Maine legalizes gay marriage

You're joking, right?Let's forget for a moment that this is about marriage. Let's suppose my religion (which is X) says that eating chicken is a sacred act and that the act of eating chicken can only be done by men and women of religion X inside the churches of religion X. But chicken tastes good, one might argue, and that anybody ought to be able to eat chicken anywhere and not just inside churches.Now, suppose that myself and everyone who follows the teachings of religion X decides to go out by the masses to vote for legislation that would ban anyone and everyone who's not of religion X from eating chicken.But then someone would point out that this is unfair. But hang on a second. Everyone is treated equal here. If you think about it, you have the same right as we do. Anyone can eat chicken as long as he follows the teachings of religion X and performs the act inside a church of religion X.Do you see how ridiculous this position is? Now, replace eating chicken with marriage.The real question is why the hell do we, as a society, tolerate christian bigots?

You're right that I missed it. I failed to read his whole post. Now that I have read his whole post including the quotes, I still don't see how you guys can have mixed feelings.Let's go back to my eating chicken analogy. Suppose I own a restaurant and would only want to sell chicken to people of the same religion as me and if only they would eat the chicken in one of my churches. The question is do I have a right to deny selling some people chicken? Have we forgotten the "we don't serve your kind here" that was so widely used not too long ago?As long as we're having doubts about forcing people to do fair business, why don't we forget about Tyra Hunter?We all have a part to play in our society. If you're a doctor, you can't use religious excuses to deny care to a patient. Why on earth would we allow religious bigots in other parts of society to deny fair service to people because of their religious based hate?This question seems to come up again and again. Why does religion get a free pass?Added by edit.I'll take that all back. If you're a christian florist, I suppose you have every right to put up a sign that says "we don't serve fags" in front of your store much the same way that christian doctors could put up a sign in front of their clinics that says "we don't treat fags".Honestly, guys, it's one thing to not force anyone to personally do something he's against. If you don't believe in same sex marriage, don't marry someone of the same sex. It's another to actually carry this attitude into the professional world. Do I need to spell out the kinds of problems our society would face if professionals are allowed to choose who to serve or help and who not to serve or help based on their religious bigotry?Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

Again, why does religion get a free pass? If the catering business you mentioned refuses to serve an interracial marriage ceremony or a muslim marriage ceremony, there would be hell for weeks and weeks in the courts as well as the media. But you're telling us that it's ok for them to refuse a gay marriage ceremony simply because of religious bigotry?Why does religion get a free pass when it comes to hate?

We've already done that years ago. Your marriage don't mean squat in a church unless you obtain a marriage license from the state.The point is allowing businesses to deny service to a gay marriage ceremony simply because of religious bigotry.

Well, this reminds me of a couple interviews I saw not too long ago. A black man and his partner were looking for a 1 bedroom apartment. They went into a private agency. After they told the woman agent what they wanted, she promptly got up, opened the door, and said "please leave, we don't serve your kind here".The second interview was of a black man and his black wife. The agent was a white man, though.CS, you're muddying up the water by confusing legit businesses with a side business. Yes, there is a difference. Most photographers who do weddings actually do full time job at some other profession and only does photography as a side job and hobby. Are they doing business? Well, technically, yes. But the spirit of the law was never intended to regulate these side hobbies. Some time ago, I played the trumpet for a gay couple at their wedding. Believe it or not, they actually couldn't find a professional trumpetist who was willing to play at their wedding and they had to ask me. I did it for $100. I didn't pay any tax for it.Heck, I could start my own lemonade business right now in front of my house and would only sell my glass of lemonade to the people in my neighborhood who are under 150 pounds. Do you honestly think anyone would care about the way I do my "business"?The point is nobody cares about a self employed bigoted photographer. We're more concerned about legit businesses like a sandwich caterer or a restaurant.Please stop muddying up the water. You know it's bullshit. I know it's bullshit. Let's stop this charade.

As a side note, you all should listen to this fresh air podcast 05/06/2009. It's about the new movie 'outrage'.Also, listen to this fresh air with Camilla Taylor.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

Let's try this again.You're muddying up the water by comparing apples and oranges. How? By assuming they're both fruit and therefore they must be the same.There's a difference between a business like wedding catering and a business like wedding photography. It's a subtle difference, but there is a difference.Try to think of photography as like selling lemonade during the summber. Most people do it more as a hobby and side job than as a real profession. Sure, there are some that have studios. But they are largely unregulated. We generally don't expect them to have to accept every appointment or every house call. They could simply say "no, I don't want to do your wedding" and that's the end of that.On the other hand, we tend to think of real businesses as places where we can go or depend on. A restaurant can't just turn you away because the manager had a bad day. These businesses are very well regulated and there are certain standards we, as a society, expect them to meet. The same goes with apartment agencies.When you first brought out the example of wedding photographer, I already guessed you were intending to muddy up this issue. Stop playing your bullshit game. The spirit of the law with regard to these issues are meant to regulate real businesses where we, as a society, already has a standard for them to meet. Nobody cares about the private photographer you were talking about.Capice?

Oh please, all your examples are instances where they don't affect other people. You're comparing apples to oranges. None of these accomodations is anything close to accomodating their religious based bigotry. Nope, not taking that position at all. I honestly don't understand how you could not see the difference between allowing a person to not have a photo on driver's license because of religious reasons and allowing a business to deny service to certain people because of religious bigotry. I mean... would you like me to explain in detail why the two examples don't mix and match? I got that part, and a more careful reading of my previous posts would show that I was actually criticizing you guys for being undecided on this matter. It's like me saying I'm undecided whether interracial marriage should be allowed or not or whether the Earth is flat or round. As to why I am undecided on those issues should baffle every sane person.

He's talking about Amish horse drawn vehicles on the highway.

That's the way I talk, so bite me. I'm not suggesting we force the photographer to be at your gay wedding at all. I'm saying we treat it like we treat racism. As I understand it, if you're a KKK member or for whatever reason you don't like black people and you're a photographer, no one can force you to take a job at a black wedding. But if you're a restaurant or a catering business and refuses to serve a black wedding, we'd be seeing nothing but that on CNN for the next month.This brings me back to the original question. Why does religion get a free pass on hate? Did you click on my link to Tyra Hunter? Are you proposing we allow professionals to not give us service simply because it's against their religion? We as a society don't allow them to do it based on attitudes of racism. Why then should we allow them to do it based on religious beliefs? Why does religion get a free pass? I'm sure there were those that were against interracial marriage for sincerely held religious beliefs. We as a society got over that. To loosely paraphrase Rrhain, if it was a crap argument then, why does it suddenly have merit now?

It's not a gay pride flag. It's a christian symbol that god would never flood the entire Earth again.

And I'll try my best to not let the fact that you're a ________ (insert a descriptive noun here) affect my analysis of the substance of your argument. Yeah, and how does this answer my question? If businesses can't discriminate based on racism or whatever other -ism out there, why should religious bigotry get a free pass? You're right, of course. Let me ask you this. Do you think the burden on the black people for having to drink out of different drinking fountains than the ones white folks used slight?You seem to imply that discrimination is a-ok if the burden on the receiving end is relatively slight. Assuming that in most cases the hardship on the black people is slight when it comes to drinking out of certain drinking fountain, how does that weigh against compelling someone to do something that goes against their personal racist beliefs? Or do you discount that factor to nothing?The reason the gay rights movement is having a lot more difficulty convincing people of the injustice in our society than the civil rights movement is because the discrimination in this case is far more subtle than segregation. I am convinced that if segregation was only about drinking fountains and different schools instead of the myriads of other injustices like the police beating school children and such, you'd be making the same argument you're making now regarding racism.Discrimination is discrimination. You're downplaying it by pretending there's a scale of suffering or burden by the receiving party, and if I'm not mistaking you're suggesting that discrimination should be allowed if the suffering or burden felt by the receiving party is lower than certain level on your imaginary scale then discrimination is a-ok.Edited by Taz, : Changed "than" to "then". Stupid homophones...

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