Gay Marriage as an attack on Christianity

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Jesus explains adultery as lust in the heart, which applies to both men and women and doesn't seem at all related to property.

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Of course you have it wrong.Matthew 5:28 Not only does it seem to be aimed at men, it’s about committing a sin in the heart - not redefining the sin. And indeed, it is much like equating coveting to theft in the heart.

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He wasn't redefining the sin, He was explaining that we are culpable for our inner thoughts and desires and not just for our outward actions.

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Thanks for admitting that you were wrong.Although I have to say that the idea is pretty strange. Our desires are not within our control, so we cannot we be responsible for them. And if we are not responsible for them how can we be culpable?

I think that your reading is very questionable.For instance you regard this part as unimportant, but it suggests that a gay couple asking for a wedding cake would be on much stronger ground.

If you can’t understand the ruling, then speculating about how ithe judges would rule in different cases is less than entirely sensible.

There are numerous points I could raise here, but there is one that even you cannot dispute. The U.S. Constitution is not binding on the U.K.

The courts won’t make religious belief carte blanche to ignore the law. And I hope that will continue to be the case in both countries.

I don’t think it is that tough.First, there is precedent, as cited above. Second, the First Amendment was never intended to make religious belief a carte blanche. It recognises that government does have a right to restrict actions: Thomas Jefferson Notes on the State of VirginiaThird, allowing religious belief to overrule anti-discrimination laws would gut them. There are still segregationists who hold that segregation of the races is a Christian doctrine.I doubt that anyone on the Court wants to overturn precedent and open a massive can of worms. And overturning the lower court’s decision would do that. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Conservatives were all against hearing it because they didn’t want to be placeD in the position of affirming that decision.

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True, but it also never intended for gay marriage to be recognized at all. So we have to look at the spirit of what is intended and try to apply them to modern times.

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I don’t think there is any question there. We are talking about a principle that was clearly intended against an attitude of the times.

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So you mentioned that what does it matter if the other party isn't really injured. Obviously, what would it hurt the baker to make a cake with two men's name on it? Is he irreparably harmed by such an act? No, it just goes against his sincerely held beliefs. On the other hand, doesn't that same argument apply in reverse? Is that the only baker in 500 square miles? Can they not go to another bakery who would love to have their business? Obviously so... No one is in fact injured so much as they are offended.

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The denial of service is already an injury, if a small one. And raising exceptions obviously creates more room for argument.

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We aren't talking about cakes so much as we are talking about principles. Can the law force a Christian man to bake a cake that goes against his beliefs in his own store?

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In most of these cases there is nothing about the cake itself that the baker disappproves of (and if there was it would be in the decoration, not the baking).The legal question is whether the baker can refuse to provide service to people of a protected class because they are of a protected class. And as I pointed out that has already been answered. He can’t.

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The right of a private business to refuse service has always been honored, except when it comes to civil rights issues.

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And it seems obvious to me that this is a civil rights case.

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The government will challenge you if you decide to refuse service on the basis of being this or being that. The thing about this case was that the baker reportedly offered alternatives and did not outright refuse business. He just said he wasn't going to make that specific cake.

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Did they ? It certainly isn’t mentioned in the decision (pdf) of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and IndustriesEdited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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For the sake of the argument, if a gay baker had a customer that came in wanting a cake that has a bible verse that is hostile towards homosexuality, would the baker be legally obligated to provide that to the customer? Private people can believe whatever they want. When it comes to commerce there's less wiggle room but still some, when it comes to government there's no wiggle room whatsoever.

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Decorations are a tougher case, but unless the baker advertises that they will provide any decoration the customer asks for, it is generally accepted that there will be some limits.See also Chiroptera’s comment above - it seems that decorations were not the issue in the Masterpiece bakery case.

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If a customer part of a hunting club wanted the depiction of a dead deer on his cake came into a bakery owned by vegetarians, should the vegetarian be compelled to honor that request or should they reserve the right to say that it goes against their beliefs and that by doing so potentially harm's their business?

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See what I said above. In addition, consider the fact that hunters are not a protected class. Also consider the fact that there is no great tradition of cakes to celebrate dead deer, or dead deer as a decoration for cakes.Really, you should have been able to work that out without my help.

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There's also no great tradition of wedding cakes celebrating gay marriage, as it was not only illegal in Colorado in 2012 but only recently passed into law.

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But there is a great tradition of wedding cakes. Singling out gay marriage in that respect is an aspect of discrimination.

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There's also no great tradition of wedding cakes celebrating gay marriage, as it was not only illegal in Colorado in 2012 but only recently passed into law.

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There is also a long tradition of homophobia, and of opposition to gay rights which had far more to do with it. Indeed, gay marriage does nothing to threaten traditional marriage, so it doesn't seem much of a motivation.

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The difference is the decoration.
Before any talk of decoration the baker refused to take the order because, this is the important point, he did not want to provide any product intended to for use in a gay wedding. The business request was that the baker do the baker thing and provide a wedding cake. A generic off the shelf wedding cake suitable for any wedding was all that was requested. The baker refused because the customer was gay.

Where are you getting that information? The information I have seen is that Phillips offered other accommodations. His one stipulation was that he not bake a wedding cake in reference to the decorations.

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If you read the quote it is quite clear that the “other accommodations” did not stretch to even a generic wedding cake A generic wedding cake is not a “non-wedding” good.Philips’ argument is that he is not prejudiced against gays because he would sell them other items but not any sort of wedding cake.

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That is the whole point to my mind and there is no other point to be considered. This isn't something a court or anyone else can decide, only the person put in the position of obeying or denying God according to his or her own understanding. Whether it's about a message on the cake, mannikins, decorations or just the fact that it is for a gay wedding, it's the baker's conscience that's engaged and nobody else can decide this.

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So if a segregationist decides that obedience to God requires excluding Blacks or forbidding mixed-race relationships or marriages, they should be allowed to ignore anti-discrimination laws.If you really believed what you said, that is the position you would take. But you don’t take that position and you don’t believe it.It’s just an excuse, and not even a good one.

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Nothing I said was about being "allowed." I said we would take the consequences.

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So if a segregationist also acts on conscience and takesthe consequences why not?

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It seems quite clear that you feel that the consequences are unjust.

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But your comparison is of course just the usual twisted trap.

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Or course it is neither twisted nor a trap. It is simply applying the principle you put forward to a closely-related situation. If there is a trap it is one you created for yourself by not thinking about the implications of your excuse.

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That requirement to obey the law is limited to whatever does not contradict God's law and that ought to be obvious. The Roman laws obviously did not contradict God's laws but now we have a law that does contradict God's law

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Then why haven’t you found a real contradiction ?

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And you obviously don't understand this whole gay marriage thing since it's not against gays as such but specifically against their being married, which is a violation of God's law of marriage between a man and a woman.

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By which you mean it is against gay couples enjoying the same secular legal rights as straight couples. That is and always has been the central issue.