Gen Con Unhappy with Indiana Governor over SB 101 - Update

[isdestroyer]

OT: Doesn't this bill violate the Constitution? Separation of church and state and all that. And good on Gen Con for speaking up I say.

A misconception. Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention a separation of church and state. That line was from a letter that Jefferson wrote to a Baptiste church. What the Constitution does say is that it will not make a law establishing a national religion, nor prohibit the free exercise of religion.

 

[Deathfish15]

This is ignorant bullshit to the umpteenth degree! Why only homosexuals? I mean, some religions believe that slavery is "God's divine right!" and that maybe they shouldn't be serving people of a different skin as well. Sound right? FUCK NO!, it doesn't! That about sums up this kind of ridiculousness.


Also, I'm pretty sure that there have been plenty of proven scientific studies that show that homosexuality has an underlying relation to genetics, not just "choice". This is along the lines of left-handedness (go southpaws!) too. Do you recall all the teachers, nuns, and parents using objects to strike a child's hand when they used their Left? Now it has been fully proven that Left-handedness is an effect from the brain and the way it communicates and works between the right and left hemispheres; not something you can simply 'slap away'.


This governor is so ass-backwards and redneck that it is unbelievable. I hope that he gets shunned so much that he either resigns or is kicked out of office. Really hoping that the SUPREME COURT finds his bill unconstitutional and is struck down rather quickly.

 

[Areloch]

Poor poor persecuted Christians, no longer allowed to freely throw gay people in jail for their sexual orientation, they're on death's door, trying their best to get out legislation so that they can discriminate against gay people in their professional lives, such as refusing emergency medical care to them. I mean its just horrific to think of Christian doctors, surgeons and EMTs being forced to treat gay people like they were actual human beings.

I think you've cracked it! Clearly every person that's a Christian is 100% for this bill and is CLEARLY only doing anything for the express purpose of discriminating against everyone ever. You know, because they're Christian.

Seriously, come off it. Some douchebags are voting for a douchebag bill. You don't need to demonize millions of people that have nothing to do with it because you're upset.

 

[EternallyBored]

OT: Doesn't this bill violate the Constitution? Separation of church and state and all that. And good on Gen Con for speaking up I say.

A misconception. Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention a separation of church and state. That line was from a letter that Jefferson wrote to a Baptiste church. What the Constitution does say is that it will not make a law establishing a national religion, nor prohibit the free exercise of religion.

Nowhere in the constitution itself, but Supreme court precedent has codified the phrase as implicit to the First Amendment since the early 20th century. It's why the Supreme court often cites "separation of Church and State" in its decisions, and is the logic behind why so many Supreme court decisions since then swing in favor of Separation of Church and state.

To the Supreme court at least, the body that decides what is and is not constitutional, "separation of church and state" is considered to be implied by the First Amendment, and unless they overturn rulings almost a century old that, many tied to the civil rights movement, they will continue to rule in favor of that interpretation.

This bill skirts a line, not necessarily the first amendment, it will likely be challenged under the 14th if it goes that far, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it overruled by the local courts and subsequently moved up the chain of appeals until the state either gives up or it goes in front of the Supreme court, which will likely strike the bill down given past precedent in similar cases anyway. Should be interesting to watch.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

The amount of bigotry, hatred, and intolerance in this community is astounding. It seems that everyone is all for tolerance and inclusion as long as you believe what they want you to believe. I weep for the gaming industry as it slowly hangs itself on the rope of political correctness.

Let's say a gay couple goes into a Christian bakery, and asks for a wedding cake. The owners of the bakery tell them that that would violate their religious beliefs. The gay couple then goes and sues the bakery for discrimination, knowing full well that they would be refused. That is the kind of behavior that this law is designed to protect businesses from.

But of course, we can't have Christians standing up for their rights, because they don't celebrate sin the way the rest of the country does. What militant groups want is not tolerance, they want validation. They want special treatment.

Now, let the hatred flow.

You're just being treated like your pro-segregation predecessors. You're no different than them, you just want special privileges because of your religious nonsense.

It wasn't bigotry to not cater to racists be for and it isn't bigotry to be against catering to religious bigots now.

No one is for total tolerance. The most intolerant just like to pretend that's what it is about to hide behind it. And once they're free their lip service to tolerance is done

 

[The Hungry Samurai]

Totally against this bill and what it represents and all, but out of curiosity I'd like to play the devils advocate for a moment.

In a place without this law, lets say a member of an LGBT affirming Christian church who owns and operates a catering company is offered a job catering an affair for the Westboro Baptist Church.

Would the WBC have the right to litigation if this buisness refused to serve them, provided that the WBC remained civil to them specifically? Would this buisness be forced to serve a group of people sitting around "God Hates..." posters all day?

If this catering company did operate in a state with these laws, would they be protected by them?

 

[Deathfish15]

The amount of bigotry, hatred, and intolerance in this community is astounding. It seems that everyone is all for tolerance and inclusion as long as you believe what they want you to believe. I weep for the gaming industry as it slowly hangs itself on the rope of political correctness.

Let's say a gay couple goes into a Christian bakery, and asks for a wedding cake. The owners of the bakery tell them that that would violate their religious beliefs. The gay couple then goes and sues the bakery for discrimination, knowing full well that they would be refused. That is the kind of behavior that this law is designed to protect businesses from.

But of course, we can't have Christians standing up for their rights, because they don't celebrate sin the way the rest of the country does. What militant groups want is not tolerance, they want validation. They want special treatment.

Now, let the hatred flow.

Hmmm...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/19/relationship-with-jesus-doesnt-justify-florists-refusal-to-serve-gay-couple-judge-rules/

Superior Court Judge Alexander C. Ekstrom said, ?In trade and commerce, and more particularly when seeking to prevent discrimination in public accommodations, the courts have confirmed the power of the legislative branch to prohibit conduct it deems discriminatory, even where the motivation for that conduct is grounded in religious belief.?



Funny thing about that lady too: she has served LGBT people before as far as flowers go. But weddings, oh "God forbid". But really if they go by their precious Bible words, it says NOTHING about weddings, but instead laying down with; so why was she for their lifestyle, but not their weddings? What a nutter!

Oh, and this one:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/02/bakery-same-sex-oregon-fined-wedding-cake/22771685/



And those are just 2 examples of many. Then end of nearly every one of them being that the discriminating assholes are called just that by the courts and required to either comply by serving, or shut down (in the case of the bakery, they have to pay $150,000 state fine and they closed their business down).

Totally against this bill and what it represents and all, but out of curiosity I'd like to play the devils advocate for a moment.

In a place without this law, lets say a member of an LGBT affirming Christian church who owns and operates a catering company is offered a job catering an affair for the Westboro Baptist Church.

Would the WBC have the right to litigation if this buisness refused to serve them, provided that the WBC remained civil to them specifically? Would this buisness be forced to serve a group of people sitting around "God Hates..." posters all day?

If this catering company did operate in a state with these laws, would they be protected by them?

WBC is knowing for their discrimination rallies. If they -the catering company- refused service for them, there is more than enough evidence floating around the internet to explain that this is a discrimination business that they didn't want to cater to the discrimination. Any $5 lawyer would get the catering company off without a dime lost against WBC, that "church" makes themselves look bad.

 

[Signa]

Call me intolerant if you will, but I think I'm fine with that bill as I understand it. No one should be refusing service to someone just because of stupid shit like them being gay or black or something, but I have no problem letting someone have the freedom to be a dick. If they are really that convinced that gays shouldn't be served, then word is going to get out pretty quickly that no one should do business with them. There's no need to impose laws and fines on someone so self-destructive as that.

 

[the7ofswords]

OT: Doesn't this bill violate the Constitution? Separation of church and state and all that. And good on Gen Con for speaking up I say.

A misconception. Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention a separation of church and state. That line was from a letter that Jefferson wrote to a Baptiste church. What the Constitution does say is that it will not make a law establishing a national religion, nor prohibit the free exercise of religion.

Here's the actual text: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..."

And here's the pertinent passage from Jefferson's letter to which you refer: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

It's pretty clear then, that keeping government out of people's religious lives?in other words separating the state from the church?was the intention. And there is much case law since that time to back it up.

But here's the thing: if business owners want to practice their freedom of religion by discriminating against a particular group (e.g., gays, atheists, the left-handed, people of Germanic descent, other Christian denominations, etc.), then I have a right to know that's what they're doing, because I have a right to exercise my own freedom of (or from) religion by not supporting bigots. So how about this: A business can deny service to whatever class(es) of people, but if they do, that have to put up a big sign that declares their belief, so those of us who believe in tolerance can make an informed decision.

But then, we already went through a long period of legal discrimination that involved signs declaring where certain people would and wouldn't be served. I thought we were past that BS by now. Do we really want to go back to a new version of jim Crow? I think not.

 

[rcs619]

OT: Doesn't this bill violate the Constitution? Separation of church and state and all that. And good on Gen Con for speaking up I say.

A misconception. Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention a separation of church and state. That line was from a letter that Jefferson wrote to a Baptiste church. What the Constitution does say is that it will not make a law establishing a national religion, nor prohibit the free exercise of religion.

Nowhere in the constitution itself, but Supreme court precedent has codified the phrase as implicit to the First Amendment since the early 20th century. It's why the Supreme court often cites "separation of Church and State" in its decisions, and is the logic behind why so many Supreme court decisions since then swing in favor of Separation of Church and state.

To the Supreme court at least, the body that decides what is and is not constitutional, "separation of church and state" is considered to be implied by the First Amendment, and unless they overturn rulings almost a century old that, many tied to the civil rights movement, they will continue to rule in favor of that interpretation.

This bill skirts a line, not necessarily the first amendment, it will likely be challenged under the 14th if it goes that far, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it overruled by the local courts and subsequently moved up the chain of appeals until the state either gives up or it goes in front of the Supreme court, which will likely strike the bill down given past precedent in similar cases anyway. Should be interesting to watch.

And let's not forget the intention behind the original founding either. The majority of the Founding Fathers were not too keen on organized religion in general, and they were specifically against the collusion between government and religion because all that had ever done in Europe is create a lot of problems and injustice. Thomas Jefferson even wrote a letter specifically stating that "The United States is in no way a Christian nation." He was so outspoken about his views on that that his political opponents would sometimes accuse him of being an atheist.

Were the Founding Fathers almost universally christian? Yeah. But they weren't fundamentalists by any means. Most of them were deists (with a couple quite likely secret atheists). They didn't believe in prayer, or a personal relationship with God. At best, they believed God was some unknowable force that acted purely through natural means. Jefferson even went so far as to take a razor blade to his bible and remove *everything* to do with the supernatural and everything that wasn't first-hand spoken by Jesus. These guys were products of the enlightenment, and naturalism, and European deism. The idea that they would side with this country's current brand of fundamentalist religious nutter is laughable. The recent trend of trying to re-write history and turn the Founding Fathers into some sort of hardcore Christians who wanted to entangle the government with organized religious is historically wrong, and a great disservice to how interesting those people actually were.

Mixing religion, especially fundamentalist, literalist religion, with government *never* ends well. It never serves anyone well. Look at most of European history. Or hell, if you want a contemporary example, take a look at the sorts of things that go on in Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Iran. That's what happens when religion gets a place in government. The United States was specifically designed to be a secular nation, one of the first in the world. That's one of the things that made us so radical and special at the time. That's our heritage.

 

[The Hungry Samurai]

WBC is knowing for their discrimination rallies. If they -the catering company- refused service for them, there is more than enough evidence floating around the internet to explain that this is a discrimination business that they didn't want to cater to the discrimination. Any $5 lawyer would get the catering company off without a dime lost against WBC, that "church" makes themselves look bad.

And while that would be Karmically awesome, is it right? What if the affair that these WBC jerks want catered isn't a discrimination rally. A baptism for example. Would it still be right for the caterer's to tell them to sod off?

 

[EternallyBored]

Call me intolerant if you will, but I think I'm fine with that bill as I understand it. No one should be refusing service to someone just because of stupid shit like them being gay or black or something, but I have no problem letting someone have the freedom to be a dick. If they are really that convinced that gays shouldn't be served, then word is going to get out pretty quickly that no one should do business with them. There's no need to impose laws and fines on someone so self-destructive as that.

While it sounds nice, "hey everyone gets the freedom to do business with whoever they want", in practice what you ended up with historically was small towns being able to practice de facto segregation.

In a big city, or even a fairly large town, things would likely end up like you say in most places, any business caught discriminating against gay people would face severe public backlash, in small towns though one or two business owners could effectively force Gay people or some other minority group out of town simply by denying them access to things like food and gasoline. This is what happened in the 40's and 50's, and was one of the cornerstones of dismantling segregation, because "separate but equal" at least looks like it works when you have businesses catering to both groups, but small towns ended up using that freedom to essentially kick black people out of their towns by refusing them business to the point that they could no longer survive there, regardless if they were legal homeowners or residents, they had to leave because they couldn't buy what they needed to live.

Likewise, something like 40% of this country still opposes gay marriage, that number isn't evenly distributed across every county and town, there are towns out there where the number of people who would outright oppose gay people, much less allow them to get married, hovers around 80%+, where you would only need a single store owner refusing service to prevent any gay person in a 10 mile radius from buying groceries. In places like that, you run the real risk of basically allowing towns or areas to become, "no gay zones". In which case, laws like this will result in outcry from people outside the towns, so you've got big city people invading small towns to protest events like this, which in the end causes bigger problems than just prohibiting it.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

It warms my dead black soulless heart that a Church has threatened to take their Con elsewhere, too. It's nice seeing a solid action like this reminding me that there's Christians that believe strongly enough in not using their religion as a reason to hate.

I hope this is definitely a trend. Legalized oppression of people just because of what they might believe leaves a bad taste in my mouth to say the least. The sooner it's gone the better. If people are going to be denied business, I feel like it needs to be entirely case by case, and based on if they cause a scene, cause trouble, commit a crime, or something like that. Not because a guy wears bright pastel colors, or someone walks in with holy script, or wears exotic clothes, or their skin color.

 

[Signa]

Call me intolerant if you will, but I think I'm fine with that bill as I understand it. No one should be refusing service to someone just because of stupid shit like them being gay or black or something, but I have no problem letting someone have the freedom to be a dick. If they are really that convinced that gays shouldn't be served, then word is going to get out pretty quickly that no one should do business with them. There's no need to impose laws and fines on someone so self-destructive as that.

While it sounds nice, "hey everyone gets the freedom to do business with whoever they want", in practice what you ended up with historically was small towns being able to practice de facto segregation.

In a big city, or even a fairly large town, things would likely end up like you say in most places, any business caught discriminating against gay people would face severe public backlash, in small towns though one or two business owners could effectively force Gay people or some other minority group out of town simply by denying them access to things like food and gasoline. This is what happened in the 40's and 50's, and was one of the cornerstones of dismantling segregation, because "separate but equal" at least looks like it works when you have businesses catering to both groups, but small towns ended up using that freedom to essentially kick black people out of their towns by refusing them business to the point that they could no longer survive there, regardless if they were legal homeowners or residents, they had to leave because they couldn't buy what they needed to live.

Likewise, something like 40% of this country still opposes gay marriage, that number isn't evenly distributed across every county and town, there are towns out there where the number of people who would outright oppose gay people, much less allow them to get married, hovers around 80%+, where you would only need a single store owner refusing service to prevent any gay person in a 10 mile radius from buying groceries. In places like that, you run the real risk of basically allowing towns or areas to become, "no gay zones". In which case, laws like this will result in outcry from people outside the towns, so you've got big city people invading small towns to protest events like this, which in the end causes bigger problems than just prohibiting it.

That was a far more rational reason for this than I've ever heard. Thanks for explaining it.

Still, I just hope you're wrong. I have a HUGE problem with making anti-dick legislation like this, because someone will find a way to exploit it for something that it wasn't intended for. On top of that, punishing people for having a different opinion, even if that opinion is wrong, will turn people that hold those opinions into second-class citizens. I don't see how that makes us any better than the intolerant jerkwads that we're trying to keep from fucking things up for rational people like us. Legislation isn't going to change their minds either, so you just give those people more feelings of resentment on top of their resentment of gays/blacks/whatever.

 

[Pyrian]

Still, I just hope you're wrong.

It's not like we didn't already go through all this with race and Civil Rights/Title II and all that. Honestly the only thing that's kept this under relative wraps is the simple fact that being gay is, if not invisible, at least easily disguised.

I have a HUGE problem with making anti-dick legislation like this, because someone will find a way to exploit it for something that it wasn't intended for.

Interestingly, I find it to be a net good, even outside the obvious ramifications. Large businesses are very careful to document why they fire people just to shield themselves from such claims. And that's a good thing.

On top of that, punishing people for having a different opinion, even if that opinion is wrong, will turn people that hold those opinions into second-class citizens.

But that's the opposite. They're not being punished for holding an opinion. They're being punished for acting on that opinion by turning others into second-class citizens. The right to free speech has absolutely nothing to do with the right to act on that speech (at all, nevermind via oppression).

Legislation isn't going to change their minds either, so you just give those people more feelings of resentment on top of their resentment of gays/blacks/whatever.

But it does prevent them from normalizing their bigotry and making it the de facto stance of the next generation. Progress does not come quickly or easily, but steps must nonetheless be taken or you really do get nowhere.

 

[Signa]

Legislation isn't going to change their minds either, so you just give those people more feelings of resentment on top of their resentment of gays/blacks/whatever.

But it does prevent them from normalizing their bigotry and making it the de facto stance of the next generation. Progress does not come quickly or easily, but steps must nonetheless be taken or you really do get nowhere.

Which is good, but I feel, at least in my area, that the cultural pressures are going to keep this from sliding backwards. Adding legislation isn't going to help much when the rest of the population is already doing its job. At best, it becomes redundant.

 

[StealthLesbian]

I for one, look forward to refusing to deliver things to all of those who don't support my clearly made up crab god. I mean, i'll never get any tips and stop making money, but at least I can legally be a hateful asshole about anything I claim as a religion now.

Kidding aside, its absolutely insane that after hundreds of years in power for the first time we're almost free of religion being used as hate and those nutbrains can't stand it. Their all going mental because for the first time, it might be a tiny bit their turn to be silent 'minority.' Now i know the religious right isn't a minority per-say, but you'd think they were, what with their claiming that everything and its gay bear is declaring war on them and their beliefs.