Posted on 02/12/2014 10:25:08 PM PST by Olog-hai
A new bill was recently introduced in the Tennessee State Legislature that, if passed, would allow people and businesses to refuse to provide goods and services to homosexuals.
It was filed by State Sen. Brian Kelsey, who represents Memphis and Germantown.
The bill notes that businesses can refuse services and goods only if it furthers a civil union, domestic partnership, or same-sex marriage. The person or business would just have to say it was against their religion. …
(Excerpt) Read more at myfoxmemphis.com ...
He better get some muslim support, because Christian support won’t mean anything to the lying, screaming, evil attacking sodomites.
Cynical ploy.
If we had the national divorce, this wouldn’t be an issue.
I would support one.
Nice objective headline.
“Bigot” ... 1. a person who holds blindly and intolerantly to a particular creed, opinion, etc. 2. a narrow-minded, prejudiced person.
No bias in that headline, lol
Not 100% sure I understand the Bill, but there needs to be great care here. I once taught a Sunday School class about prayer in school and everyone was 100% for it ... until I talked about the fact that it might not be a (insert religion here) prayer. Then they were 100% against it.
While not at ALL advocating ANYTHING resembling gay marriage, civil unions, etc etc etc you’ve gotta be very careful about permitting people to not serve, etc others just because they don’t like them. History is loaded with examples of that coming back to bite those people in the a**.
We shouldn’t need a law for this, since we have a RIGHT to refuse to do engage in any practice, business or otherwise, that violates our conscience.
Marraige is the age old social institution where a man and a woman form a union to procreate, have offspring, and raise the next generation. It is not about deviants having butt-sex, no matter how normal they tell us it is.
No one should be required to service nor support individuals that demand their service and support to the benefit of the individuals’ immoral behavior. It shouldn’t require the context of religion to justify the denial of service/support.
Nope, you wouldn't want to allow that freedom. It's a slippery slope.
I kind of wonder if this is a false flag operation here, but again one couldn’t trust the media to describe it accurately.
This might be inspired by the cases in other states where bakeries that designed custom cakes were being bludgeoned into furnishing “gay marriage” cakes or else fined. It would be better to make this into a First Amendment buttressing law, whereby anything involving First Amendment protected expression could not be forced. Cakes, invitations, etc. with inscriptions for events considered immoral by the provider need not be provided by the provider. This is both wider and narrower than what appears to be proposed, and better targeted. IMHO of course.
“While not at ALL advocating ANYTHING resembling gay marriage, civil unions, etc etc etc you’ve gotta be very careful about permitting people to not serve, etc others just because they don’t like them. History is loaded with examples of that coming back to bite those people in the a**.”
Sure, there’s a price to pay for freedom sometimes. If I can refuse service to someone, they can refuse service to me. Obviously, that can cause problems, we only need to go back a few decades to see that.
However, what is the alternative? Since we surrendered our right to do business with whomever we choose, we have been subjected to an ever-expanding list of groups we must do business with. So, we see the coercive force of the government is using this new found power to grant special privileges to certain groups over others. Arming politicians seeking votes with that magic wand of favoritism is a dangerous thing. They won’t ever restrain themselves from using it if they find it is to their own advantage.
Even setting that quibble aside, there’s a fundamental rights issue that needs to be addressed. First, we should establish: do we have a right to refuse service, and conversely, do we have a right to expect to receive service? For the sake of argument, let’s say that we have both of those rights. Now, how would we determine which right takes precedence, when they are in conflict? For that answer, you have to turn to the foundations of liberalism (real classical liberalism, not progressivism), since those questions were answered centuries ago by guys like Locke and Hobbes.
It turns out that not all rights are equal. If a right derives from natural law, it automatically takes precedence over a right that is conferred by some sovereign or legal authority. I’d argue that the right to refuse service is a natural right, while the right to receive service cannot be anything other than a conferred right. The reason is that, in order to have a right to receive service, I must be able to force another to perform an action, possibly against their will. This violates the principle of liberty, which is the highest principle of all in natural law. On the other hand, the right to refuse services forces noone to do anything against their will, it is simply an assertion of liberty itself. So, when these two rights come into conflict, the natural one, the right to refuse service, must take precedence.
If I'm free to associate with whomever I choose, then I'm also free to reject association with whomever I choose to reject!!!
That's about as "natural" a right there is as "birds of a feather, flock together" and in nature they do it without restraint!!!
bump
Yes, I thought about whether this falls under that right, but I don’t think it does. Freedom of association is specifically about joining groups and associating with others, socially, religiously, or politically. It doesn’t really apply to business transactions between individuals.
Some right is in play here, no doubt, but I don’t think that is the one. I think this simply is a manifestation of the natural principle of liberty, explained by Hobbes in Leviathan thusly:
“LIBERTY, or freedom, signifieth properly the absence of opposition (by opposition, I mean external impediments of motion); and may be applied no less to irrational and inanimate creatures than to rational. For whatsoever is so tied, or environed, as it cannot move but within a certain space, which space is determined by the opposition of some external body, we say it hath not liberty to go further. And so of all living creatures, whilst they are imprisoned, or restrained with walls or chains; and of the water whilst it is kept in by banks or vessels that otherwise would spread itself into a larger space; we use to say they are not at liberty to move in such manner as without those external impediments they would. But when the impediment of motion is in the constitution of the thing itself, we use not to say it wants the liberty, but the power, to move; as when a stone lieth still, or a man is fastened to his bed by sickness.
And according to this proper and generally received meaning of the word, a freeman is he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.”
So, clearly, if someone wishes not to do business with another, but they are not able to refuse, then they are hindered from doing their own will, and cannot be called a “freeman”. Their liberty has been curtailed.
Local media isn’t calling it the Religious Freedom bill!
They report the usual drama queens but not the small business owners punished by the govt for envoking the 1st amendment
Great idea, and misleading title written by libs.
Its the ‘religious freedom’ bill.
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