Posted on 03/12/2014 2:58:15 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Is everyone who opposes gay marriage a bigot? If a photographer declines to participate in a same-sex wedding, should she be held legally liable, on that basis alone, for discrimination?
I don’t think so. Over the past several days, I’ve been following a lively exchange on this topic between Ross Douthat of the New York Times, Mark Joseph Stern of Slate, and Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic. I like all three of these writers. I was a best man at a same-sex wedding 23 years ago, and I was a fan of gay marriage even before that. But I’m disturbed by what I see today. We’re stereotyping and vilifying opponents of gay marriage the way we’ve seen gay people stereotyped and vilified. This is a deeply personal moral issue. To get it right, we need more than justice. We need humanity.
The exchange began on Sunday, with Douthat’s column about proprietors who decline, on religious grounds, to participate in same-sex weddings. On Monday, Stern denounced these proprietors—“that infamous trio: a florist, a photographer, and a baker, who claimed their Christianity required that they deny service to gay couples.” Criticizing these and other “bigots,” Stern asserted that “their ‘dissent’ is a hatred of gay people so vehement that they’ll violate non-discrimination laws just to make sure they never, ever have to provide a gay person with a basic service.”
On Wednesday, Friedersdorf challenged Stern’s characterization of the dissenters. Friedersdorf quoted from the photographer’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, which gave her account of the events leading to her conviction for discrimination. The email exchange between the photographer, Elaine Huguenin, and the prospective lesbian client, Vanessa Willock, didn’t seem hateful:
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
They merely want you to WASTE your time, trying to prove that you're not.
They really don't CARE whether you are or not; just stop talking about how FOUL their lifedeathstyle is.
I’m awake now!!
;^)
Did it ever occur to these demented, disease-ridden child-molesters, that they’re the bigots, and the rest of us are mostly normal?
“Did it ever occur to these demented, disease-ridden child-molesters, that they’re the bigots, and the rest of us are mostly normal?”
>> This is a deeply personal moral issue.
A trivialization of morality treating it like it’s an emotion.
The homos of old wouldn’t have dreamed of trying this even in milieus where they were tolerated. Marriage would be a buzz kill. Commitment dampened the game; it didn’t accentuate it.
There is a new breed of loud mouth and they have managed to co-opt what sense was left in the old homos.
The punking instinct has been redirected towards punking society instead of just punking themselves.
Maybe the end game will look like Sodom in which the gang assault apparently was de rigueur. If it’s ever reached. There’s going to be a point reached where even tolerant Christians are going to say this is it, doo-wop, we won’t sit for this any more.
You know this, how?
No, you weren't. You just thought you were.
Because on of my friends from childhood is gay. He says it doesn’t define him and he doesn’t talk about it or feel a need to push an agenda. He calls GOP proud a bunch of ideological faggots who just want to turn the GOP into the democrats.
The only reason I know about it is because I ran into him and his partner few years ago on a fishing trip up north. He told me because he didn’t want me to figure it out on my own. We suspected him years ago when we were teenagers.
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