Gay Marriage as an attack on Christianity

You are discriminating against people because it is people who are affected - no theological position is hurt (there isn't even a distinct theological position involved on the other side - the argument is based on the Constitution and basic concerns of justice)

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"Up until now" I've been run ragged trying to keep up with all the idiotic irrelevant arguments and accusations everybody is throwing at me, haven't had enough breathing space even to stop and think about a way to ameliorate the problems experienced by the gay

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Nonsense. First this is something you should have worked out before starting this thread. Second it is not as if this is the first discussion of the matter here. You have certainly had every opportunity to get it right. Third a lot of the responses you are complaint about did correct you on the matter.You lied, and now you are trying to blame other people for it.

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You haven't a smidgen of fairness in you. You spit venom with every word.

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Wrong. You just don't like fairness.If you were really interested in solving the problem you would find out what the problem was instead of asserting that another law was "an attack on Christianity"But there is a simple solution. Abandoned your bigotry, recognise that the Bible does not require you to refrain from providing services to gay weddings any more than it requires you to stone gays to death or kill witches.

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Of course not. It's the people who hold that view who are hurt.

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You are making no sense. When people are denied a service because of who they are, it is those people who are hurt.

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It is NOT "because of who they are," it's because of what the service represents.

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Of course it is because of who they are. That is what it is all about.

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And the Christians are ALSO hurt, punished for acting on their religious convictions.

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Better to punish the guilty rather than the innocent. Acting out of "religious conviction" is not and cannot be carte blanche to ignore the law. Until you can come up with a principled way to determine when exceptions are made - that does not lead to obvious problems - the best solution is to give these poor people a better understanding of Christianity. Not that you cared enough about these "Christians" to even remember the laws involved until yesterday.

So let's get this straight. Tim Allan has been insinuating that people are Nazis for no good reason and he's been asked to apologise for it.That's your idea of being a "victim of PC" ?

The big problem with this argument is that pretty much nobody takes the cake as an expression of approval of the wedding. The same applies to the flowers and the photographs. People may well say "what a beautiful cake" but they won't go on to impute opinions to the bakers.Any analogy to a speech in favour of gay marriage is therefore extremely weak. In the case of the speech the content is direct advocacy, and may be taken to represent the speakers views. In the case of the cake in so far as their is any content it is not at all likely to be taken as reflecting the views of the baker rather than the person commissioning the cake.

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The gay activist who wrote the piece in The Guardian brought out the important point, that it is not discrimination against people. I think that ought to become the understanding of these cases.

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It is worth mentioning that the only reason for his judgement was that the plaintiffs asked for the message 'support gay marriage" to be iced.If they had been simply asking for a wedding cake for their own wedding celebrations the situation would be materially different.

There obviously is a distinction.In the case of icing a slogan then the assertion that the baker is objecting to the slogan rather than the person it is for is defensible.In refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding it is rather obvious that the objection is to the wedding - and therefore the couple getting married.Yes, I know it is convenient for you not to see that distinction but it is there and is at the root of Tatchell's article.

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Sorry, I continue to insist that objecting to a gay wedding is not the same as discriminating against gay people, who, as has been affirmed over and over and over, are quite welcome to anything else in the bakery

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You can continue to assert anything you like but you are obviously wrong. The couple are not getting a wedding cake because they are gay. That is obvious.

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Objecting to a gay wedding is refusing a particular service which is the same thing as refusing the service of writing a message on a cake.

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Except that the objection is not to the service - the objection is to the recipients of the service. You can say that the baker would not ice that particular slogan for anyone but you can't say that the baker wouldn't bake an identical cake for a straight couple.

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You keep saying you are sure Tatchell would not agree about the wedding cake and perhaps you are right but you don't know and haven't shown it to be so.

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Actually I say that Tatchell's argument is all about slogans and doesn't address the issue of supplying otherwise uncontroversial services to a gay wedding. Given that he is a gay rights activist, I think it very likely that he does disagree with you, but there is no need to show that.

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Their MEANING TO THE BAKER IS EQUIVALENT. I could not care less what their meaning to YOU is.

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If the baker is sufficiently callous, perhaps. However that is less relevant than the fact that the baker IS discriminating against gays BECAUSE they are gays.

Funny. You reject the proposed solution outright - demonstrating an important difference between the iced slogan and the wedding cake - and then complain that Modulus correctly predicted your reaction - calling that prediction "insinuating lying garbage". How can it be "insinuating lying garbage" if it is true ?

It isn't important to me. You are the one who wants to claim his support. The fact remains that the cited article deals only with icing words on a cake and the reasoning does not stretch to covering outright refusal to supply a wedding cake. THAT is my point and it needs no support but the content of the article itself.

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Gays are singling themselves out and Christians are responding to their provocations.

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In other words gays should get back in the closet.

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The Christian businesses have been there for years and along comes this law that contradicts basic Christian belief

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Taking your earlier words to heart I must do you the kindness of pointing out that this is a lie. The laws - State laws - you are complaining about have mostly been around for a while and do not "contradict basic Christian belief". You know this.

It is certainly not clear that your idea of "provocation" excludes being openly gay - with the whole idea that being gay is sinful. And even if you do not take that attitude, other "Christians" may well.I also note no sign that you repent of your sin.

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If you review the context of what is being said here you should find that it started with somebody saying something about CHURCHES singling out gays.

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So it is about churches focussing on the idea that homosexuality is a sin, to the point where it is regarded as especially bad.

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I said they do not, they are responding to gay provocations, such as the demand for gay marriage, and now its legalization.

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So, asking to be treated fairly is "provocation". If you want to give the impression that those churches are full of bigots you could hardly do better.

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Preachers also preach against all the other sins, but at the moment adulterers aren't asking to be given some special status that legally elevates them to some other category or erases their adultery.

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By which you mean that they already have plenty of rights. Adulterous was decriminalised before homosexuality, divorcees are freely allowed to remarry in most Protestant churches despite the Biblical injunction to regard it as adultery. (And lustfully looking at women is hardly even criticised !). Adultery is hardly even regarded as a problem in public figures. At least those public figures that you approve of.Given that adultery is straightforwardly wrong without the religious factor that's pretty "special" by the low bar you've set up.

So we come back to the idea that you "Christians" should dictate the secular law. Not exactly Biblical, is it ?