quote:

---

quote:

---

Also, just read the article, and what we say won't happen is still not actually happening. The fact that these people are ministers doesn't mean they're not also running a business here, not a church.

---

Beer, I can't actually believe that you are okay with this. It is evil.

---

It is evil. Let's get rid of all accommodation laws. If you just want to get rid of ones for gays though then that's evil too and I want no part in making religion a specially privileged class of snowflakes.

So because animals do something that makes it morally good for humans as well?

Animals rape and kill each other. Some male animals kill the kin of other males. Some animals have one male the head of multiple females.

The argument that animals do it so that makes it okay is a terrible one. So rape, murder, infanticide and poligamy should all be accepted by society because we've observed it in nature? That is the logic and it's wrong.

I've said repeatedly that I'm against public accommodation laws, and I don't see why you would think I'm ok with this. I've said over and over again that people like this should be able to refuse service to gay people, and then deal with whatever well-deserved negative press they get for doing so. Let the market sort it out just like with any other bad customer service issue. I'm just pointing out that this is not an example of what the OP and the author of this article are trying to make it out to be. Churches are still free to discriminate against whomever they want, just like I'm sure Jesus would want them to do. "The Hitchin Post" is not a church, even if ministers run it. A Pizza Hut run by ministers wouldn't be a church either.

I also don't find these laws evil; I just don't think they're necessary or do anyone very much good.

quote:

---

So because animals do something that makes it morally good for humans as well?

---

No. It makes it natural. Morality is another argument.

quote:

---

Animals rape and kill each other. Some male animals kill the kin of other males. Some animals have one male the head of multiple females.

---

Yes, and these things are natural. Whether they're good or not is a different question.

quote:

---

The argumentire that animals do it is a terrible one. So rape, murder and infanticide should all be accepted by society because we've observed it in nature. That is the logic and it's intuitively wrong.

---

Literally no one as made this argument. No one.

quote:

---

So because animals do something that makes it morally good for humans as well?

Animals rape and kill each other. Some male animals kill the kin of other males. Some animals have one male the head of multiple females.

The argument that animals do it so that makes it okay is a terrible one. So rape, murder, infanticide and poligamy should all be accepted by society because we've observed it in nature? That is the logic and it's wrong.

---

You are wrong. What animals do does not prove anything but certainly offers evidence that it is not a violation of natural law as some here have claimed. No one claimed we should embrace harmful behavior; however, none of you have demonstrated that homosexuality is a harmful natural behavior.

quote:

---

So because animals do something that makes it morally good for humans as well?

Animals rape and kill each other. Some male animals kill the kin of other males. Some animals have one male the head of multiple females.

The argument that animals do it so that makes it okay is a terrible one. So rape, murder, infanticide and poligamy should all be accepted by society because we've observed it in nature? That is the logic and it's wrong.

---

Nobody's making that argument but I do find it interesting if a bit tangential that many of those terrible things you list were at one point in time commanded, orchestrated or otherwise endorsed by God.

quote:

---

There is an obvious sense in which gay sex is not natural - it doesn't achieve the biological function of sex.

---

yet it persists in nature. Which leads me to believe whatever causes homosexuality provides some sort of counterbalancing benefit that would allow it to persist. A gay gene that did absolutely nothing else but make you effectively infertile would be easily selected against. However, if for instance, a gene(s) that increases fecundity in females has a simultaneous effect in certain instances of causing homosexuality would still increase the biological function of reproduction if the benefits outweigh the cost.

quote:

---

As to the question of whether gay sex does harm, that's kind of the disagreement. I personally think that it DOES do harm

---

What specific harm?

And getting rid of public accommodation all together is a different issue. What we see currently is merely an enforcement of established law. If you preferred a society with whites only stores, no-christian clauses, gays not allowed signs, that's your preference. I'm not convinced letting the market punish such behavior leads to a better society. Particularly in smaller more homogeneous towns.

quote:

---

And getting rid of public accommodation all together is a different issue. What we see currently is merely an enforcement of established law. If you preferred a society with whites only stores, no-christian clauses, gays not allowed signs, that's your preference. I'm not convinced letting the market punish such behavior leads to a better society. Particularly in smaller more homogeneous towns.

---

The market did the real work of integration anyway. It was doing the work long before the civil rights act and public accommodations. Where people get confused is that the problem areas with segregation had government mandated segregation. This didn't allow the free market to work. The courts just needed to strike down these laws. In places where things were going best the free market was allowed to work.

I'm watching Dallas while posting with my phone, but I want to quickly add that I'm fine with getting rid of protected classes.

quote:

---

The market did the real work of integration anyway.

---

The first blacks bused in needed police protection from the locals. I don't doubt that public opinion was already moving that way. But I do think segregation would have lasted much longer, particularly in the south and would exist in small towns today.

quote:

---

quote:

---

The market did the real work of integration anyway.

---

The first blacks bused in needed police protection from the locals. I don't doubt that public opinion was already moving that way. But I do think segregation would have lasted much longer, particularly in the south and would exist in small towns today.

---

Again, these are places with govt mandated discrimination. The market was not allowed to work. You were not allowed to open an interracial establishment or were required by law to have discriminatory policies.

Segregation didn't magically end faster because govt reversed and said now we'll punish discrimination. The reality is that there was little govt consequences or punishment in these areas but the driver was that businesses could note choose not to discriminate, not to segregate and reap the economic gains from that behavior.

You could be right that it slightly sped up integration bit now we're dealing with the overreach in the opposite direction where we are not free to discriminate how we wish. I have no desire personally to discriminate but I think liberty justifies itself.

I love this absurd logic that the participants in the market are different from those that vote or participate in community activities. Jim Crow was a market response to white anxiety BEFORE it was the law. Stop pretending all would have been well in the South of not for government. It's lazy.

quote:

---

I love this absurd logic that the participants in the market are different from those that vote or participate in community activities. Jim Crow was a market response to white anxiety BEFORE it was the law. Stop pretending all would have been well in the South of not for government. It's lazy.

---

Jim crow was unconstitutional legislation that stopped the free market from working as it should by preventing businesses from legally being able to be non discriminatory.
Just because legislation is passed doesn't make it free market.

I didn't say it was free market. I said the idea that the market is a magic force apart from society that only rains down beneficence is an idiotic fairy tale. Discrimination began with businesses circumventing federal law during Reconstruction and ended with them begging to continue discrimination before the Supreme Court.

quote:

---

I love this absurd logic that the participants in the market are different from those that vote or participate in community activities. Jim Crow was a market response to white anxiety BEFORE it was the law. Stop pretending all would have been well in the South of not for government. It's lazy.

---

I'm much more sympathetic to the libertarian ideals today than Jim's version of history in which the free market solved all the problems and was the cause of none of them. Clearly without government imposition Jim Crow laws would have lasted much longer and may well still be in existence.

quote:

---

I didn't say it was free market. I said the idea that the market is a magic force apart from society that only rains down beneficence is an idiotic fairy tale. Discrimination began with businesses circumventing federal law during Reconstruction and ended with them begging to continue discrimination before the Supreme Court.

---

You do realize that outside of societal thought being anti discriminatory has been shown to be almost always financially beneficial for business which in and if itself leads to more non discrimination and influenced how society interacts and forms their social constructs.

Jim crow unconstitutionally took away that mechanism, a mechanism that was significantly improving the lives of minorities and racial relations in other places.

You're right that it isn't magic and isn't completely separate from society but that doesn't remotely undermine my argument.

quote:

---

quote:

---

I love this absurd logic that the participants in the market are different from those that vote or participate in community activities. Jim Crow was a market response to white anxiety BEFORE it was the law. Stop pretending all would have been well in the South of not for government. It's lazy.

---

I'm much more sympathetic to the libertarian ideals today than Jim's version of history in which the free market solved all the problems and was the cause of none of them. Clearly without government imposition Jim Crow laws would have lasted much longer and may well still be in existence.

---

Without unconstitutional government intervention they would not have existed in the first place. Still however the fed our courts could have intervened by ruling government mandated discrimination unconstitutional and seen in my view the vast majority of the benefits experienced.

Mandating protected classes and criminalizing certain types of discrimination was unnecessary except for barring government discrimination.

quote:

---

Without unconstitutional government intervention they would not have existed in the first place.

---

This I disagree with. Jim crow was laws codified at the local level with strong support of the white majority. There is no reason to think that the preponderance of white businesses in the south wouldn't have practiced segregation if given the choice. The market is perfectly capable of maintaining segregation so long as you lose more white customers for admitting blacks than you gain black customers. I strongly doubt that the numbers favored such a policy in many places for a long time. Further, this fails to account for those owners that would accept an economic disadvantage in order to maintain personal bigotry.

More to the point, in the more liberal north, segregation happened in spite of the lack of jim crow laws. It was merely de-facto rather than de-jure segregation. A business owner would simply tell a black man he wasn't welcome. Realtors wouldn't show blacks houses in white neighborhoods even when they could afford them.

I would wager desegregation would have been considerably slower under a free market progression and might still exist in small pockets today.

quote:

---

quote:

---

Is homosexuality a religion?

---

Religion is a choice, whereas homosexuality is not. That's the point.

---

and some people believe that serial adulterers, and pedophiles, and kleptomaniacs are also all "born that way". Too bad for them their lobby isn't as effective as that of the gays.

Actions have consequences. If you infringe on another's rights you deal with them even if you're born that way. homosexuality infringes on nobody and doesn't cause harm to others.

I may think it's an illness to believe in a deity and it's bad to have tons of kids and indoctrinate them in such a belief but I'm not going to ask to criminalize it because it doesn't harm me.

Didn't read the entire thread, but the notion that 10% of domestic rams are somehow born exclusively homosexual is ludicrous. Most flocks only have one ram. In large flocks with more than one ram, dominant rams will prevent others from mating, which is why some (especially young) rams hump other rams and don't approach ewes.

That wiki link was atrocious.

quote:

---

yet it persists in nature. Which leads me to believe whatever causes homosexuality provides some sort of counterbalancing benefit that would allow it to persist

---

Want to explain how a dog is supposed to jack off?

quote:

---

quote:

---

quote:

---

Is homosexuality a religion?

---

Religion is a choice, whereas homosexuality is not. That's the point.

---

and some people believe that serial adulterers, and pedophiles, and kleptomaniacs are also all "born that way". Too bad for them their lobby isn't as effective as that of the gays.

---

All those people also harm others or their property, something which just being gay does not result in.

quote:

---

quote:

---

quote:

---

Is homosexuality a religion?

---

Religion is a choice, whereas homosexuality is not. That's the point.

---

and some people believe that serial adulterers, and pedophiles, and kleptomaniacs are also all "born that way". Too bad for them their lobby isn't as effective as that of the gays.

---

DOL do you read the arguments the other side has made or do you simply spout nonsense without ever being affected by arguments counter to your own? The point being made isn't that any natural impulse should be allowed but rather when one has a natural impulse that doesn't HARM others, the government should not be in the business of suppressing or condemning said impulse.

The only legitimate arguments to be made against gay marriage are religious in nature. If you oppose gay marriage, why not be intellectually honest and admit you want a theocracy rather than liberty?

quote:

---

Didn't read the entire thread, but the notion that 10% of domestic rams are somehow born exclusively homosexual is ludicrous. Most flocks only have one ram. In large flocks with more than one ram, dominant rams will prevent others from mating, which is why some (especially young) rams hump other rams and don't approach ewes.

That wiki link was atrocious.

---

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/science/25sheep.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

This better? Didn't figure you'd be a part of the "I can't be bothered to google something for 5 minutes" crowd.

Get off your supercilious pedestal:

http://www.mygenes.co.nz/rams.htm

quote:

---

Actions have consequences. If you infringe on another's rights you deal with them even if you're born that way. homosexuality infringes on nobody and doesn't cause harm to others.

I may think it's an illness to believe in a deity and it's bad to have tons of kids and indoctrinate them in such a belief but I'm not going to ask to criminalize it because it doesn't harm me.

---

I'm not sure if you're blinded by hate, willfully ignorant, or radically depraved (but suspect it's a combination of the thrice, particularly the latter).

quote:

---

If you oppose gay marriage, why not be intellectually honest and admit you want a theocracy rather than liberty?

---

Did Joe Stalin and Adolph Hitler want a theocracy? How about Kim Jong-Il?

quote:

---

quote:

---

If you oppose gay marriage, why not be intellectually honest and admit you want a theocracy rather than liberty?

---

Did Joe Stalin and Adolph Hitler want a theocracy? How about Kim Jong-Il?

---

Did you just ask if Kim Jong-Il wanted a theocracy? He had one. His dead father continues to be revered as a god in North Korea.

I am not suggesting only christians disagree with gay marriage. I'm not suggesting only religious people have ever opposed homosexuality. But they were wrong, just as you are wrong on the subject.

quote:

---

The only legitimate arguments to be made against gay marriage are religious in nature. If you oppose gay marriage, why not be intellectually honest and admit you want a theocracy rather than liberty?

---

I don't have the time or inclination to refute the false argument that "the only legitimate arguments to be made against gay marriage are religious in nature".

It is not endorsing a theocracy to support the traditional definition of marriage as being between 1 man and 1 woman. So do you believe we have been living in a Theocracy up until the last few years?

I don't buy your arguments, but even if I did, this is related to forcing someone who opposes gay marriage for religious reasons to participate in something that violates their religious beliefs.

Would you support an ordinance that forced kosher delis to serve bacon?

Nothing wrong with bacon. People eat bacon all the time. It's only a religious argument against bacon. So should observant Jews who happen to own a Kosher Deli be forced to serve bacon?

Tampa,

Your argument would have been stronger if you'd asked whether Thomas Jefferson or George Washington wanted a theocracy.

I personally say screw anyone you want to screw but I'm not buying into the notion that all of these exclusive homosexuals were born that way. Maybe some.

quote:

---

Get off your supercilious pedestal:

http://www.mygenes.co.nz/rams.htm

---

When you google homosexuality in sheep, there are far more articles that support the findings of the study. But let's just assume this article is correct... does it in any way suggest that homosexuality is an unnatural form of sexuality? That it is somehow harmful to others?