Philadelphia. Is that so hard to understand? LGBT are a protected class here. If my fellow landlords were against this law we would probably try to repeal it via the democratic process. The fact is ... gay folks usually make the BEST tenants ... quiet, clean, courteous (there are exceptions to every rule.)
Many places - thousands of places in fact - by law you cannot discriminate against gay folks. New York. Boston. Miami. Seattle. Chicago. Houston. Milwaukee. Hartford. Pittsburgh. Fort Lauderdale. Honolulu. Sacramento.
If people have a problem with gay folks being a protected class in those places they can seek to change the law.
If people have a problem with same sex marriage, they have the power to amend the US Constitution to prohibit it. Sen. Ted Cruz announced he will introduce a bill to do just that. I wonder why Christian conservatives don't concentrate on that, because if gay marriage is illegal, no one will have to sell them a cake or flowers. Can it be that deep in their hearts these anti-gay people know they are in the minority?
So the pharmacist can deny life-saving medication to anyone?
Surely not. But then, should people have the right to discriminate against anyone over the sex acts they do? Does a fireman have the right not to give a person mouth to mouth resuscitation he pulled from a fire, because he heard gossip that person engages in oral anal sex?
Systematic persecution is wrong. When it gets institutionalized by businesses openly committing discrimination, it can be challenged.
Business cannot "systematically persecute" anyone nor can they "institutionalize" anything. Only the government can do that. The government is has the monopoly of force in a society. You know the same organization that you seem to believe has magical powers and only works for the good and betterment of society despite it's very poor track record. The U.S. government massacred the Native Americans and took their land, codified and enforced slavery, enforced Jim Crow, and has killed more people than any other entity on the planet yet you think it's some benevolent deity that should be entrusted with "protected classes" and morality policing.
Quote:
I can make the bowling alley rent bowling shoes to black people.
And that thought sets your little tyrannical statist heart a flutter doesn't it?
The same response, no doubt, would have happened in the 1960s, if the Internet was around, had a restaurant owner boast he didn't serve Blacks and no law should make him to do it.
Segregation was mandated by law. People weren't free to freely associate or do business with people of different races. This issue here is about the attempt to force people to violate their religious beliefs, and the law being discussed is about protecting freedom.
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