Jonah Goldberg:
‘I could have handled that better.”
I don’t know if the captain of the Titanic ever said that. But Mike Pence did on Tuesday.
The Indiana governor has managed to step on an impressive number of parts of his own anatomy recently and in the process gravely injured what was already a long-shot ambition to run for president in 2016.
Earlier this month he signed the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act in a private ceremony. In attendance were prominent opponents of gay marriage.
In response, great algae plumes of righteous outrage erupted across the Internet. Gay-rights groups, the Democratic party, and the mainstream media, in unison, lost their collective marbles and raised unshirted hell. Know-nothings of every stripe cried out that Jim Crow had returned to the land. Shouts of “boycott!” went forth, including perhaps of the NCAA’s Final Four, which for Hoosiers is like threatening a boycott of Easter Mass at the Vatican. The Indiana Chamber of Commerce hied to its corporate fainting couch and begged to be rescued.
Pence, desperate to put out the political fire, raced to a TV studio last Sunday to quench the flames on ABC’s This Week. The only problem is that he arrived at the scene with a rhetorical water pistol hoping to put out a five-alarm blaze.
“Do you think it should be legal in the state of Indiana to discriminate against gays or lesbians?” George Stephanopoulos asked.
“George, you’re — you’re following the mantra of the last week online [media coverage],” Pence said. “And you’re trying to make this issue about something else.”
Well, as they say in formal debate classes, Duh.
Two days later, Pence held a press conference to ask the state legislature to rewrite the law to placate the mob.
Pence still had the better part of the legal argument. Indeed, he and supporters of RFRA have nearly the entire legal argument on their side.
The federal RFRA was passed in 1993, in response to a Supreme Court decision holding that Native Americans weren’t exempt from anti-drug laws barring the use of peyote, even for religious ceremonies.
In response, Congress passed a law barring the government from putting a burden on religious practice without a compelling state interest. If someone feels their religious rights have been violated, they can go to court and make their case. That’s it. Jim Crow laws forced people to discriminate. RFRA doesn’t force anybody to do anything.
The original RFRA was a good and just law championed by then-representative Chuck Schumer and opposed by right-wing bogeyman Jesse Helms. It passed the Senate 97-3 and was signed by President Bill Clinton.
In 1997, the Supreme Court held that RFRA was too broad and could not be applied to states. So, various state governments passed their own versions. Twenty states have close to the same version as the federal government’s, and a dozen more have similar rules in their constitutions. These states include such anti-gay bastions as Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Illinois, where, as a state senator, Barack Obama voted in favor of the law.
Liberty Is On Defense, and Religious Liberty Is In the Red Zone
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
A US justice system that punishes citizens for the free exercise of their religion has itself violated the Constitution. Such rulings are incompatible with the concept of a “separation between church and state”, as it is the State pushing aside that separation to insinuate itself into what “free exercises” The State deigns it will allow worshipers. That is an abomination to the Founders vision of the powers they were granting the Federal Government, and what expressly was withheld to “The People”. When The State takes on the power to tell the people when-where-how they must worship and when-where-how they may not, it establishes a ruling oligarchical State pseudo-religion just as onerous as the State Church of England (whom the Founders opposed).
@Ditto:
One has to ask why Governor Pence refused to answer such a simple question as Stephanopoulos asked:
“Do you think it should be legal in the state of Indiana to discriminate against gays or lesbians?”
The question was too straight-forward to qualify as a “Palin-gotcha,” and his refusal to courageously answer the question – one way or the other – smacked of a smarmy politician protecting something sinister. Yes, that misstep likely killed his higher political aspirations.
The “EXERCISE” of religion isn’t protected as completely as you suspect. Religions are full of tenets which conflict with those held by other religions and which also conflict with secular law. A religion that supports slavery, polygamy, child abuse, Jihad or any other “exercise” that conflicts with secular law cannot rely on First Amendment protection of those EXERCISES. You are “free” to BELIEVE in those “things,” but you are not free to ACT upon them. Your suggestion that these exercises ARE protected reveals your ignorance of First Amendment jurisprudence.
Just as no one goes into a Jewish restaurant and demands shellfish or goes into a halal Muslim shop and demands pork, the original law, the federal one which cannot be imposed on each state (therefore requiring state versions) no one can require Native Americans to always be peyote-free on their drug tests as a prerequisite for work.
I used to have an Alpha-Beta supermarket near me when I was newlywed.
It was owned by the 7th Day Adventist Church.
They, as per scriptural interpretation of the body being a temple, do not smoke tobacco or drink alcohol.
But their store, manned by mostly fellow 7th Day Adventists did sell tobacco from behind a counter (manned by a non 7th Day Adventist.)
Alpha-Beta also sold alcohol, also from a mini section also manned by a non church member.
They money money hand over fist from their non-religious customers.
As to gay businesses of that same time, we had a gay bar down the street a ways.
That business was always kicking people out for whatever reasons.
Police were there all the time.
The issue wasn’t gay VS straight but rather TYPES of gays that didn’t get along with one another at all.
They were the business refusing service in those days.
How would they fare today?
Well, apparently this issue is still alive and well as there is a case of one group of gay customers being refused service at a gay bar just recently.
Should gay bars be forced to allow all people inside their business?
@Nanny G #3:
“Should gay bars be forced to allow all people inside their business?”
A “gay” bar is a public accommodation that has a responsibility to serve any customer who meets the legal requirements for persons entering such establishments. Those legal requirements include being over 21 years of age, NOT being already intoxicated, NOT acting unruly (as in “disturbing the peace”) and their entry being otherwise during those hours the establishment is open for business. Sexual orientation is NOT a criteria for entry into a gay bar. DISCRIMINATION is no more correct when exercised in one direction than it is when exercised in another direction.
Regarding your false premise of requiring a Jewish establishment to serve shellfish or a Muslim one to serve pork, what is REQUIRED is not the serving of any particular product on demand, but rather the serving of whatever products the establishment DOES serve to its customers. The Jewish restaurateur isn’t required to serve a Black person chitterlings, but he IS required to seat him and to serve him whatever is on the menu.
You can come up with whatever examples of discrimination you wish, but however many you submit does not make them right. “Freedom of association” of the sort that is being claimed in many of these arguments applies in the private context but does not extend into the public realm of for-profit businesses. For those cases, you must show how the right to NOT serve gay people differs from the right to NOT serve Black people (a “right” that the courts have repeatedly asserted does NOT exist.) Yes, there are qualitative differences between Blacks and Gays, but the same logic that compelled the SCOTUS to overturn “interracial marriage” bans will compel it to also overturn gay marriage bans, and this measure of equivalency will also apply to the serving of gays in public accommodations vis-a-vis Blacks.
@George Wells:
Aspirations? likely…. actual achievement of those aspirations? No.
All he had to do was say ‘no’. and this law does not do that.
Think about that. Is it the religion believing it that makes it wrong? Homosexuals believing in homosexuality does not make it ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ does it? If it does, then it’s just a matter of who is louder makes the ‘rights’. Isn’t it?
The way I see it. Had Gov Pence not gone on tv last Sunday and not made a statement on the law, it would have been a ‘non event’, just as it has in 19 other states and the Federal law. The law, in itself, does not change any fact.
@Nanny G: That video was very interesting. Now I know (not that I care) that gay men are afraid to be perceived as feminine. That’s why such a large number of them wear a beard, they see it as ‘masculine’. Even though they speak with a lisp and a feminine voice, they still think that need to ‘appear masculine’. In my ignorance, I assumed there needed to be one feminine gay for each masculine gay. That usually seems to be the pattern in lesbians. The real humor was while that guy was standing there in a beard, talking with a feminine voice and with many feminine mannerisms, he was explaining why they didn’t want feminine gays. Chuckle.
@George Wells: .
George, how would that be administered? isn’t that a ‘new’ basis for discrimination? Who decides if a drivers license is ‘legitimate’? Who decides if someone is ‘already intoxicated’? Who decides if someone is ‘acting unruly’? Isn’t that just a license to allow discrimination? Can the owner just decide that a ‘gay’ is too unruly to allow them to enter? Can he decide that for all gays? that’s the kind of issue that RFRA is/was designed to prevent.
@Redteam #5:
“All he had to do was say ‘no’. and this law does not do that.”
I agree that if Gov. Pence had said “No.” he’d have been in a bit better position to argue exactly what the law does and what it does not. But he refused to do that, and since he is the executive who SIGNED the damned thing, you have thought that he MIGHT be in a position to stand up for it.
However, I read the law, and my take on its wording is that it is entirely too broad and ambiguous in meaning to withstand judicial review. I predict that if it isn’t “fixed,” then it will quickly be fought in court, and the best that Indiana can hope for is that it would be returned to the legislature to be… FIXED.
The Federal and State laws that it seems to mimic have not been seriously challenged in the courts, so the existence of many similar “laws” doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. And this law is not a carbon copy of any of them.
I honestly don’t have a clue what the legal significance of the wording of the Indiana law is. It SEEMS to allow commercial enterprises to discriminate against gays by refusing them services based on who they are, IF the owner or employee of that commercial concern has a religious objection to homosexuality. If the Law DOESN’T permit such discrimination, then exactly what DOES it do?
@Redteam #7:
“George, how would that be administered?”
The same way it is administered in straight bars. Poorly. Usually nothing at all happens until a drunk gets into a car and kills somebody. Then, in an effort to punish somebody who HASN’T pissed away his meager paycheck on booze (that is, sue somebody who has assets worth going after) the family of the deceased go after the bartender and the bar owner, supported by silly laws that make it a crime to sell booze to drunks. Patrons are carded, remember? You were young…er once. And if you get unruly, the bouncer tosses you into the street. Gay or straight – no difference. What’s your point?
It is obvious to me that either these RFRA’s won’t do a blessed thing at all, and gays will NOT ever be discriminated against in the delivery of products or services by for-profit businesses operating in the public sector, or gays WILL be discriminated against in this manner, the RFRA’s will be used to defend that discrimination, and the RFRA’s will subsequently be challenged in court. I think this WILL happen. I predict that the RFRA’s will either need to be modified to NOT allow such discrimination in commerce, or they WILL be declared unconstitutional. I cannot guess which of these two latter options will prevail, but I believe that one of them will. You are welcome to offer an opposing prediction, and we’ll see which one is correct.
@George Wells: george as best I might try to say what I think it means. Genuine issues. For example, if a black tent erection business were to be asked to set up tents for a KKK meeting they might have a legitimate issue. However, to be consistent, they might should be required to. Tho I would hope not
@George Wells: of course we might play what if. Should a book store be required to sell porn books? Should they be required to sell gay books? I don’t think a legitimate case could be made that since they don’t stock them it shouldn’t be required. gay weddings aren’t stocked. As I said, a case can be made for a lot of things
@Redteam #10:
“if a black tent erection business were to be asked to set up tents for a KKK meeting they might have a legitimate issue.”
The courts have decided that in such cases, refusal to serve is warranted if and only if there is a reasonable expectation that harm to the Black business or its employees would result. Such expectation of harm might be warranted if the KKK group was in the habit of making threats of violence to Black persons or businesses. But such expectations must be well-demonstrated by significantly more than an understanding that the two groups generally advocate for different perspectives on civil rights.
I truly feel sorry for people who are on the one hand in business for the apparent purpose of making money (as opposed to making ideological points by refusing to do business with would-be customers who they do not like) but who on the other hand are so utterly disturbed by their customers that they are indisposed to serve them.
We already have SOME laws in this country that forbid discrimination of the sort that you keep bringing up as if it is something you actually agree with or support, but the fact that such discrimination still exists (partly because the laws forbidding it are not universal) is compelling greater and greater numbers of people to aggressively fight for MORE laws forbidding it.
Look what happened today in Indiana. The RFRA was essentially gutted. For the first time in the State of Indiana’s history, Gays and Lesbians were specifically protected – by the so-called “legislative fix” – from precisely the sort of discrimination that the original RFRA intended to allow. Additionally, the Speaker of the House said that the inclusion of Gays and Lesbians in the State’s Non-Discrimination statute was going to have to be addressed – soon.
Protecting Gays and Lesbians from the type of discrimination that the original RFRA was intended to allow is becoming so popular that when a group of Republicans attempts to put another spin on the same old bigotry, the reaction is fast and furious. That is not to say that every “Religious Freedom” idea is bad. But anyone hoping to achieve something in this quarter had better make darn sure that what they are proposing DOESN’T infringe on someone else’s rights, or they will end up with less than what they started with.
Let’s be quite clear about what is happening here. The gays are saying “Hey, you’re allowed to believe anything you want, but you need to keep your opinions limited to your church activities. If you disagree with what we do (different from who we are) and you don’t walk lockstep with what we want, we will destroy your job, your business, your reputation and put you into financial bankruptcy fighting the litigation we will bring down on your head as we are funded by the gay mafia groups so have no personal financial stake in that litigation.”
Christians are being told that although gays demand the right to conduct themselves as gay in public, you’re not allowed to conduct yourself as a Christian in your public business dealings. Submit or be destroyed. That’s the bottom line.
These are not the actions of those seeking “equal” rights. These are the actions of fascists.
I have freedom of choice when it comes to deciding who will provide me goods or services. Why doesn’t a business have the same equal right to decide who to provide goods or services to, and in what form.
I, as a cake baker, would bake a cake that looked like a wedding cake for anyone. I would not put a message on it, or a cake topper, that supported gay marriage nor would I deliver said cake. But for that, according to the gays, I should be sued out of business.
Again, this is not about equal rights. It is all about fascism.
@George Wells:
I don’t agree with your assessment at all. I think it only clarified what it already did, just put it in more plain english.
I agree,, but, for example the book store, whose only intent is to sell books to make a profit. Should they be required to sell you a sexually explicit book just because you want them to? I don’t think you could make the argument that you ‘don’t have them in stock’, it could be shown that you were excluding that class of books just so you could discrimianate against those that want them. It could certainly be argued by a cake maker that the explicit materials necessary to make a cake for a homosexual was not in stock. If everyone can be forced to do business that they don’t desire to do, then their only legitimate option would be to go out of business.
What do you suppose would happen if I go into WalMart tomorrow and demand that they sell me a sexually explicit book? How much would you recommend that I sue them for and do you think I should win the suit?
@retire05:
I’ve thought about ‘legitimate’ ways to get around this. Try this. I make wedding cakes for the public. What decoration that can be put on the cake has to be selected from a catalog. The wording can only be done with a template of wording that is available, ie., it is not done ‘free hand’ only following a template. You don’t make your own template, they are purchased from a company that makes them. You don’t have any ‘gay’ templates in stock and do not purchase new ones for only one order. But as a general rule, I think if you make cakes, you should make cakes for whoever walks in the door unless you are not ‘open to the public’ and only take special orders as you have time to do so. Have any cake deliveries done with a delivery service. Don’t cater weddings. Let a catering company handle that.
If you want to limit your business to church members, then you should state that and only take business from church members. I suspect that would really put a large target on you.
@retire05 #13:
“Why doesn’t a business have the same equal right to decide who to provide goods or services to, and in what form.”
Do you really think that this question hasn’t already been answered by the courts? It HAS been answered, over and over again, and the answer is the same EVERY time. You CANNOT pick and choose which people you do and don’t want to serve. Period. You cannot exclude Blacks from your restaurant, you cannot keep Jews off of your golf course, and you can’t refuse to sell flowers to a gay person when you ARE willing to sell them to a straight one.
If you choose to do ANY of those discriminatory things, you are breaking the law, and if you choose to break the law, why would you NOT expect to be punished?
Every time a restaurateur gets sued because he refused to serve a black patron, it isn’t fascism. Neither is it fascism when people take their employers to court over age or sex discrimination. What you want is nothing more than an unfettered tyranny of the majority – the right of both people and businesses to discriminate at will against whomever you wish, up to and including causing death through neglect. (The Indiana “Religious Freedom” law put no limits on the right to discriminate.) “Religious Freedom” laws serve no other purpose than to absolve bigots of any responsibility for the equal treatment of their fellow Man, essentially voiding perhaps half of the Constitution’s guarantees in favor of an exclusive exaltation of the First Amendment. That pig won’t fly.
@Redteam #15:
I think that you are BEGINNING to understand the problem conservatives are having with the Law. You are correct that as long as that Baker is willing to do the SAME thing for ANY customer, he won’t run afoul of the law. I WOULD remind you, though, that there ARE churches who perform gay marriages, so your suggestion: “If you want to limit your business to church members, then you should state that and only take business from church members” won’t really solve your problem.
@George Wells:
And there you have the first step toward cultural Marxism. And if I own a floral shop, exactly how am I supposed to tell a customer is gay?
On the other side of the coin, then the law should require the Jew to purchase food from a halal grocer, the black to frequent a café owned by a KKK member, and a gay person should be forced to purchase flowers from anyone who objects to their lifestyle.
Freedom is a two way street, as much as you don’t think it should be.
No, George, the bigotry is on your side of the debate. Why would you even want to force a business to cater to you knowing the business owner disapproves of you? That, buddy, is tyranny, and fascism. Just because you get your widdle feelings hurt, that doesn’t give you the right to strike out and destroy someone. The gay movement is out of control. OUT OF CONTROL. You are not demanding tolerance. You are demanding total acceptance. You are demanding that people set aside their Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion to placate you.
Where is your “love?” You say you have the right to be queer. Why don’t others have the right to believe the act of homosexuality is a sin? Where is YOUR tolerance for the beliefs of others?
Remember back when people were just starting to read the ObamaCare bill (already passed and signed into law) and found out what was in it?
Christians were going to be forced to pay for abortions as well as abortifactants (day after pills).
Obama actually took your position stated above: Christians only had a right to their worship inside a building or home, not in public life.
Hobby Lobby took him all the way to the Supreme Court over that very issue and won.
Christians, in America the Court ruled, have the right to exhibit and exercise their consciences in public.
So, where did Obama even get his idea that Christians only be allowed to worship, sing, wear crosses, or exercise their consciences INSIDE the privacy of home and church building?
From Sharia states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt (when it was under his buddies in the Muslim Brotherhood.)
@Nanny G:
How is the Constitution guarantee of the “free exercise” of religion adhered to when limits are placed upon those who would exercise that freedom?
I remember when I got to Mississippi after Katrina, almost ALL of the groups helping those who had lost so much were Christian groups. They were there based solely on their belief in Christian charity. Food lines, helping others clean up their properties after they lost everything, putting on new roofs, all done with a Christian heart. They even asked people if they wanted a Bible. No one complained about the religious groups doing what they believed in then.
But todays left think that you should not be able to express your entire belief in Christ’s teachings. Just those beliefs that suit their needs, like helping others after a disaster. They will tell Christians what beliefs they can act on, and what beliefs they can’t act on. We have seen the destruction of other societies and nations that started out the very same way. Call it what it is; fascism.
Does it really harm a homosexual to have a pizzeria owner say they won’t cater a gay wedding? No, it does not. The gay may be insulted, get their widdle feelings hurt, but there is no law, as of yet, that I cannot hurt your feelings. If there were, lots of progressives would be in jail at this very moment. But it does not create harm to the gay since we live in a capitalist society and that gay if more than free to take their business elsewhere and that gay is free to tell his friends and boycott that business.
But that is not good enough. Antonio Gramsci’s will must be done.
@retire05 #18:
That has never been the issue, and you know it.
Freedom from religious persecution does not depend upon a Southern Baptist being recognized as such on sight. The SCOTUS has addressed this point repeatedly AS YOU KNOW and it doesn’t hold water, so either you are MAKING PRETEND that you have a basis for an argument, or you FORGOT that classes of people DO NOT HAVE TO BE RECOGNIZABLE in order to be protected from discrimination.
WOW!
Exactly how MUCH of the Constitution do you want to throw out???
Most of it, evidently. Certainly all of the parts dealing with equality.
What, just keep the “One Nation Under God” part?
You don’t want a democratic republic, you want an Old Testament-based theocracy.
Well, good luck with that.
I guess that you can blame the “Founding Fathers” for being those “cultural Marxists” you despise so much…
I don’t give a rat’s ass about progressives’ feelings OR YOUR feelings. What I care about is what the Constitution says and what the SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT we have ALLOWS us to do – WITHIN THE SYSTEM – to effect change. The “gay rights movement” has finally figured out how to work this system, and their success is evident. Gays EVEN have the majority of Americans ON THEIR SIDE, which really explains how 2% of the population is apparently wagging the other 98%.
You’re just pissed that you now find YOURSELF in the minority.
How’s it FEEL?
Are YOUR “widdle” feelings getting hurt?
It’s about time.
@George Wells:
guess it would have to be limited to Christian churches.
@retire05:
Very good point 05 but I’m gonna guess that the argument that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander is not gonna fly amongst the lefties. When a gay couple walks into a florist and discovers they are gay haters but the gays are ‘required’ by law to use them anyhow (otherwise they would be discriminating against the business) then we will have the equality they wish. As you said, along at that time a black family would have to stay at a KKK hotel. Somehow, I’m gonna guess the argument is gonna be that the seller can be forced to sell but the buyer can’t be forced to buy.
@retire05:
hate to ask, but did they also help ‘gays’? My guess is that the gays were helped equally as the others, but that they didn’t have a rainbow flag on their chest advertising their sexuality.
I suspect that the ‘equal’ rights thing is a one way street, as long as the haves (Christians)have it, the have nots (gays) will demand, and get. But when the shoe gets on the other foot, it won’t be so. Religious rights for Christians are only there to be surrendered to the Non Christians and Muslims, etc. there won’t be any surrendering, only usurping, from the other side.
George, answer this question. Gay goes into a wedding caterer, asks if they are gay and if they cater gay weddings. They say yes they cater gay weddings but they’re not gay. Gay says sorry, he’s looking for a gay caterer to do it. Does shop owner have grounds to sue for discrimination?
@George Wells:
If you believe that George, you may be out of touch with reality. First 98% implies ‘everyone that is not gay’. That’s clearly not the case. Just guessing I’d put it about 50-60% and even those that say, well, yeah I guess it’s okay will not watch a scene on the tv or movie screen of 2 gay men kissing each other. What little I do see makes me nauseus, that tell you anything. Watching a man and woman kiss does not make me nauseus. Want to guess if more have the reaction I do or the opposite reaction?
@Redteam #22:
“guess it would have to be limited to Christian churches.”
Really, Redteam, How ignorant are you? Really?
Do you REALLY not know that there are many Christian denominations that already are marrying gays? IN CHRISTIAN CHURCHES?
Do you not know this simply because you are too lazy to look up such information before commenting on it in ignorance?
Don’t you get tired of playing the fool?
@Redteam #26:
What earthly difference does it make what nauseates you?
Play with the numbers I gave you, or play with your toes.
Gay rights are making great progress, and much of their progress can be traced to a growing acceptance and approval – not just “tolerance” – by heterosexuals.
But gee, Redteam. I don’t really want to upset you. You and Retire05 seem so angry, you need to “chill.”
If you want to think that 50 or 60% of the population is gay, be my guest.
You might need to have your head examined, but that isn’t my problem.
@Redteam #25:
No. Laws that apply to commerce govern the behavior of those entities that occupy the public realm, conducting their lawful business according to rules established by the government. Other than various details of contract law, the government does not interfere in the private side of public transactions. Yes, the government may require an individual to purchase auto insurance, but it does not interfere with who the individual purchases the insurance FROM. Otherwise, individuals are NOT required to do “business” that they do not want.
Businesses do NOT have a “right” to require anyone to do business with them. Individuals DO have a “right” to do be served by someone who is in the business of providing the desired service. The government does not hold businesses and customers identical in this aspect of commerce.
You actually almost got it right in your rant to Retire05:
“the seller can be forced to sell but the buyer can’t be forced to buy.”
There are exceptions to this rule (in the first instance) but they are minor.
@George Wells:
Oh, Contrare……. there are no Christian churches performing gay weddings. Once they stop following Christ, they are no longer Christian. A name without substance is just a name.
I’m neither lazy or ignorant as you well know. You may refrain from attempting personal insults, I’m just involved in discussion, it’s not ‘personal’.
@George Wells:
because what nauseates me nauseates the average citizen and the stuff that it’s in won’t sell. You think the average straight person would spend a dime to see Brokeback Mountain. The only thing I ever see that has gays in it is usually sprung as a surprise. They know if we know it’s in there, we’re not gonna be watching it. like PMSNBC news, we know what’s in there, we don’t watch.
give me an example of me displaying anger about the subject. It’s not me that has to live with homosexuality, it’s you.
You seem to be confused, first you claim 98% now you’ve lowered it to 50-60%. Try to keep up.
Yes, I’d suspect being gay, your problem would be further South.
@George Wells:
So the caterer does NOT have to cater the gay wedding?
and they don’t ‘require’ an insurance company to sell to any individual, unless the individual is gay and wants to sue someone.
So you’re saying discrimination is okay if it’s not a gay being discriminated against. Require someone to sell to a gay but don’t require the gay to buy from someone (if they buy)
So you’re clearly saying discrimination is okay if it benefits you or your cause, but not the other way around.
You are incorrect, sir. I got it exactly right.
@Redteam:
You want an example of hate, Redteam? Here’s one for you.
It’s not about equality. Never has been. It’s all about power.
@Redteam:
George said:
But oh, my, we now have a problem. Who is the left going to support, the queers or the blacks?
“The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI), a faith-based coalition of 34,000 churches comprised of 15 denominations and 15.7 million African-Americans, has broken its fellowship with Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) following its recent vote to approve same-sex marriage.
The Presbyterian General Assembly, the top legislative body of the PCUSA, voted last June to revise the constitutional language defining marriage. This arbitrary change of Holy Scripture is a flagrantly pretentious and illegitimate maneuver by a body that has no authority whatsoever to alter holy text.
Rev. Anthony Evans, NBCI President noted:
“NBCI and its membership base are simply standing on the Word of God within the mind of Christ. We urge our brother and sisters of the PCUSA to repent and be restored to fellowship.”
“PCUSA’s manipulation represents a universal sin against the entire church and its members. With this action, PCUSA can no longer base its teachings on 2,000 years of Christian scripture and tradition, and call itself a Christian entity in the body of Christ. It has forsaken its right by this single wrong act.
“Apostle Paul warns us about this when he declared in Galatians 1:8 that there are those who will preach another gospel.
“For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. … For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
“No church has the right to change the Word of God. By voting to redefine marriage PCUSA automatically forfeits Christ’s saving grace. There is always redemption in the body of Christ through confession of faith and adhering to Holy Scripture.
“In this case, PCUSA deliberately voted to change the Word of God and the interpretation of holy marriage between one man and one woman. This is why we must break fellowship with them and urge the entire Christendom to do so as well.”
A CBS reporter had filed a false fraud report to GoFundMe for its Memories Pizza fundraising page.
She didn’t have even one fact to back up her claim that it is a fraudulent fund, only the rantings of angry Leftists upset that anyone with two cents to rub together doesn’t give one of them to a Lefty.
See:
http://soopermexican.com/2015/04/03/here-are-21-liberals-who-are-foaming-at-the-mouth-angry-because-of-donations-to-christian-pizzeria/
http://soopermexican.com/2015/04/03/memories-pizza-was-an-inside-job-angry-bitter-liberals-are-turning-to-pizza-truther-conspiracy-theories/
Now Alix Bryan at CBS may lose her job.
I wonder if her Lefty buddies will support her so richly?
@retire05: Yes, just today alone George has accused me of ‘anger’, ignorance, tired, a fool, lazy, need my head examined, and the day isn’t even over yet. He was perfectly reasonable yesterday, no name calling, but right out of the chute today. I guess his stable mate cut him off last night (probably just a headache). Strange how when someone doesn’t have a legitimate point to make they fall back to the mud slinging, name calling mode.
@retire05:
I have never thought of the Presbyterian Church as a Christian church. I’ve always (I mean from when I was a teen ager) had them in the secular church stable of churches. It is the church when people didn’t have any religious beliefs, but wanted to say they went to church, that those people went to. The Southern Baptist Convention has been in and out of that stable for at least the last 50 years. So yes, I can see why any church that doesn’t want to recognize gay weddings would break any connections to the Presbyterian Church.
I guess you saw where I told George that Christian church’s do not do gay weddings, that once they stop following Christ, they are no longer ‘Christian Churches’. Contrary to George’s claim, just because some people choose to follow the law does not mean they accept gays and their lifestyles. Yes, he has the right to wear assless chaps and I have the right to not like it.
As of now, I don’t see the Southern Baptist caving on the gay issue. Seems that they think Christ had a negative position on homosexuality.
@Redteam:
George is the typical queer. He doesn’t understand, or refuses to understand, that one can be a [true] Christian and can have love for his fellow human being that is gay but can also hate the sin that makes the human being gay. It is a concept that eludes those like George.
In the 1989 book After The Ball, two homosexual males came up with a plan to “normalize” homosexuality and make it acceptable to the masses.
“At a later stage of the media campaign for gay rights-long after other gay ads have become commonplace-it will be time to get tough with remaining opponents. To be blunt, they must be vilified. (This will be all the more necessary because, by that time, the entrenched enemy will have quadrupled its output of vitriol and disinformation.) Our goal is here is twofold. First, we seek to replace the mainstream’s self-righteous pride about its homophobia with shame and guilt. Second, we intend to make the anti-gays look so nasty that average Americans will want to dissociate themselves from such types.”
And this.
“The public should be shown images of ranting homophobes…bigoted southern ministers drooling with hysterical hatred to a degree that looks both comical and deranged; menacing punks, thugs, and convicts speaking coolly about the “fags” they have killed or would like to kill;”
After The Ball was the handbook on the radical gay movement and was used as a Bible for every gay group that wanted to protest. The book made clear that their primary target was Christians, and Christian religions, since those presented the most opposition to their agenda.
Now George will tell you that “times have changed” and that we (Christians) have lost. Perhaps. But that battle was not by accident. Gays infiltrated the education systems, fertile ground for their indoctrination of young minds. Just as Antonio Gramsci wrote that if the Marxists could infiltrate the educational systems, including the [teacher] unions, they could make good little Marxists out of the children they were tasked with educating. But it had to be done by the time the children reached 12 for, as Gramsci held, one a child reaches the teen years, they begin to think for themselves. We are now seeing the result of homosexual teachers who have, under the guise of “education”, indoctrinated an entire generation to think like they do.
George doesn’t want to talk about the dark side of homosexuality, any more than other fascist groups wanted to talk about their dark sides. He wants to ignore the fact that it was Christians who volunteered at the gay hospitals in the early days of the disease. He wants to ignore that Christians have rights to practice their faith is guaranteed in the Constitution while nothing about marriage, or homosexuality, is.
But you are getting a taste of the way queers like George operate. Just as the best way to shut someone down is to call them a “racist” gays shut debate down by calling anyone who disagrees with them “haters.”
@retire05:but it’s hard for him to get away with anything except queers and straights. Any ‘hater’ I see is on the other side. I don’t mind being called a ‘hater’ if it’s by a homosexual, first because it puts him in the positon of being the ‘name caller’ which is traditionally, as in this case, the losing side. They know it, we know it.
@retire05 #39:
“Now George will tell you that “times have changed” and that we (Christians) have lost. Perhaps. But that battle was not by accident.”
How would you feel if your side had failed so miserably to stop the fight for gay rights if that fight had simply happened by accident?
“Oops! I ACCIDENTLY asked for equal rights! My bad!”
Gay activists learned by their early mistakes, and eventually crafted a strategy that worked.
Conservatives anticipated the gay activists’ success, developed some strategies to counter it and others to protect “Religious Freedoms” if their first strategies failed.
What we are seeing unfolding in the public arena is not survival, but rather the victory of the fittest strategy.
There will be for a long while a running battle between these two diametrically opposed sides of the “culture war.”
I can’t forecast far into the future, and you might well be correct that at some point the pendulum will swing back in a direction opposite to its current one. But I CAN forecast that I won’t live to see such a reversal, and that’s really all I care about. The future belongs to THEM, just as the present belongs to US.
If your side squandered its opportunities, failed to convince its audience, misplayed its tactical and strategic cards and blundered its defenses, that’s just not my problem. Fuss with your GOP politicians who can’t seem to recognize what is coming down the road until it runs over them, if you want someone to blame.
“George doesn’t want to talk about the dark side of homosexuality.”
Do YOU want to talk about the dark side of heterosexuality?
You know full well that I have condemned homosexual misbehavior many times here on FA. And you also know that the rights of law-abiding citizens do not depend upon the misbehaviors of others. When all else fails, grab for the “ick factor,” right?
Well done.
You have me sobbing in sympathy for you yet again.
@George Wells:
Let’s see if we can interpolate this. We’re (the gays) ahead, but someday the pendulum might (or will) swing back to where heterosexuals will have equal rights.
But:
So even tho you’re ahead, you still see a long running battle and you might still lose because right usually wins out in the end.
That about sum it up. Never heard the old axiom, quit while you’re ahead?
@George Wells:
Hey George, “when did you stop beating your gay lover?”
That’s what kind of question Stephanopoulos asked:
Why are you bringing Palin into this? Your derangement is showing.
Actually, yes it is. I don’t know what Obama’s grades were, but I was at the top of my political science class where the historical study and interpretation of the Constitution is concerned. Try reading the Constitution and the Federalist/Anti-federalist Papers instead of the Daily Kos and LGBT talking points. The “free exercise clause” was precisely intended to protect religion and it’s free exercise from the federal government they were creating, and only forbid the Federal government from establishing a State religion.
I did not say that “all” religious practices are legal. A religious practice that violates the Constitutional Rights of another are by definition not legal. The individual Constitutional Rights of citizens must be balanced.
I never said I “BELIEVE” an any of those things, But as a religious person I am free to practice religious actions that do not violate the Constitutional Rights of another person. If a person “knows” a business person has religious objections to doing something, but uses that as a weapon to destroy that business person, it is no longer about the service wished, but pure vindictive behavior calculated to persecute and punish that person for their religious belief. I do not recognize you having any “right” to demand I give up my First Amendment “free exercise” rights so that you can force me to violate my religious prohibitions. I don’t give a damn how much you scream in my face and tell me that I have to give in to your demands, and succumb. As a free citizen of the United States and as a veteran, I served my nation to uphold all the Constitutional Rights of me and my fellow citizens. You have no “right” to demand that I, a free citizen, must become your servant, My sweat and labor is not yours to enslave. I would refuse to give you service George, not because you are “gay” but because you are an obnoxious jerk.
Historical “jurisprudence” is chock full of poorly judged cases, ruled not on by law, but by egocentric justices who insert their own biases in their rulings. As such I recognize something you do not, which is that “jurisprudence” is a mutable variable often created by political pressures, influences, the interference of activist mob rule, and pigheaded personal opinion. Sometimes such “jurisprudence” may be corrected by sounder minds having a more impartial nature with a strong basis in Common Law and Constitutional Law.
@Ditto #43:
“As a religious person I am free to practice religious actions that do not violate the Constitutional Rights of another person. If a person “knows” a business person has religious objections to doing something, but uses that as a weapon to destroy that business person, it is no longer about the service wished, but pure vindictive behavior calculated to persecute and punish that person for their religious belief.”
First sentence correct.
Second sentence I have a problem with.
If the restaurateur has a sign in the window explaining that he does not serve Blacks, your position would seem to be that a black should walk away… not make an issue, not try to establish the point that he has an equal right to be served in public accommodations, and the consequences of that would be to take us rather far back in our country’s racist past. I would prefer that the Black fellow establish a witnessed record of the exclusion and sue for his rights. Wrongs tolerated grow like a cancer.
The same would be true for a restaurant displaying a sign informing customers that gays would not be served. Such a sign is an invitation to cultural war, particularly when the law has confirmed that such exclusions are not legal. You might not like it, but there are many people out there just itching for a fight, and one wonders why there are so many other people willing to give them what they want. Particularly given that the Law favors the Black or the gay being excluded.
And I’m an “obnoxious jerk” for pointing out the law. Is that what you learned in your Poli-Sci class?
“I did not say that “all” religious practices are legal. A religious practice that violates the Constitutional Rights of another are by definition not legal. The individual Constitutional Rights of citizens must be balanced.”
That was your most accurate statement. I have advocated precisely this approach to the balancing of conflicting constitutional rights. And if you have been following my discussions with Nanny G, I have long advocated an “incrememtalist” approach to the expansion of gay rights, not the slash-and-burn approach now being pursued. I’m not the one shouting in your face. Must be some other guy…
@George Wells:
As you so often do, you fail to recognize the history behind the gay “movement.”
When Marshall Kirk and partner, Hunter Madsen, came out with After The Ball in 1989, they were not discoverers of some new, radical ideas on how to propagandize and change public perception of an issue. They both formed their tactics from earlier books such as Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and Edward Bernays’ The Engineering of Consent. Bernays was a student of the propaganda tactics of Paul Joseph Goebbels, the very man responsible for acceptance by the German people for the annihilation of the Jews of Europe. No surprise that you would be pleased with those tactics.
What strategies? The simple fact that religious freedom is guaranteed in our Constitution while sodomy is not? How is that even a strategy? It is a simple Constitutional fact.
So you support the “survival of the fittest” strategy? How will that, in the end, work out for so many gay men who have become effeminate?
@retire05:
Retire, if you saw that video mentioned in a comment earlier, you know that the effeminate will be taken care of by the “masculine” (LOL) gays. Seems as if the ‘masculine’ (roughly defined as a gay man with a stubble beard) gays don’t like the feminine gays and won’t even let them into gay bars(descrimination is okay in this case). So there are, according to that display, two types of gays. Effeminate and ‘less effeminate’ gays. But if it comes to survival of the ‘fittest’, I’m not sure how that’s gonna work out.
@Redteam:
Didn’t see the video, but not surprised. I know many gay men that really have an ardent disdain for lesbians. The common joke is “Stop acting like a queen” which, it was explained to me, meant stop acting like a lesbian. So the very people that George wants to claim are not discriminatory themselves, but are only discriminated against, are quite discriminatory toward lesbians.
Now this is only one of the dark sides of homosexuality. Of course, our resident queer will come back with some story about how he has never acted like that, but you can take it with a grain of salt because if he EVER participated in the gay “scene”, now, or earlier in his life (which he admitted), he was surrounded by those who held disdain for women who liked [sexually] other women.
And you will also notice that George will not address my question on how a business owner would know that a customer was gay. He will deflect by using the typical “same discrimination as that toward blacks” although one can tell a person’s race by simply looking at them, while I have no way of knowing a person is gay unless they VERBALLY tell me they are. When pressed on that, George’s argument falls apart. And he knows it.
All he, and his ilk have, are the tactics of Goebbles, Bernays and Alinsky. Modern day fascism on display.
Retire, here is that link, it was in comment 3 above. Actually a little humorous because all the reasons the girly guy in a beard gives for denying the gay in drag admission are clearly just discrimination. I asked him about it above, but he booted the question. Seems bar owners are allowed to discriminate for various reasons, too unruly, too drunk, improper id, all ‘judgmental’ things. Don’t want a gay in drag, his ID is improper (doesn’t look like ‘he,she,it’.) Strange it’s okay for the gay to discriminate, but a cake baker can’t reject a customer just because his id doesn’t match.
http://www.queerty.com/denver-bear-bar-found-guilty-of-discriminating-against-men-in-drag-20140805
@retire05 #45:
I couldn’t care less where a good idea comes from.
You are stuck in a rut spitting at Saul Alinsky and Antonio Gramsci as if they mean anything to the individuals who have been fighting all of their lives against discrimination. To them, that discrimination is far more real than what some long-dead circle of radical intellectuals wrote – that you happened to have stumbled across in your quest to denigrate the efforts of gay rights advocates.
Good for you to have found that a good idea can come from a bad person, if that’s the point you’re trying to make. What a sorry world this would be if every good idea that was adopted by a bad person had to be abandoned. We’d have nothing left at all.
But what point ARE you trying to make? I can’t seem to find one in your #45 rant.
You seem at one point to be harping on the fact that the Constitution doesn’t mention gay rights, which ignores the fact that the Ninth Amendment acknowledges the existence of “rights” not elsewhere specifically delineated.
Justice Arthur Goldberg (joined by Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice William Brennan) expressed this in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut (1965):
“The Framers did not intend that the first eight amendments be construed to exhaust the basic and fundamental rights… While the Ninth Amendment – and indeed the entire Bill of Rights – originally concerned restrictions upon federal power, the subsequently enacted Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the States as well from abridging fundamental personal liberties. And, the Ninth Amendment, in indicating that not all such liberties are specifically mentioned in the first eight amendments, is surely relevant in showing the existence of other fundamental personal rights, now protected from state, as well as federal, infringement. In sum, the Ninth Amendment simply lends strong support to the view that the “liberty” protected by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments from infringement by the Federal Government or the States is not restricted to rights specifically mentioned in the first eight amendments.”
That the Constitution doesn’t expressly address gay marriage doesn’t mean that a right to it cannot be found in that document. Watch what happens at the SCOTUS in June, and LEARN.
@retire05 #47:
“He will deflect by using the typical “same discrimination as that toward blacks” although one can tell a person’s race by simply looking at them, while I have no way of knowing a person is gay unless they VERBALLY tell me they are. When pressed on that, George’s argument falls apart. And he knows it.”
Sorry that you missed my answer to this before.
I am not making an argument about HOW gay people are identified. The SCOTUS has already decided that this question is irrelevant, and I agree with them. So I HAVE no argument on your question, and will not be drawn into an irrelevant discussion of which attributes are visible and which are invisible. It does not matter to the Law.
Your and Redteam’s characterization of gay people is childishly comical.
“there are… two types of gays”
REALLY?
Are there “two types of heterosexuals”?
Just TWO???
Doesn’t it occur to EITHER of you that the world isn’t nearly that simple?
You both profess to have known gay people before, so I can’t imagine why you are both coloring them with Crayons.