Where should there be "The right to refuse service"?

This schism between the two wings of the GOP may be the political event of the year.May it grow.

Sure he would...family night dessert at the fair:

Abolishing slavery, as an example, required a change to the Constitution because slavery was written into the Constitution.Affording equal marriage rights to all requires no change to the Constitution, merely its enforcement.

So they won't obey.Which means...what? They will encourage small businesses to disregard the law, accrue fines, refuse to pay them and then go to jail?Pretty brave talk from leaders who won't pay any penalty for urging their flock to throw themselves onto the horns of their own bigotry: these leaders won't suffer fines or jail terms: they will lead from the rear, unconcerned about police dogs, beatings, fire hoses and jail.The commentary claims the moral mantle of MLK. Reverend King went to jail for fighting against bigotry; these jokers will safely urge others to go to jail for bigotry.Sure, I see the equivalence.NB:

quote:

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An Oregon bakery is facing a $135,000 fine for refusing to make a cake for a lesbian wedding and a Washington State florist faces fines for refusing to participate in a gay wedding.

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Florists and bakers did not participate in my wedding, although they provided services for fees. They played no ritual or celebratory role--they weren't even there. This absurd claim that bakers and florists are wedding participants is the last refuge of this particular bigotry.I suppose the maid who changed the sheets before and after participates in the marriage consummation.

I freely confess, Faith, that the theoretical subtleties of an engaged Christian conscience are beyond my intellectual powers.Fortunately, I have a long record of Christian actions to guide me. Indeed.

Sure, but we'll probably all differ on who is a bigot. So what?Most American bigots think they're the good guys, martyrs for some racial or religious lunacy or another...Do you think you can refute my worldview or political philosophy with one uncensured bigot?Silly coyote.AbE: You may have mismanaged expectations on this one Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.

Some folks see hypocrisy everywhere but at home.

Fortunately, our laws protect our marketplaces from even the most loving of bigots.

Really? Thousands?I wager most Christian businesses will conclude that serving all comers, like paying taxes, merely renders Caesar his due.And what is the law you think recently invented to persecute Christians? The Constitution?Well, anyway, in the U.S. now, you must suffer witches to live, adulterers to go unstoned--and the gays to no longer be treated as second class abominations.Cry me a river.

I know, right? It's crazy the way the Nazis also passed laws against zealots practicing religious bigotry in commercial transactions...Not.They did round up the gays for death camps, though. You'd have liked that. You really got me there. Sadistic, sinister liberals DO just keep passing those danged godless laws protecting people from discrimination like there's no day of reckoning. They could pass tax breaks for the wealthy instead, like Jesus and his GOP disciples would do, but oh no, they've gone too far into the swamps of liberty.You can't get much more Nazi than that.

Putting an end to acts of bigotry by Christians in modern America does not equal Nazis laying groundwork for the Holocaust. Both Jews and gays, then and now, provoked bigotry from outraged "Christian" sensibilities. You can plug modern Christians into the Nazi equation if you wish, but I don't think you'd like where they fit.Christians in general, and European Christians in particular, have a long record of persecuting Jews and other religious minorities. The Nazis were a particularly pure and vicious distillation of your creed.There is no devil, dear--we made him up to explain the blood on our hands and our taste for it. Dig through the bone mountain memorializing the human stain, and it's all people, all the way down.

I personally think religious zealots everywhere should be prosecuted for transgressing the rights of others; and it does happen everywhere, a great daisy chain of Muslims persecuting Jews and Christians, Christians persecuting other Christians now, mostly, though they have a great track record against pretty much everyone; Jews persecuting Palestinians as though out to prove that, indeed, those to whom evil is done...; Hindus finding grist for their mill wherever they look...even the Buddhists have a history of persecuting the animists present where Buddhist teachings spread, and of violent clashes between temples and schools.So the fact that no one here adopts your Mexican, evangelist-hating Catholic thugs cause celebre signals not hypocrisy but a weary awareness that you godly folks can't seem to keep your hands off each other.Tempe didn't equate violence and the refusal to bake a cake--he pointed out that both narratives reveal religious zealotry in the act of denying full human status to its victims.That was clear. It's rather dishonest of you to suggest otherwise.Edited by Omnivorous, : -that

Fortunately, Faith, your side is losing.By almost every measure, our society is rapidly becoming more secular, and progressive social positions now poll as a majority stance in the U.S. The steepest drop in self-declared religious affiliation is among evangelicals, especially among the young, whose newer ears know hatefulness when they hear it.I'm surprised you think your God is so feeble that He requires you to do what He'd do if He were in possession of all the facts: a god that can only thrive in a repressive theocracy is a pretty puny god.As to Mr. Adams' quote, let's make one small change. As with the paeans to liberty sung by founders who whipped and raped slaves, one sometimes has to abstract the contemporary hates and horrors to get the larger point. What you want is that imperium in imperio (that sovereignty within a sovereignty) to be your sect, a Grand Evangelical Imperium--for all your disdain for the Inquisition, you want your own. Mr. Adams warned against claims of religious authority that exceeds civil authority--he'd be no happier with your claim that every evangelical has the same imperium in imperio he detested in the Pope.Sam was right about the threat posed to liberty and order by religious claims of sovereignty. Should your evangelical mania bring you into conflict with the law, I'm increasingly comfortable with the notion of you in jail.