I have noticed in the past that every article I've ever read regarding something in which I have personal knowledge is wrong in some fashion.
Yes. Journalism is ending, and that is not a bad thing at all. It was a crutch. Better than nothing, but nowhere near what we told ourselves it was.
The journalists are still at a loss to find even one case where such a law has been used to deny service to gays, but that didn't slow them down any. It's all about the hate.
The pizza place, Memories Pizza, the one that had the lady on TV who says she wouldn't cater to a same sex wedding, raised $44,000 on GoFundMe, all in the name of "defending their faith." I've said it elsewhere, but you know what I hate about this whole thing? "Religious liberty" is going to be a defining political issue for the upcoming election, and I'm going to have to watch while all of my kind, compassionate, sweet Christian friends get shoved into the same group as these honorless, unscrupulous assholes. Fuck her, and fuck everyone who uses their faith as a shield and a bludgeon to hate someone else merely for being different.
But what makes you think the pizza place hates anyone for being different? They happily serve gays in their restaurant and always have. They just won't do gay weddings, kind of like Palestinian pizza joints won't do Bar Mitzvahs.
Shield? Fuck, looks like they're using it as a mealticket... Makes me think of televangelists and their megachurches...
You do realize most Palestinians and Jews LOOK ALIKE (Same part of the world)? And most I know would SELL Pizza to Satan himself if it meant making MONEY! Oh Yeah HOW do I know, My Mothers maiden name is EPSTEIN and half my family IS JEWISH, some even have Arab (Palestinian) cousins through marriage. The number one rule in ANY business, Leave your feelings AT HOME, they only cost you, business is business.
Does Scam-artist pizza place cater the weddings of other anti-biblical sinners, like divorcees, adulterers, non-virgins, persons with tattoos, and so on?
^^Non-virgins are fine according to the Bible, at least in general; just don't sell someone into marriage as a virgin if they're not. But that's just common sense for any pious, God-fearing merchant trading in human beings.
Having read through this thread, I've yet to come up with a witty comeback for my 22 yo born-again holy-roller (my god, they believe in speaking-in-tongues and faith-healing) step-son when he states Indiana's law is good in that it protects Christians' beliefs. I could tell him he's on the wrong side of history. I could say it isn't a protection of religion so much as stomping on individual rights, but I'm not sure I believe this. Doesn't everyone have the right to discriminate on private property with the exception of certain employment practices? Does a gay couple have grounds for a civil lawsuit against a store that refuses to serve them? Or a black person for that matter?
The way I see it, privately owned property thats open to the public (a business) is different than private property.
I would think that these folks would come up with better excuses to wiggle outta serving untouchables, if nothing else. In today's media, having the business get blasted online would be a far better deterrent than anything to kill this behavior. Still, the law at a minimum needs to be more clear that it's not a tool to beat gays with.
Refusing to cater an event isn't the same as refusing to serve someone in your own store. In your store, you have the right to eject someone who is causing trouble, or you can call the police. If you don't allow customers to dance on the tables, you don't have to put up with it. If one starts harassing some little children at the booth next door, you can toss them out. But catering an event means you and your employees, who are often family members, are going to someone else's turf where the rules of behavior will not be yours. Thus each business owner has to weigh things like risk, morals, and likely outcomes. Are the drunken revelers at the gangland wedding likely to act out and target the servers who are "different"? Is the owner's 17-year old daughter going to be exposed to adult-themed situations if he agrees to cater a wedding at a strip club? Is the demand for his services just a set up so an out-group or in-group can have fun humiliating him on their own turf when they have him horribly outnumbered? Is the offer to cater a Hamas wedding in Gaza just a ruse to draw out some Jewish targets?
I think you're correct. Here's an excerpt from an article in a Tucson newspaper from last year: The fact is, according to civil rights and business law experts, when business owners hang up open signs, whether literally or figuratively, they have a responsibility to treat all customers equally under the law. State and federal civil rights laws prohibit employment discrimination and discrimination in places of public accommodation for reasons of race, color, national origin/ancestry, sex/gender, religion/creed and disability (physical and mental). However doesn't the federal RFRA relate to what Indiana (and other states) are doing? It states: "Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability." Don't equal rights laws burden a person's exercise of religion? Didn't RFRA make sharia law the rule of the land, at least those who profess to believe in it?
So you're saying no business has the right to refuse service to gay couples as long as it's at the place of business? What if the business is catering only?
I would tell your step-son caesari caesaris: not just government, but government and the market are to be separated from a Christian's religion, according to their own rules. And their rules are wise, too -- every deviation from this has historically served to corrupt Christianity through its governmentalized or commercialized institutions. Of course, if you want to be nasty, you could ask him whether he is involved in any kind of credit, as debtor or lender, that accumulates an interest. It's one of the few things Christians are explicitly forbidden to do, as opposed to selling and buying from people with other beliefs and lifestyles, which is fine according to scripture. But I'm assuming you don't want to be nasty to the poor guy; he's your step-son, he's suffered enough.
A busy catering business refuses jobs all the time, based on schedule, capabilities, demands, and location. Do you think no caterer has ever just up and told the bride's witch of a mother to go fuck herself? Can musicians refuse to play your wedding, and if not, can we sue Van Halen now? When a caterer takes a job they're deciding how they, their employees, and often their family will spend the evening. If they anticipate that it will be a disaster, that the guests will break all their plates because it happens to be their bizarre cultural tradition, or that their daughter is going to be groped by a bunch of guys who are trashed out of their mind, then why should the government compel them to put themselves through it - against their will and better judgement? "Freedom" seems to be a foreign concept to the left. When did allowing gay marriage become "attendance is mandatory for all citizens"?
He is 100% dependent on us, has no loans or credit cards so he's a good christian in that respect. He might be a repressed homosexual though; he seems to enjoy the company of his "brothers" more than "sisters" and the love of god is better than sex. I'll try the caesari caesaris argument next time it comes up at the dinner table. Thanks.
A summary of what happened from Reason Burn Her! She Would Act Like a Witch in a Situation That Will Never Come Up! The anti-pizzeria mob loses its mind Someone please tell me if my progression here is inaccurate in any way: 1) Family owners of small-town Indiana pizzeria spend zero time or energy commenting on gay issues. 2) TV reporter from South Bend walks inside the pizzeria to ask the owners what they think of the controversial Religious Restoration Freedom Act. Owner Crystal O'Connor responds, "If a gay couple came in and wanted us to provide pizzas for their wedding, we would have to say no….We are a Christian establishment." O'Connor also says—actually promises is the characterization here—that the establishment will continue to serve any gay or non-Christian person that walks through their door. 3) The Internet explodes with insults directed at the O'Connor family and its business, including a high school girls golf coach in Indiana who tweets "Who's going to Walkerton, IN to burn down #memoriespizza w me?" Many of the enraged critics assert, inaccurately, that Memories Pizza discriminates against gay customers. 4) In the face of the backlash, the O'Connors close the pizzeria temporarily, and say they may never reopen, and in fact might leave the state. "I don't know if we will reopen, or if we can, if it's safe to reopen," Crystal O'Connor tells The Blaze. "I'm just a little guy who had a little business that I probably don't have anymore," Kevin O'Connor tells the L.A. Times. If they'd said they support ISIS they wouldn't have gotten a tenth as much hate - and ISIS throws gay people off buildings just to watch them go 'splat!'. ETA: More of the backstory on the events that brought all the hate down on a random pizza joint, from Scott Ott.
Bet me these poor martyrs wait a few months and open another store in another neighborhood with the "donations."
Doubtful, because they've only raised about $180,000 so far. Keep in mind that the young girl who owns the place only responded to a reporter's question, honestly, and had probably never been interviewed before - about anything. The reporter was going door-to-door looking for people to comment on the RFRA, and this girl just happened to be naive enough to think that in America people are allowed to have an opinion. Boy was she wrong. She's lucky she's not dead. If not for conservatives determined to make whole her losses, she'd be out of business for good. Of course we don't allow such expressions of hatred and bigotry here in my state. Heck, we don't even allow the issue to arise because here gay marriage is illegal. Boy was Indiana stupid to allow it, and as we can all see, it just opened them up to a world of condemnation, hatred, boycotts, and threats. They should have seen that coming, because gays don't respect any law, religion, or social convention, they just make threats, destroy people's lives, crush dissent, and make sure that personal freedom and the ability to hold an opinion or a preference is just a distant memory.
So the left finally went from encouraging tolerism to "we'll burn your place down if you don't say what we want you to." Then they call everyone that doesn't think in lockstep with them insane.
You say that as though it's something to be proud of. No matter, as I expect the SCOTUS to rule marriage bans between consenting adults to be illegal within the year and it'll be a moot point.
That won't make marriage bans between consenting adults illegal because we make sure most consenting adults can't get married. The big list includes people who are already married, along with your close blood relatives. Meanwhile Kentucky is arguing that our marriage policy is non-discriminatory because it doesn't distinguish between gay and straight people, neither of whom are allowed to marry members of the same sex. They are actually correct on that point. You could wade through most of US law and not even find anywhere that "sexual preference" even exists as a concept, just as you won't find anything about Furries, Bronies, or Trekkies.
