Gay Marriage as an attack on Christianity

I have to protest as usual that you are misrepresenting the situation again: The baker is not objecting to "someone," he's objecting to an illegitimate definition of marriage. Even Peter Tatchell, the gay activist in the UK who wrote the Guardian opinion piece, argued that there was no discrimination against persons by the Christian bakery, but against an "idea," the idea of gay marriage. In the American cases, the request for a wedding cake was refused not because the customers were gay but because of the service asked for. There is no evidence that their sexuality was the reason the order was declined. No other order would have been declined, just the order that legitimizes gay marriage. As NCE was apparently trying to say, the bakers should not be compelled to supply a service that legitimizes a concept to which they conscientiously object. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

IN this case yes. Times have changed, The Messiah has come. He is Lord of the Sabbath. He IS God, He can change His own Word.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't think there's much mileage arguing rationally about why these so-called Christians are wrong about their beliefs about homosexuals; they're deluded, rationality has nothing to do with it. They are incapable of reading the bible without confirming their own bias. People that believe in witchcraft, satan, 6,000 year old earth, Noah's Ark, people riding dinosaurs, women made from male ribs, Trump etc etc. believe the impossible.It's hard to imagine living with these people as a straight person let alone a gay. It's also hard to believe there are so many of them - it's so damn stupid.Education, education, education....

Hi Faith - just doing a bit of research on this, in order to try to narrow down why gay marriage is a conscience issue for fundamental Christians and not other issues.Do the Christian bakers also refuse to bake Eid cakes, as far as you're aware ?It's probably not an issue in practice, because they are pretty unlikely to use halal ingredients - but if a Muslim family was so impressed with their work, that they asked them to bake an Eid cake with halal ingredients, would they - or indeed you - see that as a matter of conscience to refuse to do it ?

We don't evaluate truth by bean counting. In this case, most of those folks agree that the final arbiter is the text of the Bible. Accordingly, the answer to the question of whether the Bible contains a "marriage ordinance" is primarily an objective inquiry.Yet is seems the best folks can do are equivalent to saying "It was Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve" or point to verses about a man cleaving to his wife. None of that constitutes a marriage ordinance.

So God is inconsistent and God's words are like those of Humpty Dumpty. Yet more proof that the Bible itself is filled with contradictions.

When a baker writes "Happy Birthday to You" on a gay person's cake, do you think he is expressing his pleasure that the gay person was born? Or that he is participating in a celebration in any way? The message on the cake is not from the baker.On the other hand. If I were tasked with providing a cake for a gay wedding, I'd likely hunt around for a baker who would not object simply because I wouldn't trust someone else not to crap on the cake. Since I live in an urban setting near a bunch of college towns, I'd likely find one pretty easily even here in North Carolina. But that's just not the case every where.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I hate to disillusion you, it seems to matter so much to you, but I became a Christian out of a totally liberal-atheist background with a strong conviction that the world was going to Hell because of the irrational religions that had descended on America in the 70s. The thing is, Christianity is TRUE and when it hit me it was like a lightening bolt, it transformed me completely. As I got deeper into it I also fought it for some time as I saw the truth closing in on me: "Oh no am I really going to have to accept all this?" Yep, in the end I did.I know you can just say, oh well, so some educated people are fundamentally irrational or something like that. Well, with that bias you aren't very likely to be convinced.But CSLewis is one who became a Christian as a Professor at -- Oxford (?) -- and described himself as coming to belief "kicking and screaming."The story of Rosaria Butterfield is very interesting in this regard. She was a lesbian professor of English literature at a university. She wrote or said something against Christian belief and a pastor contacted her about it, invited her to his home to discuss it, and over a few years of such discussions and friendship developing with him and his wife she began to realize it was true and she wanted it for herself. Her first book about it was "Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert."ABE: Later: I'm reading the book, she is pondering how to describe her conversion without making it sound like an alien abduction or a train wreck. /ABEThere are lots of us "unlikely converts" around.More education obviously can't be the cure you think it is.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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The baker is not objecting to "someone," he's objecting to an illegitimate definition of marriage. Even Peter Tatchell, the gay activist in the UK who wrote the Guardian opinion piece, argued that there was no discrimination against persons by the Christian bakery, but against an "idea," the idea of gay marriage.

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It is funny that you should accuse Percy of misrepresenting the situation and then go on to misrepresent the Tatchell piece. Tatchell argues exclusively about messages iced on to cakes, not about wedding cakes. The Tatchell article does not support your claim.Anyway perhaps you can- at last - explain which of the legal rights associated with marriage as a secular institution must be denied to gays, and where the Bible says so.

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In the American cases, the request for a wedding cake was refused not because the customers were gay but because of the service asked for.

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The service asked for was simply a wedding cake, which the bakery did not refuse to heterosexual couples.

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There is no evidence that their sexuality was the reason the order was declined. No other order would have been declined, just the order that legitimizes gay marriage.

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These two sentences contradict each other. The reason the order was refused was that it was for a gay couple. That is what you MEAN when you say that it "legitimises" gay marriage (as if a cake did any such thing).

I don't know what an Eid cake is or enough about halal etc to have any idea whether it would be a matter of conscience or not.

As a fundie baker, I have a plan. Note on the door."Happy to bake anyone a cake, just don't tell us who you sleep with.If you need a message on your cake for a special occasion, first choose your cake from the catalogue, pay for it, then pop it into the lead-lined box in the corner. Type in your revolting message and our robo-atheist will write it on the cake without causing a theistic meltdown."A hacker could have a lot of fun with that.

Okay, Eid is the Muslim festival, which celebrates the end of Ramadan, a month of religious fasting. Cakes are often eaten at Eid - for fairly obvious reasons.Halal is a series of requirements, relating to foods, ingredients and methods of preparation, which are permitted by Islam.

I don't see a problem of conscience with any of that.

No. You think its okay to say the baker is wrong to refuse to sell a cake for a gay wedding, but it is also okay for a person to refuse to write something promoting homosexuality - speech is protected, selling services is not.The question is what it is about speech, but not providing a service, that means speech ought to be protected but services not? Or, what is it about providing services that means they should not be protected in the way that speech is?Also, if the service that you offer is a form of speech, does that change it? Or does it still count as speech and is therefore protected?What if the service of baking a cake was determined to be a form of speech? Would that then mean that cake baking would be protected too? Also if we're talking about speech, then its protected and you shouldn't be compelled to do it, no? Like writing a particular message on a cake, that can be refused. But neither does creating something that you find abhorrent. But speech is protected and providing services is not.My question is what is the difference between speech and service providing such that one is protected and one isn't. Too, if the service is speech, then is it protected or not?

I'm aware of the context, but since I think that case and the American cases are basically the same for Christian conscience I think he might agree with me. If not, then I'll still have my own opinion that they are the same thing.