Posted on 04/10/2015 9:29:37 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A sequel to yesterday’s Reuters poll. Again, the most politically salient question, whether Christian business owners should be able to deny service for gay weddings specifically, is conspicuously left out of this survey. (You get three guesses why and the first two don’t count.) But then, RFRA laws aren’t limited to gay weddings either. Theoretically they provide a religious defense to any discrimination lawsuit, not just one involving marriage. What’s useful about these polls is seeing which side the public thinks should prevail in those lawsuits, at least in cases involving a total denial of service to a particular group. (Not only are there no cases like that out there right now, no RFRA statute has ever been used successfully as a defense to discrimination.) Verdict: Even the “very religious” say antidiscrimination laws should trump religious liberty when it comes to turning an entire group away categorically:
There’s the old paradox at work — Americans broadly support the right of business owners to refuse service for any reason, but once you specify that the reason might involve some personal objection to a historically disfavored group, the numbers flip. Interestingly, when asked whether eliminating discrimination or protecting religious liberty is more important to them, 59 percent of “very religious” voters say the latter versus just 35 percent who say the former. In theory, they want the business owner’s religious liberty right to trump the gay customer’s right to be served. But not in practice, when you ask them about that specific scenario.
Needless to say, the “you can’t refuse service to someone because of who they are” rule doesn’t apply to every group. Here’s what happened when YouGov asked whether a religious business owner should be able to turn away a member of a hate group like the KKK. Top line is “should,” second line is “should not,” third is “not sure”:
The groups most supportive of the business owner’s right to tell the Klansman, “Hit the bricks, scumbag”: Conservatives and Republicans, whom the media would have you believe belong to a party that is itself one big klavern. Democrats can’t even get to 50 percent support and liberals actually oppose the right to deny service here on balance. (Other groups with pluralities who oppose kicking the Klan out: Northeasterners, Latinos, and people who make more than $100,000 per year, although some of those subsamples could be dodgy due to high margins of error.) I assume that’s slippery-slope logic at work. Liberals could argue that it’s okay to deny service to the KKK but not to gays and lesbians because of the exceptional immorality of the first group, but codifying an “exceptional immorality” exemption to discrimination laws would be hard. They could fall back on the argument that, moral distinctions aside, joining the Klan is a choice while being gay is not, but of course not everyone agrees with the latter so that argument wouldn’t get them far. They could argue that gays have been historically disempowered until recently and therefore, like racial and religious minorities, deserve special protection from antidiscrimination laws that political groups don’t. But that argument will become increasingly hard to maintain as gays grow more powerful politically. After all, as I write this, we’re probably less than three months away from the Supreme Court granting gay-marriage supporters supreme victory. Evidently, in the interest of avoiding all those tangles and limiting exemptions to antidiscrimination laws as strictly as possible, liberals would force Memories Pizza to plate a slice of deep dish for the local Grand Dragon rather than grant them the right to turn him — and thus, potentially, some more sympathetic customer — away.
If I was asked to be the photographer...I’d puke...and save it for the anti-Christian judge.
Note: Leftists can be “very religious.” Their god is an anus.
“And that reason includes the color of one’s skin or one’s ethnicity?”
Yes. Let the market place sort it out. The courts created the doctrine that the state has a compelling interest to end discrimination. The government yes, private individuals and corporations, no.
And you should not be required to supply the reason.
Absolutely. If we can't, then we are just slaves.
Nobody should be forced to associate or trade with anybody for any reason. If you are not free to choose whom you deal with, you are not free at all.
There is a difference in selling a product, and being forced to be part of the celebration of sin.
“If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.” ~Matthew 5:41
Can't entirely agree.If you're a devout Christian who owns an ambulance service you *have* a moral obligation..and *should* have a legal obligation...to serve everyone.Owners of photo studios and bakeries,OTOH,no way should they be coerced in *any* way.
The question was never ‘serving gays’ is was catering a gay wedding.
More push polls...
Could you turn them away just because they’re A$$HOLES and you don’t want their business or to have to deal with them?
Because these gay activists all seem to fall within that group
Here’s an idea: don’t refuse service, just be totally incompetent.
Yeah, sorry about your gay wedding cake being two hours late and tasting like crap. Maybe next time, eh?
Revelation 13:17
“So that no-one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is,the name of the beast or the number of its name.”
I think it is a fact that anyone who refuses service to someone trying to conduct lawful business needs to bear in mind that such policies can and will bite them in the butt in the end.
NO SHOES NO SHIRT NO SERVICE
You should be able to turn anyone away for any reason. It’s just like dating. No explaining is necessary. Should a catering service have to provide for ab adult movie convention? Absolutely not. This is all just PC silliness. The problem is the law specifically references “religious Freedom”. The truth is, it’s just a basic freedom that everyone has and should never give up.
Very few business owners would turn someone away just because of skin or ethnicity. All money is green, and a black person’s money is as good as a white person’s or a brown person’s or whatever. On very rare occasions it may happen that some dumb, silly, or bigoted business owner turns down a customer for a frivolous reason. In that case, the customer is free to boycott that business, tell his friends to boycott, etc. If we are to be a free country, such cases are the price we must pay. The alternative is forcing businesses to serve people they don’t want to serve, and for me, that is more unacceptable.
bump
“Can’t entirely agree.If you’re a devout Christian who owns an ambulance service”
I was speaking of retail outlets only.
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