Meanwhile, back in Kansas...

[pErvinalia]

Mendacious libertarian pettifogery aversion tactics.

[FBM]

Tactical aversion to mendacious, libertarian petifoggery.

[laklak]

Might be easier to post a sign saying who you will serve. "White cicgendered straight married Evangelical Christians ONLY!" is easier than "NO niggers chinks spics dagos mackerel snappers hebes fags hippies trannies dykes zippers and anybody else I decide I don't like".

[Seth]

Might be easier to post a sign saying who you will serve. "White cicgendered straight married Evangelical Christians ONLY!" is easier than "NO niggers chinks spics dagos mackerel snappers hebes fags hippies trannies dykes zippers and anybody else I decide I don't like".

I'm good with that. I prefer to have bigots out in the open, so they can be easily identified and shunned. All anti-discrimination laws do is make things worse by driving the bigotry underground, where bigots who object to being forced into association will find other ways to express their bigotry, like by putting on pointy hats and robes and riding around burning crosses on people's lawns or spitting in someone's wedding cake.

If a baker doesn't want to bake cakes for gays, then yes, he should post that fact on his storefront and let all his potential customers know what his policies are so that they can decide whether to do business with him or not. The same applies to racial, religious or any other sort of bigotry a merchant may have. I encourage them to express it openly because it allows consumers to make well-informed rational decisions about whom to support and who they need to boycott.

Why a gay couple would even want to have someone who reviles their lifestyle make them a cake is a bit of a puzzlement. One would think they would prefer to do business with a baker who welcomes their trade. I know I would never patronize any merchant who advertised bigotry towards gays or blacks or women or any of the other status conditions that are protected by the civil rights laws.

Perhaps it went down as it did because the gay couple wanted to shove their sexual orientation in the baker's face and drive him out of business deliberately by wielding the anti-discrimination laws like a blunt instrument and getting the government to do their work for them. It's not as if that has not happened before. And did their complaint achieve anything? Not really, the baker is back baking again and people who hold prejudices against gays have had their prejudices confirmed and are even less likely to change their opinions as a result, as amply demonstrated by the OP of this thread, wherein both Kansas and Arizona, and I suspect others to follow, feel threatened enough to put forward legislation explicitly protecting the religious rights of individuals engaged in commerce to discriminate for religious reasons. That wouldn't be an issue if people were able to identify and avoid bigots. There would be no confrontation and the power of the free market would deal with the bigot appropriately. The push-back here is likely to make things worse and cause more divisiveness and acrimony, not less.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. knew how to deal with bigotry through the power of the free market. When Rosa Parks was arrested he and other black civil rights leaders organized a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama to protest the racist bigotry. This had an immediate and beneficial effect as it stripped the city of much-needed revenues, and by hitting the bigots in the purse the boycott had a wide-reaching positive effect. Had the gay couple in the bakery incident organized a protest of the baker's shop they would have had a a much more far-reaching effect than they did by filing a complaint and driving the baker out of business...temporarily.

You catch more flies with honey than you do vinegar.

Bigotry is a civil right and it is the duty of every citizen to respect the right of a person to be a bigot. But it is also the right of every citizen to shun and reject association and trade with a bigot. Allowing bigots to reveal themselves is a far better way of reducing bigotry, particularly in commerce, than siccing the law on them is. Even bigots will often respond to economic pressure and change their policies when the choice is to change or go out of business because the community rallies behind those who are being discriminated against by refusing to patronize the bigot.

You don't change attitudes by using the law as a blunt instrument to bludgeon bigots.

[MrJonno]

Perhaps it went down as it did because the gay couple wanted to shove their sexual orientation in the baker's face and drive him out of business deliberately by wielding the anti-discrimination laws like a blunt instrument and getting the government to do their work for them.

And this is a bad thing because?

Sorry If I found such a baker it would be time grow a beard, hire some leather gear/ mini skirt, get out the Abba and dance into his shop singing Dancing Queen. I would then go hi darling your sticky buns do look gorgeous and I would like some to share them with my boyfriend (I might even eat them). You don't have a problem Mr Baker do you?

Like most things in life running a business is a privilege not a right, abuse it and lose it

[laklak]

I've no real problem with private business discriminating against whoever they decide they hate, as long as the same principle extends to me. The next time I run a background check on a possible tenant I'll make sure they're dope-smoking libertarian atheists, no fundamentalists, bigots, homophobes or other wooheads need apply. Actually I don't give a fuck as long as the rent check clears, fundy money is still green.

Why would any self-respecting homosexual live in fucking Kansas anyway? Nothing but strip malls and Golden Corrals there. Doesn't even have a decent beach, FFS. For those who don't know Golden Corral, it's a chain of really cheap, all you can eat "restaurants" that make Denny's look like haute cuisine. The state seal should be set of cheap dentures on the rusted bed of an '84 Ford F150. "Fly over state" doesn't quite describe it, it's more like a "dump over state", someplace airliners go to vent their sanitary tanks. Let them pass all the bigoted laws they want, maybe the asshole fundies will move there and free up a few trailer parks.

[Robert_S]

Might be easier to post a sign saying who you will serve. "White cicgendered straight married Evangelical Christians ONLY!" is easier than "NO niggers chinks spics dagos mackerel snappers hebes fags hippies trannies dykes zippers and anybody else I decide I don't like".

I'm good with that. I prefer to have bigots out in the open, so they can be easily identified and shunned. All anti-discrimination laws do is make things worse by driving the bigotry underground, where bigots who object to being forced into association will find other ways to express their bigotry, like by putting on pointy hats and robes and riding around burning crosses on people's lawns or spitting in someone's wedding cake.

If a baker doesn't want to bake cakes for gays, then yes, he should post that fact on his storefront and let all his potential customers know what his policies are so that they can decide whether to do business with him or not. The same applies to racial, religious or any other sort of bigotry a merchant may have. I encourage them to express it openly because it allows consumers to make well-informed rational decisions about whom to support and who they need to boycott.

Why a gay couple would even want to have someone who reviles their lifestyle make them a cake is a bit of a puzzlement. One would think they would prefer to do business with a baker who welcomes their trade. I know I would never patronize any merchant who advertised bigotry towards gays or blacks or women or any of the other status conditions that are protected by the civil rights laws.

Perhaps it went down as it did because the gay couple wanted to shove their sexual orientation in the baker's face and drive him out of business deliberately by wielding the anti-discrimination laws like a blunt instrument and getting the government to do their work for them. It's not as if that has not happened before. And did their complaint achieve anything? Not really, the baker is back baking again and people who hold prejudices against gays have had their prejudices confirmed and are even less likely to change their opinions as a result, as amply demonstrated by the OP of this thread, wherein both Kansas and Arizona, and I suspect others to follow, feel threatened enough to put forward legislation explicitly protecting the religious rights of individuals engaged in commerce to discriminate for religious reasons. That wouldn't be an issue if people were able to identify and avoid bigots. There would be no confrontation and the power of the free market would deal with the bigot appropriately. The push-back here is likely to make things worse and cause more divisiveness and acrimony, not less.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. knew how to deal with bigotry through the power of the free market. When Rosa Parks was arrested he and other black civil rights leaders organized a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama to protest the racist bigotry. This had an immediate and beneficial effect as it stripped the city of much-needed revenues, and by hitting the bigots in the purse the boycott had a wide-reaching positive effect. Had the gay couple in the bakery incident organized a protest of the baker's shop they would have had a a much more far-reaching effect than they did by filing a complaint and driving the baker out of business...temporarily.

You catch more flies with honey than you do vinegar.

Bigotry is a civil right and it is the duty of every citizen to respect the right of a person to be a bigot. But it is also the right of every citizen to shun and reject association and trade with a bigot. Allowing bigots to reveal themselves is a far better way of reducing bigotry, particularly in commerce, than siccing the law on them is. Even bigots will often respond to economic pressure and change their policies when the choice is to change or go out of business because the community rallies behind those who are being discriminated against by refusing to patronize the bigot.

You don't change attitudes by using the law as a blunt instrument to bludgeon bigots.

LOL. So minority populations should still have to fight the combined economic might of the majority to secure equal treatment. No problem for you that blacks had to wait 100 years after the end of slavery for the end of official legal segregation.

Fuck that. Bigots have used the law against minorities, but you wanna cry foul when the tables are turned?

How about this: Polemicists have a responsibility to fight ignorance and bigotry if they don't want the blunt instrument of the law doing it FOR them? Part of the price of freedom is maintaining a society worthy of it.

[Seth]

Perhaps it went down as it did because the gay couple wanted to shove their sexual orientation in the baker's face and drive him out of business deliberately by wielding the anti-discrimination laws like a blunt instrument and getting the government to do their work for them.

And this is a bad thing because?

Sorry If I found such a baker it would be time grow a beard, hire some leather gear/ mini skirt, get out the Abba and dance into his shop singing Dancing Queen. I would then go hi darling your sticky buns do look gorgeous and I would like some to share them with my boyfriend (I might even eat them). You don't have a problem Mr Baker do you?

Like most things in life running a business is a privilege not a right, abuse it and lose it

And he'd be legally justified in throwing you out of his shop because of your dress and/or your conduct.

[Seth]

LOL. So minority populations should still have to fight the combined economic might of the majority to secure equal treatment. No problem for you that blacks had to wait 100 years after the end of slavery for the end of official legal segregation.

Fallacious appeal to the consequences of a belief.

You let me know when gays are entirely, or even substantially unable to obtain wedding cakes and that such discrimination is both pervasive and pernicious in large areas of the country. Until then the right of the baker to follow his religious conscience outweighs the desire of a gay couple to draft one particular baker into their service against his will.

Fuck that. Bigots have used the law against minorities, but you wanna cry foul when the tables are turned?

That's exactly what's happening now. Pro-homosexual, anti-heterosexual bigots are using the law to force their political agenda on others because they think because some other bigots sometime somewhere misused the law against someone else in a pernicious and pervasive manner that this morally and ethically justifies revenge-based turnabout bigotry that forces people to violate their deeply-held religious beliefs.

Unfortunately for them, in this particular situation, unlike racial discrimination, the political agenda goes directly against a civil right held in higher esteem and more carefully protected from infringement than that of gays wanting wedding cakes. This is not to say that gays should not be able to get wedding cakes, and I'm sure there are plenty of bakers out there who would be happy to provide them with one. But when religious rights are violated by the law, then the law must submit to the more important religious liberties, even if it offends gay bigots.

How about this: Polemicists have a responsibility to fight ignorance and bigotry if they don't want the blunt instrument of the law doing it FOR them? Part of the price of freedom is maintaining a society worthy of it.

You can't stop bigotry by being a bigot. All that does is create push-back, as proven by the OP. You stop bigotry by persuading people to cooperate and to respect their fellow citizens by cooperating with and respecting your fellow citizens and tolerating their exercise of liberties just as much as you expect them to tolerate yours.

[Seth]

Why would any self-respecting homosexual live in fucking Kansas anyway? Nothing but strip malls and Golden Corrals there. Doesn't even have a decent beach, FFS.

Well...there is that...

[mistermack]

There's a lot of butch cowboys in Kansas.

And apparently, they don't feel right without their chaps.

[JimC]

There's a lot of butch cowboys in Kansas.

And apparently, they don't feel right without their chaps.

Chaps, if worn alone, would chafe...

[Robert_S]

LOL. So minority populations should still have to fight the combined economic might of the majority to secure equal treatment. No problem for you that blacks had to wait 100 years after the end of slavery for the end of official legal segregation.

Fallacious appeal to the consequences of a belief.

You let me know when gays are entirely, or even substantially unable to obtain wedding cakes and that such discrimination is both pervasive and pernicious in large areas of the country. Until then the right of the baker to follow his religious conscience outweighs the desire of a gay couple to draft one particular baker into their service against his will.

Fuck that. Bigots have used the law against minorities, but you wanna cry foul when the tables are turned?

That's exactly what's happening now. Pro-homosexual, anti-heterosexual bigots are using the law to force their political agenda on others because they think because some other bigots sometime somewhere misused the law against someone else in a pernicious and pervasive manner that this morally and ethically justifies revenge-based turnabout bigotry that forces people to violate their deeply-held religious beliefs.

Unfortunately for them, in this particular situation, unlike racial discrimination, the political agenda goes directly against a civil right held in higher esteem and more carefully protected from infringement than that of gays wanting wedding cakes. This is not to say that gays should not be able to get wedding cakes, and I'm sure there are plenty of bakers out there who would be happy to provide them with one. But when religious rights are violated by the law, then the law must submit to the more important religious liberties, even if it offends gay bigots.

How about this: Polemicists have a responsibility to fight ignorance and bigotry if they don't want the blunt instrument of the law doing it FOR them? Part of the price of freedom is maintaining a society worthy of it.

You can't stop bigotry by being a bigot. All that does is create push-back, as proven by the OP. You stop bigotry by persuading people to cooperate and to respect their fellow citizens by cooperating with and respecting your fellow citizens and tolerating their exercise of liberties just as much as you expect them to tolerate yours.

False equivalence and moral failure.

Using the law against bigots does not equal bigotry. Saying so makes you a supporter of bigotry and hiding behind calls for "equality" in an unequal situation is a cowardly form of bigotry.

Pushback? I don't really see as much pushback except for an increasingly irrelevant portion of the nation. You get some stupidity from bumfuck states out west and "taker" states in the south maybe. But not from anywhere that matters.

[Seth]

Here is an excellent analysis of the Arizona RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) amendment currently awaiting the governor's signature.

I strongly suggest that you all read it carefully, because it shows that the act is nothing like what the objectors are making it out to be. It is in fact a narrowing of Arizona's existing RFRA law. It also provides some background and context for the federal RFRA and it's near-unanimous passage in Congress under Clinton.

I hope this gives some people something to ponder before they once again drag out the red herrings and straw men.

...
Given that, here are some of the main changes the Arizona bill would make:

Those covered by RFRA would include "any individual, association, partnership, corporation, church, religious assembly or institution or other business organization."
A religious freedom violation can be asserted "regardless of whether the government is a party to the proceeding."
The person asserting a religious freedom violation must show three things: "1. That the person's action or refusal to act is motivated by a religious belief. 2. That the person's religious belief is sincerely held. 3. That the state action substantially burdens the exercise of the person's religious beliefs."

In sum, the bill would essentially make three changes for RFRA: 1) Clarify that any association, including for-profit corporations, are covered. 2) Clarify that the government does not have to be a party in the case. And, 3) to prevent frivolous RFRA claims, require that those claiming a religious freedom violation show that there is an actual religious belief behind their action, that they are sincere in their religious belief, and a state action has placed a substantial burden on their religious belief.
...
Source

[MrJonno]

Freedom of religious practice is not compatible with any modern civilized country.

For anyone to pretend otherwise is living in dreamworld.

You can believe in anything you want but not for one second does that mean you can put that belief into practice