Gay Marriage as an attack on Christianity

PaulK runs away:

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And you lie again.

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Says the one denying his own words.

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If I meant that I would have said it. Don't forget, people can go back and read my posts.

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Yep. Especially when I quote you. So when you say you didn't say it, we can tell that you're not exactly being honest.

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I have tried a rephrasing.

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Then why are so many of your posts resulting in you saying something you didn't mean? Remember, we can see your posts so when you claim you didn't write what you have written, we can determine if you're being honest or not.I suppose that makes you very proud.Shall we spin the merry-go-round again?

Yes, but so far I'm not legally required to say they aren't sinful (though I think they're working on it), but legalizing gay marriage requires me to treat them as not sinful, rather as a normal sexual variation. It's something I've wondered about, because it often involves a whole personality expression, which is hard to explain occurring in a person who is clearly physically designed for normal heterosexuality. I don't think gays are "crazy" though, no, not the ones I've known.ABE: and I've also said I think some mental disorders, schizophrenia, psychoses, etc., could be caused by demons. But because we officially don't believe in demons any more, nobody will ever find out.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I see that like Modulous you have a hair trigger when the word 'prejudice' is used against you. So much so that you both instantly reacted to it out of the context it was used in. You either didn't read, or read and ignored - in classic Faith fashion - the fact that I was responding specifically to Modulous's multiple personally abusive and ill-willed attack on me. It's possible to be supportive of your cause but have some different ideas about how it might be pursued. It would be nice to be not sworn at, threatened, and abused for daring to mention that people can be different.Maybe you've heard that said before about something else?

Faith responds to me:

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You are aggressively missing the point, as usual.

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You are aggressively avoiding the direct question, as usual. Let's try again. Third time, Faith:How does this cake: Suddenly become something the baker is "personally engaged in doing" by replacing the "50" with a wedding topper? What is it about that "50" that removes the baker from the baked good?You keep intimating that you think there's something different about a wedding cake, but you keep refusing to give any indication as to what it is.

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The reason to point out that the wedding cake is a big project is to emphasize the personal involvement that engages the baker's conscience.

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And how is that any different from any other custom cake?Fourth time, Faith:How does this cake: Suddenly become something the baker is "personally engaged in doing" by replacing the "50" with a wedding topper? What is it about that "50" that removes the baker from the baked good?

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There is no issue if a cake is bought off the shelf.

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Huh? What baker just does a slap-dash job on pre-made cakes? That's not a very good baker. When I was a cake decorator, I did everything I could to make our pre-made cakes look special. That's how you get them sold, after all: By making them appealing.

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It also doesn't matter how big a project a birthday cake might also be

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Then why did you say the following in Message 362If it isn't about the size of the project, why did you harp on about a "small affair"? Why emphasize the "special custom creation"? Why mention the "days to put together"? Why focus on that it "costs a LOT of money"?Most importantly, why did you directly state that it "is a big deal" if that is irrelevant? Second time on this one:Do you really think that this cake is a "big deal" to make? If it isn't, then if a gay couple came in and asked for that cake, the baker should have no trouble selling it since there's no effort in it at all, right? You could whip that up in less than an hour in your sleep.

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a birthday cake doesn't engage the baker's conscience.

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Says who? What sort of baker doesn't "engage their conscience" when doing their job?Fifth time, Faith:How does this cake: Suddenly "engage the baker's conscience" by replacing the "50" with a wedding topper? What is it about that "50" that removes the baker from the baked good?Remember, Faith, one of your own examples of a wedding cake was actually a birthday cake. The only reason you chose it was because it was fancy. You directly stated that birthday cakes aren't a "big deal," that only wedding cakes are.Now that you've seen that birthday cakes are just as big of a deal, just as personal, just as engaged with the baker's "conscience," you're trying to run away.What is the difference? You keep intimating that you think there's something different about a wedding cake, but you keep refusing to give any indication as to what it is.

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Says the one denying his own words

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And Rrhain the lying liar lies again. What a surprise.

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Yep. Especially when I quote you. So when you say you didn't say it, we can tell that you're not exactly being honest.

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Hoping that other people will miss the context ?You have never quoted me denying my own words.

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Then why are so many of your posts resulting in you saying something you didn't mean?

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Zero is not "many" by any sane standard.Let us remember how this has gone.I posted a brief critique of Faith's argument.You wrongly assumed - despite the context - that one sentence of it was a more general statement.I corrected you. You refused to accept that correction and continue to refuse to accept it. I was prepared to accept that the first time was an honest mistake, and the first refusal and even the second. But we are well past that by now.So what is the point ? Is it really worth compounding your initial error with all this silliness ?

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? This is about the baker's CONSCIENCE and changing part of a cake to make it into a wedding cake for a gay wedding may be a problem for his conscience, which would be the case where he/she has to be personally involved in anything that they know will be part of a gay wedding. You can't determine this, the baker does. I'm trying to define the situations where it is most clearly a problem for a Christian's conscience. All you are doing is playing silly games. Get off it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Here, let me see if I can come up with the main elements that would probably be involved in engaging the baker's conscience over a cake for a gay wedding:As I think about it, the main thing would probably be KNOWING THAT THE CAKE WAS FOR A GAY WEDDING. The more personal the involvement the greater the problem, but even a small thing like turning a birthday cake into a wedding cake by changing one ornament could be a problem. Turning a shelf cake into a wedding cake could be a problem. Even selling a cake out of the display case could be a problem if it's known to be for a gay wedding.That's what I think it all comes down to. Not knowing it's for a gay wedding would be no problem, and any other cake bakery item for any other purpose would be no problem.I hope I've covered all the possible conditions here.ABE: I think I need to add that some degree of personal involvmenet or personal responsibility is part of it. Even if an employee does the work the owner could feel personal responsibility for it. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Tangle responds to me:

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You risk alienating your friends by raving at those that support your cause but have the audacity to suggest that maybe other ways of pursuing it are now possible.

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Which is exactly the point you and NoNukes and PaulK are missing:If you think suing someone for violation of anti-discrimination laws is "alienating," you aren't a friend.It's just another way of literally saying, "Shut up." You are literally telling people to shut up.I asked this, but never got an answer:How many times does a person need to be discriminated against before it becomes "worth it"? You want to get married so you go to a baker. They deny you because you're gay. OK...so you go to the next one, but they also deny you because you're gay. So you try a third one and they finally say they're good with it.So you start looking for a florist and this time, it takes five tries. But with the photographer, you only need to get to the fourth one.At what point do you get to say that enough is enough? Three? Five? Twelve? And why does that last one have to be the one to bear the brunt of the bad behavior of all the ones that came before? They didn't do anything different from all the others who got a free pass to deny you services because you're gay. Why do they have to be the one to be made an example of?Or is there no limit? Everybody in town should be allowed to deny you services because you're gay and you should just accept that it's "trivial" to do so?After all, you wouldn't want to risk "alienating your friends" by making a fuss, right?What's the point of having anti-discrimination laws if you aren't allowed to use them lest you "alienate your friends"?Hint: Are they really your friends?I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you can't support gay people as full and equal members of society in all areas and situations without hesitation or question and do so full-throatedly, then you're a homophobic bigot. It really is that simple.Nobody is expecting you to take up arms.You are expected to stop being part of the problem.And telling people to shut up because you're "alienated" by their demand for the dignity and respect that comes with being a full and equal member of society is part of the problem.I'm reminded of some of the discussions surrounding the movie, Get Out. Without giving anything away, one of the questions people are talking about is at what point should the main character have gotten out? At what point should he have said, "Wait a minute. Something's not right here and it needs to be addressed now before we go any further"?And for a lot of people, it's right at the very beginning in the setup. This is part of the trailer, so I'm still not giving anything away, but the black man and his white girlfriend are going to visit her parents for the weekend. He asks, "Have you told them I'm black?" And she says she hasn't.It becomes a bit of a point and she manages to convince him to go anyway (again, that doesn't give anything away). But that's the first big flag that something isn't right. And would you call it "petty" if he had said, "No, this is important to me. I don't want to show up at your parents' house and have it be a surprise. At the very least, I'm going to be anxious about their response so why don't we settle this first before we go?" And it's very interesting noting the responses from black people compared to the responses from white people. White people tend to think the setup isn't such a big deal. Her explanation rings true with them and they don't think it's a big deal.The black people, on the other hand, immediately see it as a problem. Do their opinions not count? Didn't we learn anything from last summer and Black Lives Matter? When the people who are being discriminated against are telling you their experience and what it means to them, the privileged group doesn't get to dismiss it as "trivial." That dismissal as if you know better is part of the problem.Because here's another hint, since the question is how many lines have to be crossed before it is no longer considered "petty": Surely you didn't think that the first time these gay people have ever encountered discrimination was when they went to choose a baker for the wedding, did you? If there is a threshold for how many times you get to be discriminated against for free before you can do something about it, that limit was reached a long time ago. Or do they all have to be for the same thing? The discrimination of the bakers is separate and cannot be accounted for when examining the discrimination of the florists? You have to be discriminated against the minimum number of times by the same type of service before you aren't "alienating" your "friends"? Is there a temporal restriction, too? If you get turned away from hotel rooms but only every couple of months or so, they don't count? In the calculus of whether or not something is "alienating," there's an expiration date?Exactly what is the calculus to determine if it is "alienating" to stand up for your rights?As I was driving to my friends' this weekend, I was listening to The Splendid Table on NPR. They had a segment about handicapped people going to eat in restaurants and they asked one of the guests what would be an OK level of denial of service. Is there a scenario where they could be understanding and realize that the owners weren't in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act?"None." One of them was an educator of people with disabilities and he asked how he could stand in front of them and tell them that they shouldn't demand equal access? How do you tell people that they aren't deserving of full and equal participation? That people should be allowed to discriminate against them and they should just get over it? "Where's the bathroom?" "It's downstairs." The fact that the tables can't accommodate a wheelchair. That the doors aren't at least 34 inches wide.Oh, whether or not you're going to do what it takes to correct the problem is up to you. But there's a difference between wanting to do it.....and being told to shut up about it because you'll "alienate your friends" if you do it.Nobody is expecting you to take up arms.But they are expecting you to stop being part of the problem.

Faith avoids the direct question again:

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Good grief man, THINK.

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Strange. That's everybody else's argument to you, Faith: THINK.There is no difference between a wedding cake and a birthday cake. Everything that goes into a wedding cake goes into a birthday cake. So why can a baker refuse to sell a cake to a gay couple if it's their wedding but not if it's their birthday?

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IF YOU CAN GET A WEDDING CAKE OFF THE SHELF THEN IT ISN'T A PROBLEM FOR THE BAKER

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Considering that the baker "engaged their conscience" when they made the cake, off-the-shelf or not, why is it a problem when the customer comes in and asks, "Could you do it in blue?" Why is it not a problem if the cake is already made but suddenly is a request for child sacrifice if the baker has to make a new one?

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It's when the baker has to make it personally specifically for the wedding, WHICH IS THE CASE IN MOST BAKERIES, that it becomes a problem in the case of a gay wedding.

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But that's no different from any other cake the bakery makes. Remember, Faith, I used to do this for a living. What is different about a wedding cake? You keep avoiding this question.Third time, Faith:You keep intimating that you think there's something different about a wedding cake, but you keep refusing to give any indication as to what it is.

[MSG=382]

Tangle responds to me:

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I see that like Modulous you have a hair trigger when the word 'prejudice' is used against you.

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BWAHAHAHA!Oh, the irony is strong in you, isn't it? Look at how you are triggered at being considered a homophobic bigot. So triggered are you that you lash out and accuse everybody else. So much so that you instantly ran away from your argument, claiming that there is some sort of "context" by which being told to shut up doesn't, you know, mean being told to shut up.In classic Faith fashion, you try to change the subject onto everything except the issue at hand: Your abusive and ill-willed treatment of gay people exercising their rights.Question: How does the gay couple next door interfere with you and your marriage?
Answer: It doesn't.
Conclusion: Getting upset over the gay couple next door getting married is silly.Question: How does the discriminated party exercising their rights interfere with you?
Answer: It doesn't.
Conclusion: Getting upset over the discriminated party exercising their rights is silly."But, they might lose!" Indeed, they might. But if they do, then that means the discriminated party never had the protection of the law. Your argument is akin to saying that we shouldn't open the umbrella to protect us from the rain on the chance that it might not work. What's the point of carrying an umbrella against the rain if you aren't going to use it when it's raining? Do you really care that other people would feel "alienated" by the fact that you're staying dry?

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It's possible to be supportive of your cause but have some different ideas about how it might be pursued.

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Indeed."Shut up," isn't one of them. That is the opposite of "supportive."Nobody is expecting you to take up arms.You are being expected to stop being part of the problem.

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It would be nice to be not sworn at

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It would be nice not to be discriminated against.Shouldn't you just get over it? After all, it's "petty" of you to complain over something as "trivial" as being sworn at.

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threatened

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What threat? For someone who just pontificated about how I "didn't read, or read and ignored" what you said, you clearly didn't read, or read and ignored - in classic Faith fashion - Modulous' comment.He hoped you did *NOT* get discriminated against. He hopes that you will somehow understand how your attitude is part of the problem and change. But, he is worried that the only way it will happen is if you or someone you love is discriminated against...and that would be a horrible thing and he is unwilling to have you come to this knowledge if that is the price to be paid for it: From whence comes the impression that you are being "threatened" in that?

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and abused for daring to mention that people can be different.

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Shouldn't you shut up about this "abuse" lest you alienate your friends?Maybe you've heard that said before about this very subject?

PaulK spins the merry-go-round again:

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And Rrhain the lying liar lies again. What a surprise.

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So you're denying you wrote what you wrote? What a surprise.See, when I quote you fully in complete context, including providing the links back to the original post so that people don't have to go looking for it in case they are concerned that I didn't provide complete context, your claim that I am "hoping other people will miss the context" is trivially shown to be false.

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You have never quoted me denying my own words.

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You really should stop forgetting that we can see the posts and can call them up.In Message 182, I quoted your entire post from Message 145. In fact, I quoted my entire response to it.But then you stated in Message 185: So yes, you have been quoted denying your own words.You made an argument. I responded. You contradicted yourself. I corrected you. You refused to accept that correction and continue to refuse to accept it. I was prepared to accept that perhaps you might want to clarify, but we are well past that time.But spin the merry-go-round again! I'm sure you'll get something new this time!C'mon! You know you want to.SPIN IT!

Faith writes:

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There is no such thing as sexual orientation

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Really? You find other women sexually attractive? What sort of woman floats your boat, Faith? Are you a breast gal? Or is it all about the base? What sort of sex do you fantasize about having with a woman? Do you want to gently flick your tongue around her nether regions, suckle upon her bosom? What do you wake up in the middle of night having dreamt about that has you panting and sweating and begging to be made real? What is it you wish a woman would do to you so that your toes would curl back and you'd scream out her name forevermore?What's that? You mean you don't actually find women sexually enticing?Then congratulations, Faith. You've got a sexual orientation.

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homosexual acts are sin.

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So is having a physical deformity (Leviticus 21). Does that mean there are no amputees? People who are just willfully rejecting the fact that they actually have two legs?

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Comparing it to race is in itself sin.

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Denying the comparison to race is a sin.See, I can do that, too.

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WHICH DOESN'T MEAN WE ARE TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST THE SINNER

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And yet, that is precisely what you are demanding Christians do.

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BUT WE ALSO AREN"T TO TREAT THE SIN AS A MERE SEXUAL VARIATION

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Faith, nobody is forcing you to have the hottest, steamiest sex of your life with another woman the way you really wish you could, are they? Because that would be wrong. If you don't want to have sex with another woman, then don't.But for you to treat those who do any differently is against the law.

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WHICH IS WHAT LEGAL GAY MARRIAGE ASKS OF US.

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See, you just said that you aren't to discriminate against people and here you are, demanding to discriminate against them.

Faith writes:

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which is hard to explain occurring in a person who is clearly physically designed for normal heterosexuality

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Gay people don't seem to have any trouble having sex. You can go online and see any number of educational videos demonstrating it. After all, there is nothing that gay people do that straight people don't also do...in fact, more often since there are so many more straight people in the world.Clearly, they are physically designed for normal homosexuality.

And once again that is utter nonsense. Only God and the sinner get to decide whether something is a sin or not. You have nothing to say about other folks sins.If you think gay marriage is a sin then your ONLY option is not not marry someone of the same sex.What other folk do is simply none of your business.No where in the Bible does it say it is a sin to bake a wedding cake for a gay marriage or to celebrate a gay marriage or to attend a gay marriage feast or rent a room to a gay couple or any other such action.Sorry Faith but you folk are just making shit up so you can suffer. That's fine if it makes you happy but do not expect others to think it is not just plain silly behavior.