Comments
Please wait...
Comments are closed.
Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.
Editors' Picks
is a proud member of the
media network
media network
All contents © Index Newspapers LLC
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
According to their logic, you should be allowed to discriminate against people of other religions because their religions go against your own. Fucking stupid.
What isn't wrong with Kansas is exactly the question.
And no, I DON'T SUPPORT THIS BILL. Just saying that if I knew someone was anti-gay I wouldn't give him my business anyway.
But if this law wasn't in place, there would be nothing stopping a business from hanging a sign saying "we'll serve sodomites because we have to by law, but just so you know we don't like it." And no non-straight people like myself would do business there and they get their wish...and other businesses that aren't run by pricks would make more money as a result.
So while anti-discrimination laws are fine, they shouldn't stop people from only spending their money on merchants who aren't bigots. At the same time, I would be against any "hate speech" laws. In America, you have the right to be a bigoted douche-monkey. I would prefer to know so up front so I know where not to spend my money.
As a Christian myself, this was highly insulting that the lit guy thought he represented my faith. But as someone who's seen many a cop refuse to take guff from anybody in a situation like this, that the cop was trying to use persuasion, was almost begging the guy to move on, meant to me that the lit guy had friends who could make our policeman's future days go badly if he decided to take no guff and move him along forcefully.
That was 15+ years ago, in one of the most liberal towns in the Great Plains.
This will get ugly. And FAST.
There ya go. World's shortest winning legal brief ever. From a non-lawyer, yet. Yeah, there are a bunch of other things you can cite, too, including the 5th and 14th Amendments, but why knock yourself out? Dead is dead.
It's funny because there's a grain of truth there -- the modern world IS discriminating against old white Christian bigots in Kansas, by rendering their entire useless windblown state obsolete. I mean, seriously, if Kansas just disappeared completely, would anyone worthwhile even miss it? Besides fans of Sporting Kansas City, that is?
I'm sure they are. Or were you under the mistaken impression that Republicans don't like wasting taxpayer dollars?
@13,
That's one thing I've basically argued about haters who are required by law to serve gay customers. Even aside from not wanting to give money to bigots, there are a lot of ways a business can fuck you over while maintaining plausible deniability. "Oops. We dropped your wedding cake when we were carrying it to the truck. Sorry (not sorry)."
@18 - I don't think we would miss any red states. Think of how much lower our taxes would be if we didn't have to support their agriculture subsidies.
This is why the "homosexuality is a choice" people are so caustic and should be challenged at every opportunity. Laws like this are a direct result.
Look, it isn't going to clear the senate. Even if it did, it'll get scrubbed, and could even end up setting precedent that firmly protects individuals from the "sincerely held religious beliefs" of others.
And for every second that this law might be in effect [which it won't ever be], Kansan queers and allies would be legally empowered to deny services and considerations to bigots due to their sincerely held beliefs.
And, because this thing is merely theater and not serious legislation, the bigots get to stomp around proudly reminding the world how awful, unamerican and inhumane they are, and it doesn't cost the rest of us a thing.
Hell, the more I think about it, the more I'm sure that this is a false-flag action by covert progressive operatives in the Kansan Republican Party.
Wow, yeah. That's pretty harsh.
So your response to bigotry is MORE bigotry? Really?
How is your assuming that all Kansan's are bigots any better than a fundy claiming that all gays are child molesters?
Are these Kansan's anti-gay bigots: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/23…
By all means, be angry with the politicians for doing this, but don't hate an entire state for what their elected officials do.
Good point. I am okay with anti-discrimination laws as long as they don't go crazy. But at the same time I think these laws have the unintended side effect of lulling the public into a false sense of security. The thought becomes "why do we need to fight bigotry? The government can do that".
Even if these laws we should still be vigilant and understand that, ultimately, it is our job as a community to fight bigotry and injustice, not the government.
And by crazy anti-discrimination laws I mean ones that say fat people get free extra seats on airplanes. I was born bisexual and chubby, as every baby is born chubby. But if you choose to eat ten big macs a day and wash it down with a soda big enough to bath a Great Dane in, you should also choose to pay for the extra seat on an airplane.
*
*
*
*
Everyone falls down.
@39 .... Jim Crow laws were based on your philosophy. I'm sure you know this and I'm equally sure that you mourn the day that Jim Crow laws were struck down. News flash bigot, religion is all too often bigotry and there are hundreds of millions of people who would gladly see your religion scraped from the face of the
earth.
Now go play with Seattlblues. The grown ups are talking.
I concur.
Even the jehovah witnesses of my youth didn't dare to say out loud that the Earth was created in seven days. It was created in seven "periods, you know, ages, each one taking hundreds... of thousands of years ? Am I spinning this right by you ?" And nowadays, with American creationism, we're starting to hear young jehovah witnesses saying in science classes "yeah, the big bang, well my religion says it didn't happen".
We have a right to private conscience in this country, that means the little old lady with the flower shop, who's been taught her entire life that homosexuality is a sin and that she should not support it, does not have to change her mind. She, and everyone else, is free to decide what they consider right and wrong, and if they want their business practices to reflect their version of what's right and wrong, it's authoritative and unjust to tell them they can't.
Now just for fun, I want you to not respond to the content of my post, instead, what you should do, is claim a moral high ground based on ambiguous terms (despite the fact that you obviously have no respect for the concept of private morality) and use that as an excuse for ignoring me out of hand, or tell me to go to SeattleBlues, whatever that is. I'm sure that if you can do that, you'll manage to look super cool to the other insubstantial reactionary hipsters that frequent these comment sections. You won't have said anything worthwhile to make a legitimate point mind you, but I'm sure you're more concerned qwith the former then the latter.
Kthxbye
The rub for me is that this bill would include state employees that everyone pays for, would people be given gay friendly services people or totally shut out, what about the deplorable(in my opinion) lifestyle of "starve the beast" quiverful christians with large welfare subsidized families?
SeattleBlues is not a thing but a commenter who occasionally joins in on discussions, some people say he's a troll but it depends who you ask.
1) The case to which you refer against Arlene's Flowers occurred in Richmond Washington which is 200 miles from Seattle.
2) I work for Nuns and have a great deal of respect for private morality, observing that phenomenon up close and personal on a daily basis.
3) The State is in no way attempting to regulate her private morality, she is free to object to whatever she may wish, but oddly, before the legalization of gay marriage, her business practices never reflected her moral position. She had until then, shown no compunction what so ever in serving the couple in question. Indeed, they had been regular customers, and as gay as gay could be, yet her moral opposition did not prevent her from taking their money until they were afforded by the State the right to no longer live in Sin. So in effect she had no problem supporting "the homosexual lifestyle" one tiny bit, and her private morality remained private as it should have, and as it should have continued to do.
4) Seattleblues is someone with whom you may find you have a lot in common.
5) "Hipster" is a very lazy insult.
6) Institutional discrimination against gays is every bit as egregious as Jim Crow, and is precisely what the bill in Kansas wishes to legalize.
Now run along and search I Can Has Cheezburger for another pithy internetism with which to sign off on your next post.
Voting yes
Democrats: Jan Pauls, Hutchinson
You want to target someone for defeat at the polls, these are your guys.
Your problem is with Fundamentalists:
fundament noun \ˈfən-də-mənt\ 2. The bottom; the buttocks or anus.
I mean, you said that private businesses should be able to choose whom they serve.
http://sandwichesforsale.blogspot.com/20…
http://sandwichesforsale.blogspot.com/20…
North by Northwest:
People here aren't rushing to insult your intelligence because you've bested us with infallible logic and objectivity and we're just too helpless to reply with anything other than childish insults. We're insulting your intelligence because you're too dumb to be worth teaching anything.
It's not our job to teach you about how anti-discrimination law doesn't actually legislate morality any more than it's our job to teach you the fucking ABC's.
Here's one excerpt:
"Recently one (1) Army reserve officer prepared a presentation regarding discrimination. In a poorly (i.e. internet google search) researched powerpoint slide, she referred to Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity as “Religious Extremism.” Let me emphasize—this was one (1) person with their own presentation. Not Army Reserve documents. Not General Army documents. One person. Yet what does the headline read? Defense Department Classifies Catholics, Evangelicals as Extremists." [...]
Yep, that's pretty bad - what kind of person would characterise an entire body of people by the opinions of one individual?
Let's read on.
"And how does *the Christian community* respond? *This Christian’s* comment referencing the article states..." (my emphasis)
Uh.
He then goes on to explain the difference between persecution and prosecution; concluding that killing Christians for being Christian isn't persecution, provided that you first offer them the opportunity to deny they are Christians, to worship the emperor and to curse Christ.
Mm.
I think you may have mistaken "this is well-written" for "this supports my views".
(Incidentally, as far as I can tell this bill has died in Senate as Kansas noticed how it was making them a laughing stock?)
The nature of my work may weed out, in some measure, those I consider less desirable associates; if it doesn't, I don't see any reason to let my personal morality keep me from taking your money.
Now, as someone who also spends money, I can certainly discriminate on whatever basis I like as to where I spend my resources. In that sense, I might choose not to patronize a business that maintained a mission of which I disapproved. But that's a different exercise of power--bottom up, rather than top down.
Yes, we have bigots here and some of them have money and influence legislators. But we have plenty of human beings here, of all religions and sexual orientations, and guess what? Some of us LIKE living here for various reasons and we would rather wrestle control of our government and homes away from the right-wing crazies than pack up and move to some expensive coastal state with exorbitant house prices and smug "progressives" who congratulate themselves over victories that have no stakes. This is my HOME. A law like this passing would affect people I love DIRECTLY and it scares the shit out of me. So I don't have patience for some privileged fuckwit hipster in a blue state throwing out flippant lines about how me and all my neighbors should be thrown to the wolves because "who cares; it's just Kansas."