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.
We are not able to properly define the issue because we do not own the studios, microphones, transmitters, satellite links, or airwaves.
All means of mass communications lie in the hand of Liberal Democrat Urban dwellers who refuse to let dissenting opinions reach the public. *THEY* dishonestly frame the debate to deliberately support their position. They don't want the truth, they want distorted truth to reach the people.
We will never solve this problem until we cut them off at the knees. Both News and Entertainment media are nothing but one big massive propaganda tool for the left.
We should start and end this argument thus: neither gays nor anyone else has a “right” to be served by any business.
One can claim a “right” to anything, as long as no one else must be compelled to act in order to exercise that “right”.
There is a major subsection of the "gay" community that makes a point of informing anyone and everyone as to their degree of "gayness". They won't let you ignore it. They insist that you know about it and affirm it. They are literally drama queens.
No one has a problem with selling homos a cup of coffee. That's not the debate.
The question, if unbiased, would be "Do you believe religious people should be forced to assist in a ceremony or ritual that disagrees with their faith?"
Christians should NOT have to assist in a Satanic ceremony. They should not have to assist in a homosexual ceremony or ritual, because it's roots go back to the ceremonies and rituals conducted by the early Satanists. (It was their way of spitting into the face of God)
Yes, if a bar doesn’t want whites or non-bikers in it, or hippies, or men, or non-Italians, it should be able to do that.
That used to be common sense.
You're being asked to participate in what your religion refers to as an unholy ceremony. According to the Christan faith, only male and female can be joined together in HOLY matrimony and be made one. Anything other than that is considered an an abomination - a very very sinful act. No one should be forced by law into committing a sin against their conscience and against their own immortal souls.
Yep, but the last generation has no idea what freedoms the Constitution gives us and the tyranny it protects us from. They are deaf, dumb, and blind to what's happening to them and their children, and their children's children.
Somehow, copies of the Constitutional Amendments (In an easy to read form) have to be spread out everywhere across the net where people can find them or stumble across them . If only half the people read them, we're that many people ahead plus some, because people will talk to each other.
First, the government should never demand that anyone other than a slave provide service to another against his will, and there are not supposed to be slaves in this country any more.
Second, if government is going to meddle in private business, there is a huge difference between refusing to sell something off the shelf to a customer and refusing to engage in creative, artistic expression on behalf of a prospective client. To compel objectionable expression is an unforgivable act of supreme evil.
The thugs are intentionally framing this question in a deceptive manner in order to compel their preferred response. Liberals disgust me.
Looks like I am in the tiny minority here. Bakers should bake. If queers want to spend their money on a wedding cake, I say businesses should comply and fill their request. I dont think the government should have the power to force bakers to make wedding cakes for queers, but I think they are wrong to refuse them service.
Wouldn’t this whole issue be somewhat abated if we ruled out using the word gay and instead replaced it with the expression “men who orally enjoy other men’s anuses” ?
RE: I dont think the government should have the power to force bakers to make wedding cakes for queers
Well, regardless of whether you will do it or not, it SHOULD be a free country where people decide for themselves what they own conscience tells them is right or wrong.
Here’s where we agree — GOVERNMENT should BUTT OUT of the decision and courts should simply THROW OUT the case if a business declines to service any gay ceremony.
Agreed. However, homosexuality notwithstanding, the right to choose associations is the hallmark of a free society.
Which is why this should not be merely a debate about whether homosexuals can force me to come to their wedding; we need to make this about the broader issue - true freedom to choose.
We will not win the hearts and minds of the populace by making this merely a religious argument...
And that reason includes the color of one’s skin or one’s ethnicity?
In a free market, I would aggressively boycott any business that discriminated against folks on the basis of their race. Wouldn't you? I think such wrong-headed businesses would very likely be pressured or hounded out of business, peacefully and civilly.
That said, I would be okay with State laws that prohibited discrimination against fellow Americans based on something so removed from behavior as a person's race.
But homosexuality is a behavior, no more identifiable at a glance than someone's ethnicity. MANY people of 100 percent Chinese bloodlines, or 100 percent Japanese bloodlines, are ethnically AMERICAN, for example.
Cruz nails this when he defines it as a matter of religious freedom.
Correct.
Let’s remember that Reuters is the last gasp of British fascists to keep alive Goebbel’s Nazi Propaganda Ministry. Reuters has been caught numerous times publishing fake photos, especially of Israelis bombing “innocent” civilians.
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