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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.

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Link??

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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".

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So, in other words, you have no other argument...

I don't give a damn about human homosexual behavior, woody. I also don't buy everything suggested by the gay lobby.

You may want to read the details of that article and what it cites a bit more closely.

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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?

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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?

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I'm against public accommodation laws too, but not one at a time. If we are going to protect classes of people that are clearly choice based, I don't see why a class of people that cannot be demonstrated are that way because of a choice should be excluded.

If the government is going to define a marriage between a man and a woman then it better have good reasons to do so. I have yet to see an argument that makes any sense other than religious arguments. If you'd like to throw some out feel free, but don't waste my time with the fact that they can't have children... neither can 70 year olds but you don't mind heterosexual marriages between old people do you?

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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?

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On this particular issue, yes. There are people who would very much like to extend that to other areas of peoples' lives too. No matter how good at your religion you are, someone is always going to think you're not taking it far enough.

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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?

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You're smarter than this. I really, genuinely, 100% believe that. Some posters here I seriously wouldn't expect to be able to understand why this is a terrible example, but for all of our differences I really don't think you're one of those people. Your example is of making a business offer a product that it does not offer, not of making it serve whatever products it does offer a particular type of customer. It would be just like asking if an Italian restaurant should be forced to sell car batteries. That is not what is happening in these cases. If your kosher deli served non-bacon items to some people, but not to a certain group of them (i.e. Muslims/Christians/Hindus/Women/Asians), then yes, they would absolutely be violating applicable public accommodation laws.

I suspect you know this.

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Your example is of making a business offer a product that it does not offer, not of making it serve whatever products it does offer a particular type of customer. It would be just like asking if an Italian restaurant should be forced to sell car batteries. That is not what is happening in these cases. If your kosher deli served non-bacon items to some people, but not to a certain group of them (i.e. Muslims/Christians/Hindus/Women/Asians), then yes, they would absolutely be violating applicable public accommodation laws.

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Bacon is a breakfast food. The deli serves breakfast. They may even sell beef-bacon, or turkey-bacon. They just don't serve real bacon for religious reasons.

How about cheeseburgers? They don't serve cheeseburgers for religious reasons. They may sell cheese and they may serve burgers, but put cheese on that burger? Nope, not here.

It is a valid analogy.

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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.

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Liberalism supposedly holds liberty as a chief end. Not today. When someone's behavior is not in line with a liberal's morality, that person is coerced - either by law or severe pressure from "the market." The days of letting a person be and live his life in peace are long gone. A time where this gay couple would have simply "kept the peace" and sought another avenue to get married have passed. No, this chapel must be taught a lesson of what is right and wrong. If not by the government, by an overwhelming marketing campaign to put them out of business.

I'm certainly not a liberal, but I am often surprised that they so quickly abandon their political ideology.

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Bacon is a breakfast food. The deli serves breakfast. They may even sell beef-bacon, or turkey-bacon. They just don't serve real bacon for religious reasons.

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And they can do that. They're not serving bacon to anyone. Just like the Meineke down the street isn't serving bacon to anyone. You can not serve whatever product you want, for whatever reason you want, including religious ones. You just can't serve it to some people and not others.

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How about cheeseburgers? They don't serve cheeseburgers for religious reasons. They may sell cheese and they may serve burgers, but put cheese on that burger? Nope, not here.

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That's totally ok too. If no one gets cheeseburgers you're not discriminating against anyone. You're just making a decision on which products to sell. Taco Bell has the incredients for the Cheesy Gordita Crunch onhand year-round, but they only sell that particular monstrosity certain times during the year. They're not discriminating because everyone has access to it at the times they do offer it.

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It is a valid analogy.

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It's not. I gave you a valid one - a kosher deli who serves it's menu to some people but not others.

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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.

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Go to the 5 minute mark. These people had cataract surgery, and many are seeing for the first time in many years after they take the bandages off. Watch their reaction. They are praising a dead man who is now 2 generations away from being the actual leader. This is god worship.

Yeah I don't know how anyone could ever watch anything about life inside North Korea and not conclude that they have a nation-wide cult thing going on there.

Even the beer commercials give that vibe. Taedonggang mekjoo!

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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.

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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).

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I suspect the point went sailing over your head

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Liberalism supposedly holds liberty as a chief end. Not today. When someone's behavior is not in line with a liberal's morality, that person is coerced - either by law or severe pressure from "the market." The days of letting a person be and live his life in peace are long gone. A time where this gay couple would have simply "kept the peace" and sought another avenue to get married have passed. No, this chapel must be taught a lesson of what is right and wrong. If not by the government, by an overwhelming marketing campaign to put them out of business.

I'm certainly not a liberal, but I am often surprised that they so quickly abandon their political ideology.

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I don't understand why a gay person who gets bad customer service should just "keep the peace," but anyone else can let other people know about their experience. If I go to a restaurant and the service sucks, food was bad, they messed up my order, staff was rude, place was dirty, etc., I'd let people know about it, and I suspect you would too. I took a marketing class at A&M where the professor talked about how a bad customer service experience with a flower shop in a small town led to that business eventually closing. This kind of thing happens all the time. It's the entire reason websites like Yelp exist. Only The Gays are expected to not speak up about it.

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They're not serving bacon to anyone.

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And the wedding chapel isn't giving same sex marriages to anyone.

A valid analogy.

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They're not serving bacon to anyone.

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And the wedding chapel isn't giving same sex marriages to anyone.

A valid analogy.

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And at one point they weren't marrying any interracial couple but that got struck down.

If the wedding chapel owner says, "we only do weddings for marriages" and by their definition a marriage is a permanent union between one man and one woman, then they should be allowed to provide only the product they wish to offer.

The government then comes in and changes the definition of "marriage" to mean something different than what this business owner has used.

The business owner's definition may be religiously based, but they should have a right to abide by it.

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They're not serving bacon to anyone.

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And the wedding chapel isn't giving same sex marriages to anyone.

A valid analogy.

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And at one point they weren't marrying any interracial couple but that got struck down.

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really? I didn't read that part of the story. Can you refer me to when this couple was refusing interracial couples?

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If the wedding chapel owner says, "we only do weddings for marriages" and by their definition a marriage is a permanent union between one man and one woman, then they should be allowed to provide only the product they wish to offer.

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I do love the argument that religious people should just get to exempt themselves from any law that applies to everyone else. Like Jim pointed out, lots of people used to (and many still would if they're being honest) define it as a union between a man and woman of the same race. They often had sincerely held religious beliefs on that. They still have to follow the law, and like in your attempt at making this a relevant example, they weren't offering interracial marriages to anyone.

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The government then comes in and changes the definition of "marriage" to mean something different than what this business owner has used.

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That's how laws work. The government defines things literally every time it meets. They amend existing definitions of things all the time. Businesses comply and the world keeps spinning.

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The business owner's definition may be religiously based, but they should have a right to abide by it.

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Not if it conflicts with a law that applies to everyone else, and their definition results in them discriminating. The kosher deli not selling bacon isn't discriminating against anyone; these people are.

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Only The Gays now have the power of government to fine or close down the business.

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FIFY

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They're not serving bacon to anyone.

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And the wedding chapel isn't giving same sex marriages to anyone.

A valid analogy.

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And at one point they weren't marrying any interracial couple but that got struck down.

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really? I didn't read that part of the story. Can you refer me to when this couple was refusing interracial couples?

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I think it's pretty clear "they" meant "people in general," not these specific people.

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Only The Gays now have the power of government to fine or close down the business.

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FIFY

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This is patently not true. These laws apply to several demographics you belong to as well. It's just you have the privilege of belonging to groups that are virtually never refused service because they're typically the ones doing the refusing.

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Not if it conflicts with a law that applies to everyone else, and their definition results in them discriminating. The kosher deli not selling bacon isn't discriminating against anyone; these people are.

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You are using the law to justify itself.

By not selling bacon, the kosher deli is discriminating against someone who wants to eat bacon.

By not "selling" same sex marriages, the wedding chapel is discriminating against someone who wants a same-sex marriage.

The point isn't what you sell but to whom you sell it.

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You are using the law to justify itself.

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I've said repeatedly I'm not for these types of laws. But we live in a society of laws and we all have to abide by them until they're repealed or struck down. You're not a special snowflake who gets to opt out.

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By not selling bacon, the kosher deli is discriminating against someone who wants to eat bacon.

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It's really discouraging to see an otherwise intelligent person keep returning to this. By this logic they're discriminating against anyone who wants any of the literally billions of products and services they do not offer. If I want a car battery, a dump truck, or someone to put a roof on my house, this deli isn't discriminating against me by not offering those things for sale. If they suddenly opened a Deli/Car Battery/Dump Truck/Roofing business, and refused to offer me any of those things based on my race/religion/gender/sexual orientation (in some places), they would be.

Simply put - there are good and valid arguments that can be made against these laws. There's no need to resort to red herrings and terrible analogies like this.

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By not "selling" same sex marriages, the wedding chapel is discriminating against someone who wants a same-sex marriage.

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Because they're not selling opposite-sex marriages, they're selling marriages. I get that you think they're different. Under the law they're not. You're not a precious snowflake.

DOL - I'm curious if you can answer the question I posed a few pages ago. What if there were legislation to remove only the religious grounds for anti-discrimination statutes? Would you support it? For the sake of argument let's say this is in a state that doesn't protect sexual orientation in this way. A reduction in the number of grounds on which people may sue for this is a good thing, yes?

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I don't understand why a gay person who gets bad customer service should just "keep the peace," but anyone else can let other people know about their experience. If I go to a restaurant and the service sucks, food was bad, they messed up my order, staff was rude, place was dirty, etc., I'd let people know about it, and I suspect you would too. I took a marketing class at A&M where the professor talked about how a bad customer service experience with a flower shop in a small town led to that business eventually closing. This kind of thing happens all the time. It's the entire reason websites like Yelp exist. Only The Gays are expected to not speak up about it.

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Bad customer service assumes the business is offering a service that they failed to provide. A flower shop not providing pizza hardly warrants a marketing campaign against the flower shop.

Of course, this chapel does provide the service of marriage. Though the difference lies in the opinion of what marriage is. The chapel thinks between a man and woman; you think otherwise. What to do with the difference of opinion? Liberalism of yesteryear would put coercion, government or otherwise, way down the list.

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I get that you think they're different. Under the law they're not.

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The government doesn't have the authority to change the definition any more than they have the ability to change the definition of any other religious sacrament. And that is the key that makes this a religious discrimination issue.

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I get that you think they're different. Under the law they're not.

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The government doesn't have the authority to change the definition any more than they have the ability to change the definition of any other religious sacrament. And that is the key that makes this a religious discrimination issue.

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For legal purposes they absolutely do. If any other religious "sacrament" also carried any actual meaning in the realm of our legal system, they could change them too. Your church can still call them whatever it wants within the church. I guarantee you the church I grew up in would adamantly define marriage as the union of a man and woman of the same race. They can do that even though the state thinks otherwise.

Can you please answer my question now?

I've wondered why homosexuals even want to be married by a church/pastor. If someone opened a store called the Anti-Christ Groceries and sold the same stuff as HEB, I wouldn't want to shop there even if they were forced to let me. I would obviously not be welcome.

It's truly amazing how Dad, and those that have his position, continually get their clocks cleaned on this topic, yet they keep coming back again and again. I'll hand it to you; you're determined.

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I've wondered why homosexuals even want to be married by a church/pastor. If someone opened a store called the Anti-Christ Groceries and sold the same stuff as HEB, I wouldn't want to shop there even if they were forced to let me. I would obviously not be welcome.

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So gays can't be people of faith?

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I've wondered why homosexuals even want to be married by a church/pastor.

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I haven't seen any trying to get married by a church who doesn't want to marry them. Like with any other service there are plenty of churches and pastors who gladly will do so.

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I've wondered why homosexuals even want to be married by a church/pastor. If someone opened a store called the Anti-Christ Groceries and sold the same stuff as HEB, I wouldn't want to shop there even if they were forced to let me. I would obviously not be welcome.

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Do you realize how fast this store would be sued if they operated this way and actually refused service to christians? Don't act like gays are the only ones to use the legal system. Imagine the outrage that would pour out over the Anti-Christ grocery that refused to sell anything to you because of your faith.

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I've wondered why homosexuals even want to be married by a church/pastor. If someone opened a store called the Anti-Christ Groceries and sold the same stuff as HEB, I wouldn't want to shop there even if they were forced to let me. I would obviously not be welcome.

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So gays can't be people of faith?

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That's a whole different topic and I don't want to derail the thread.

I will say that if the bible took the opposite stance and said heterosexuality was sinful and how entire cities were destroyed because of that behavior, I would do one of two things.

1.) question the bible
2.) turn away from heterosexual behavior (wouldn't engage in homosexual behavior, just be single)

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I've wondered why homosexuals even want to be married by a church/pastor. If someone opened a store called the Anti-Christ Groceries and sold the same stuff as HEB, I wouldn't want to shop there even if they were forced to let me. I would obviously not be welcome.

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Do you realize how fast this store would be sued if they operated this way and actually refused service to christians? Don't act like gays are the only ones to use the legal system. Imagine the outrage that would pour out over the Anti-Christ grocery that refused to sell anything to you because of your faith.

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No in this example this store still provides services to everyone. I'm saying that just because this store is willing to provide me service doesn't mean I want to give them my business