It’s hard to argue with the timeless wisdom of “Alien vs. Predator”.
Ah, wasn’t aware of that. That makes these cases even more asinine.
The law (which is somewhat subjective) and what’s right (which is very subjective) represent two different discussions.
About what’s right/optimal for mankind, I think businesses should not be allowed to discriminate, not on age, ugliness, strength of accent, baldness or whatever… As individuals, people should be allowed to express whatever ideas they may have, no matter how stupid.
Either way, it’s not like ultra conservative religious establishments that offer lousy service for gay people will attract a lot of them anyway. Maybe some people should get a life.
Of course there is a blurry line of reasobleness. It may be justified to refuse selling of K2 climbing packages to 90 year olds. I have no idea how to properly legislate for the little nuances.
That’s exactly what i was getting at!
So many establishments are “discriminating” against certain groups. If you go to a higher end restaurant (esp back in the days) you may be turned away because you don’t meet their dress code. Now can you say that the restuarant is discriminating poor people?
Perhaps.
But at the end of the day, the business is setting an atmosphere for their target audience. If they choose to target only the conservative religious group, then ti’s their right to do so.
Much like some restaurants serve meat in every dish, can you sue them for discriminating vegetarians?
I think it has to be within reasons, certain occupations or business owners should grant the right. But when other people talk about lawyers and doctors, they are under their own professional standards code of conduct. Clearly a doctor should not stop operating on a patient in the ER because that person is gay - whether or not that is their religious belief is beyond the scope.
If you want to discriminate against poor people, the easier way is to raise your prices.
Hmm… yes and no.
Even the so-called “poor” people can afford the cheapest items on teh menu, perhaps just a coffee?
Or they are going as a guest, who knows?
How is treating people badly the right thing to do? How is legislation of this sort in the public interest?
^
Because freedom is more important than common sense apparently
I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about this bill and why it was originally proposed. What the bill provides is the ability to argue in court that they didn’t provide a service as it would violate their reliigious freedom. It wouldn’t necessarily protect the “right” of storeowners to deny service to gays etc. If you couldn’t prove in court that your religious freedom was violated, then you really wouldn’t be able to make a claim under the law.
The governor claimed she vetoed the bill because there weren’t any cases in Arizona on the issue. The main reason that there weren’t any cases is that I can’t even think of a service that would make sense to deny gays under religious freedom arguments, except as related to gay marriage (and Arizona doesn’t have gay marriage). For instance, consider a case in Iowa where a baker and his wife had some gays ask for a cake for their wedding. Bakers said, we don’t make cakes for gay weddings. The gays sued; the bakers lost under Iowa’s anti-discrimination laws.
I’ve long been opposed to the way the government handles marriage. Of course, the main reason for the piss-poor way they handle it is to upset factions to grab votes. I’m really not that interested in playing their game and getting upset about it.
However, I think that the issues that arise from the government’s handling of marriage are more complicated than simply that businesses should be forced to do business with everyone. There’s a very strong distinction between denying gays food at a regular restaurant versus contracting out to have a one-off cake. It’s not at all like discrimination in the South during Jim Crow. Jim Crow was far, far worse. At a minimum, I think the people who oppose this bill need to spend far more words than they do on why the balance between the religious liberty of the bakers should override the desire to have equality for gays. Talk about the balance of rights and why you think forcing bakers to make cakes they don’t want to make is more important than religious liberty. I consider that a difficult, complex balance and would be interested how people make their decisions along that trade-off. However, I find it disingenuous to imply it is a simple issue that equality is obviously more important than liberty. Maybe I read Harrison Bergeron too many times growing up.
put simply, gayness trumps religion in developed western culture. it will only be a matter of time before christians soften their views to that particular abomination as they have with numerous other abominations from the old testement.
either that or they could just move to Russia or Uganda
The problem, to which many posters have alluded, is that large, popular religions and religious texts can be interpreted myriad ways. In truth, the Bible says very little on homosexuality. Sodom and Gomorrah was more about rape. Leviticus has so many crazy laws it is obvious that the one on homosexuality was singled out by religious people to discriminate against those they do not like. All of the New Testament passages regarding homosexuality are long lists like: "“Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers – none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.” So, all people who have sex outside of marriage and those who have too much money in their bank accounts should also be denied service?
Homosexuality was siezed on by religious people as something they did not like, and they found Biblical justification to discriminate against homosexuals. End of story. The same has been done for centuries. This is why you cannot allow servicers to discriminate against homosexuals in particular: you can find a reason to discriminate against many classes of people in religious texts and religion has a history (because people feel passionate about it) of whipping up social discord and violence. This flies in the face of the tolerance that is the intent of the religious freedom article in the Bill of Rights.
Don’t forget the abominations of eating shellfish, cheeseburgers, bacon, and having sex with a woman whose menstruation ended less than a week ago.
This is why we have cold waves…
CFAvsMBA, do you really believe this? These laws I’m sure were required back in the day when discrimination was rampant and could result in businesses “colluding” on racial issues. But assuming it’s not that way anymore, don’t you think market forces would take care of it? Basically what I’m saying is maybe it is required to get the conditions set up for the market to take over later on. It’s something I’ve always considered – I think it may have been something a Ron Paul person told me once
^ Read up on the bus boycott. When blacks didn’t ride the bus, market forces reacted in a hurry.
I’m sure I read somewhere that in biblical times all non vaginal sex was considered sodomy. so if you’ve ever gone down on someone you’re going to hell. Bascially everyone is going to hell.
^The dictionary definition of sodomy (at least according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice) is “any sexual act that involves the genitals of one person, and the mouth or anus of another.”