DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Gov. Mike Pence signs 'religious freedom' bill in private

they used christianity as a way to justify that nonsense bro. Sorry man. and I didn't mention race. the first slave owner was a black dude. dude had whites out the world working on the fields.

But he was christian. They had their agenda, and used their religion to justify said agendas.

j/c

Basically I support religious freedom until the religious people feel the need to dictate laws. Then I feel they all have the right to climb up on their crosses and get crucified.

Religion belongs in caves not in modern public life.

What tool or argument does he possess that those on earth who utterly fail in an overwhelming majority of attempts to 'straighten' out homosexuals? Is it magic, or is there a specific argument most mortals are just missing?

And if he was that persuasive, maybe he should've opened his mouth before they nailed him into lumber.

PDR....dude you out of control with that comment lmao

If I lived in that state, I'd gladly flush a few grand to open up a bare bones shop that banned service to blacks, citing that my God, Goro, the six armed alien, teaches that black people are evil, and that he burned their flesh for their sins, and we are to shun them.

J/C .....

I am considering our right to refuse to associate with people we don't not agree with.

Where is the line drawn?

Is an Atheist cake maker allowed to refuse to script a cake, "Jesus Christ is Lord, God, and creator of all. I love and believe in Jesus Christ, now and forever"?

Is a Jewish baker allowed to refuse service to a Nazi organization?

Is a Black baker allowed to refuse to bake a birthday cake for a Klan meeting?

The only problem people have is that they do not see "gay" as a sin. Frankly, I myself would not have a problem doing business with a gay person. I would not have a problem with an Atheist in my business.

I would, however, have a problem with a Nazi group, or a Klan group, wanting my services. I would have a hard time with that.

Should we expect a Black carpenter to be forced to set up stages for a White Supremest meeting?

There is a line somewhere. Where is it? Who decides? Does each person get to follow the dictates of our own consciences, or are we forced into accepting what someone else tells us we must?

So Indiana is justified in doing this because Nazis and hate groups are totally analogous to same-sex couples?

That's a new argument...

I would have to go back to my earlier post.

I believe that whatever the case may be, there would have to be some consistency for any serious consideration to take place.

ie... If you're professing that you wish to not do business with people who have a sinful lifestyle, it would have to be all people who live a sinful lifestyle and not pick or choose which sin you have decided to base that belief on.

Because when you single out one sin in particular, it sort of loses its validity.

That sounds reasonable .... except that there is no way I would do business, knowingly, with a group of people, like Nazis, White Supremest, or the Klan. No way. I would never, knowingly, associate in any way with a rapist, or a child molester. That is where my line is drawn. Others draw the line elsewhere. Where that is, is up to each of us.

I would also add one more scenario:

What if there was a sign maker who was a gay man, and the customer was a religious zealot, who wanted 100 signs that said "Gay people are an abomination before God", with Leviticus 20:13 on the sign, or another such message.

Would/should that gay sign maker have the right to refuse to make those signs, or should he be forced to make those signs that offend him, who he considers himself to be, and his lifestyle?

So let me ask you a question Ytown, unless someone actually orders a product from your business that explains exactly who they are to you, how would you know who you are doing business with?

That would be hard to know.

There was a case of a couple who owned a bakery, and who were asked to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. They politely (from all reports) declined. They were sued, charged with civil rights violations, and so on. They were forced out of business as a result, for following the dictates of their consciences.

Is that the kind of country we want to have?

Churches are being threatened for teaching the Bible, as far as homosexuality is concerned. What's next? Do we insist that Bibles are edited to remove all offending passages?

People must be allowed to follow the dictates of their own consciences, and the freedom to express themselves, and associate with those they choose to associate with. Even the KKK has the right to their abhorrent speech. Others have the right to speak out in opposition to them. We must not lose the right to express our consciences, and our beliefs. (even those that are disgusting, offensive, or frightening to others)

I get paid with little of pieces of paper that says we all trust in God. I don't really believe that, but I roll with it, because it pays my bills.

I wouldn't care, because in order to get by in life, we all must interact with things that are diametrically opposed to our beliefs.

I'd print the signs and cash the check.

However, if I felt strongly enough that I didn't want to do it, I'd explain that I was uncomfortable and would rather they seek business elsewhere. From there, they'd either go on their way, or we'd have a dialogue. End of story.

This is a stupid law, and it's based in shaming a segment of the population.

It's entirely unnecessary. If you're a devout Christian, decorate your business as such, and you probably will weed out the people you don't want around. Vice versa for your example. Hang rainbow flags everywhere, and see if someone stops in and asks for 'God hates fags' signs.

jc



to the posters who made the example with race with regards to this bill, and how it relates, I'm sorry for disagreeing.

Christians have been using Their religion forever, and the government had to shut their ass down, and it seems like once again, the government needs to shut these christians down.

I asked my grandparents from both my mom and dad's side about this article and the findings, and they said it was absolutely HUGE, which is why i decided to post the article, which led me into all the readings i was doing today. They was telling me all kinds of stories, how this was just as big on TV as the current anti-gay stuff is today, and as far as society and media stuff with religion goes.

Basically this: Any time I see christians try to take some moral high ground, I'm going to laugh in their face.

When ‘Religious Liberty’ Was Used To Justify Racism Instead Of Homophobia

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/02/26/3333161/religious-liberty-racist-anti-gay/

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
— Judge Leon M. Bazile, January 6, 1959
The most remarkable thing about Arizona’s “License To Discriminate” bill is how quickly it became anathema, even among Republicans. Both 2008 GOP presidential candidate John McCain and 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney called upon Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to veto this effort to protect businesses that want to discriminate against gay people. So did Arizona’s other senator, Jeff Flake. And former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Indeed, three state senators who voted for this very bill urged Brewer to veto it before she finally did so on Wednesday, confessing that they “made a mistake” when they voted for it to become law.
The premise of the bill is that discrimination becomes acceptable so long as it is packaged inside a religious wrapper. As Arizona state Rep. Eddie Farnsworth (R) explained, lawmakers introduced it in response to instances where anti-gay business owners in other states were “punished for their religious beliefs” after they denied service to gay customers in violation of a state anti-discrimination law.
Yet, while LGBT Americans are the current target of this effort to repackage prejudice as “religious liberty,” they are hardly the first. To the contrary, as Wake Forest law Professor Michael Kent Curtis explained in a 2012 law review article, many segregationists justified racial bigotry on the very same grounds that religious conservatives now hope to justify anti-gay animus. In the words of one professor at a prominent Mississippi Baptist institution, “our Southern segregation way is the Christian way . . . . [God] was the original segregationist.”
God Of The Segregationists
Theodore Bilbo was one of Mississippi’s great demagogues. After two non-consecutive terms as governor, Bilbo won a U.S. Senate seat campaigning against “farmer murderers, corrupters of Southern womanhood, [skunks] who steal Gideon Bibles from hotel rooms” and a host of other, equally colorful foes. In a year where just 47 Mississippi voters cast a ballot for a communist candidate, Bilbo railed against a looming communist takeover of the state — and offered himself up as the solution to this red onslaught.
Bilbo was also a virulent racist. “I call on every red-blooded white man to use any means to keep the n[*]ggers away from the polls,” Bilbo proclaimed during his successful reelection campaign in 1946. He was a proud member of the Ku Klux Klan, telling Meet the Press that same year that “[n]o man can leave the Klan. He takes an oath not to do that. Once a Ku Klux, always a Ku Klux.” During a filibuster of an anti-lynching bill, Bilbo claimed that the bill
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will open the floodgates of hell in the South. Raping, mobbing, lynching, race riots, and crime will be increased a thousandfold; and upon your garments and the garments of those who are responsible for the passage of the measure will be the blood of the raped and outraged daughters of Dixie, as well as the blood of the perpetrators of these crimes that the red-blooded Anglo-Saxon White Southern men will not tolerate.
For Senator Bilbo, however, racism was more that just an ideology, it was a sincerely held religious belief. In a book entitled Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization, Bilbo wrote that “[p]urity of race is a gift of God . . . . And God, in his infinite wisdom, has so ordained it that when man destroys his racial purity, it can never be redeemed.” Allowing “the blood of the races [to] mix,” according to Bilbo, was a direct attack on the “Divine plan of God.” There “is every reason to believe that miscengenation and amalgamation are sins of man in direct defiance to the will of God.”
Bilbo was one of the South’s most colorful racists, but he was hardly alone in his beliefs. As early as 1867, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld segregated railway cars on the grounds that “[t]he natural law which forbids [racial intermarriage] and that social amalgamation which leads to a corruption of races, is as clearly divine as that which imparted to [the races] different natures.” This same rationale was later adopted by state supreme courts in Alabama, Indiana and Virginia to justify bans on interracial marriage, and by justices in Kentucky to support residential segregation and segregated colleges.
In 1901, Georgia Gov. Allen Candler defended unequal public schooling for African Americans on the grounds that “God made them negroes and we cannot by education make them white folks.” After the Supreme Court ordered public schools integrated in Brown v. Board of Education, many segregationists cited their own faith as justification for official racism. Ross Barnett won Mississippi’s governorship in a landslide in 1960 after claiming that “the good Lord was the original segregationist.” Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia relied on passages from Genesis, Leviticus and Matthew when he spoke out against the civil rights law banning employment discrimination and whites-only lunch counters on the Senate floor.
Bob Jones
Although the Supreme Court never considered whether Bilbo, Candler, Barnett or Byrd’s religious beliefs gave them a license to engage in race discrimination, a very similar case did reach the justices in 1983.
Bob Jones University excluded African Americans completely until the early 1970s, when it began permitting black students to attend so long as they were married. In 1975, it amended this policy to permit unmarried African American students, but it continued to prohibit interracial dating, interracial marriage, or even being “affiliated with any group or organization which holds as one of its goals or advocates interracial marriage.” As a result, the Internal Revenue Service revoked Bob Jones’ tax-exempt status.
This decision, that the IRS would no longer give tax subsidies to racist schools even if they claimed that their racism was rooted in religious beliefs, quickly became a rallying point for the Christian Right. Indeed, according to Paul Weyrich, the seminal conservative activist who coined the term “moral majority,” the IRS’ move against schools like Bob Jones was the single most important issue driving the birth of modern day religious conservatism. According to Weyrich, “[i]t was not the school-prayer issue, and it was not the abortion issue,” that caused this “movement to surface.” Rather it was what Weyrich labeled the “federal government’s move against the Christian schools.”
When Bob Jones’ case reached the Supreme Court, the school argued that IRS’ regulations denying tax exemptions to racist institutions “cannot constitutionally be applied to schools that engage in racial discrimination on the basis of sincerely held religious beliefs.” But the justices did not bite. In an 8-1 decision by conservative Chief Justice Warren Burger, the Court explained that “[o]n occasion this Court has found certain governmental interests so compelling as to allow even regulations prohibiting religiously based conduct.” Prohibiting race discrimination is one of these interests.
My Liberty Stops At Your Body
Ultimately, the question facing anti-gay business owners, even if the bill Brewer vetoed had become law, is why it is acceptable to exclude gay people simply because of who they are, when we do not permit this sort of behavior by racists such as Bilbo or Byrd? And there is another, equally difficult question facing advocates of the kind of sweeping “religious liberty” protected by the Arizona bill — why should we allow people to impose their religious beliefs upon others?
One year before Bob Jones, the Court decided a case called United States v. Lee, which involved an Amish employer’s objection to paying Social Security taxes on religious grounds. As the Court explained in Lee, allowing people with religious objections to opt out of Social Security could undermine the viability of the entire program. “The design of the system requires support by mandatory contributions from covered employers and employees,” Burger wrote for the Court. “This mandatory participation is indispensable to the fiscal vitality of the social security system. . . . Moreover, a comprehensive national social security system providing for voluntary participation would be almost a contradiction in terms and difficult, if not impossible, to administer.”
Just as importantly, allowing religious employers to exempt themselves from the law would be fundamentally unfair to the employees who are supposed to benefit from those laws. “When followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity. Granting an exemption from social security taxes to an employer operates to impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees.”
Lee, in other words, stands for the proposition that people of faith do not exist in a vacuum. Their businesses compete with other companies who are entitled to engage in this competition upon a level playing field. Their personnel decisions impact their employees, and their decision to refuse to do business with someone — especially for reasons such as race or sexual orientation — can fundamentally demean that individual and deny them their own right to participate equally in society.
This is why people like Theodore Bilbo should not be allowed to refuse to do business with African Americans, and it is why anti-gay business owners should not be given a special right to discriminate against LGBT consumers. And this is also something that the United States has understood for a very long time. Bob Jones and Lee are not new cases. A whole generation of Americans spent their entire professional careers enjoying the protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Religious liberty is an important value and it rightfully belongs in our Constitution, but it we do not allow it to be used to destroy the rights of others.
The argument Gov. Brewer resolved Wednesday night with her veto stamp is no different than the argument Lyndon Johnson resolved when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Invidious discrimination is wrong. And it doesn’t matter why someone wants to discriminate.
Tags: ArizonaConstitutionDiscriminationgay rightsRaceSupreme Court

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looks crazy on this post so better just read it from the link.

so in reality, religious people are just a bunch of hate-fill demographic. makes sense, since anything you guys deem immoral, you want to burn(or nuke when it comes to the middle east) segregate it, and damn it hell.

Swish,

I do not know where to begin. So much about that article is misleading, false, and offensive. I was shocked to read your final statement about Christians being hate-filled. The only thing that matters to me is my individual freedoms. Religious freedom is spelled out in the Bill of Rights. Forcing someone to bend to your will because you feel offended is not in the Bill of Rights, I would never want to use the power of the government to force your silence because I find what you said to be offensive. I hope that you would not want to do the same to speech you find offensive.

I find anti-religious people are often angry because they do not like to have others making judgements. They feel themselves being judged by others and it makes them uncomfortable. I am not saying this is the case with you, however, I would not advocate that anger at someone because of their religion justifies your desire to take their Constitutional rights from them and I would hope you would not either.

And that's kind of my point. Unless and until someone actually asks for a direct service that tells you they are a KKK member, Gay, or of some other group you wish not to do business with, you will be doing business with them. Or does a man who has a feminine sounding voice suddenly qualify?



I think even having this debate causes me to say this isn't the kind of country we want to have. I don't believe people saying they deserve to have the right to simply refuse service to someone based on their sexual preference is either Christian or based upon the Bible. At least nothing I've read in the Bible.

I believe trying to hide behind religion as an excuse to discriminate is quite un-Christian like.



I've never heard of this and would be willing to bet it has more to do with getting headlines than any real threat.



I believe when you decide to open a business you have chosen to serve the public. I don't believe hiding behind religion as an excuse to discriminate against those who do not share your beliefs has anything to do with Christianity or religion.

Like I said before, if that's really the reason, such businesses need to have some sort of questionnaire at the door.

1. Are you a drunk?

2. Have you committed or are you currently committing adultery?

3. Are you currently a drug addict?

I think you get my meaning. Unless Christians decide they don't want to do business with ANYONE and EVERYONE who lives a sinful lifestyle, can't you see how discriminatory this looks? So I guess it begs to question, is it people who live lifestyles you don't approve of or the gay community in particular? Of it's the latter, that's discrimination.

Discrimination isn't a constitutional right.

Paul Harvey said it all in 1965...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Az0okaHig

99% of life is discrimination.

There are 7 billion people on earth. We are passively discriminating against 6.99 billion people at a minimum.

We choose one person to marry. We discriminate against everyone else in this field.

We choose one career and one place to work. We are discriminating against all other offers and opportunities with our choices.

We choose where to live, we choose who we spend time with, we choose where we spend our money.

Discrimination is something we do constantly. Discrimination is inherent in the mere act of choice.

I like to simplify the business thing down to it's extreme. The westboro baptist church is extremely extremely discriminatory and bigoted. We don't arrest them for picketing soldiers funerals. We don't arrest them for running around with their god hates fags posters. But...If they were to open a lemonade stand. And they continued their obvious and clear discrimination policies, all of a sudden this is violating all kinds of rights? They are already doing this in who they allow in their church.

The challenge in this discussion is fighting against irrational bigotry. It is virtually nothing to do with discrimination outside a few very rare instances. Does anyone actually think we should arrest people for refusing to make cakes for black people, gay people, christians, or short people with thick moustaches?

This is the tricky thing being philosophically in support of freedom and rationality. I don't support bigotry, I don't support a lot of christianity (I think a lot of the desire for ethics and fight against vice are great), but I don't support arresting people who haven't done any harm to anyone else. You don't change people's minds by threatening them with power (at least not morally).

People constantly discriminate. Discrimination and choice are two sides of the same coin. When people argue against the legal validity of discrimination they are saying "you can't choose to do what you want, regardless of its not harming others". This is the exact same logic of the drug war, of jim crow, of slavery, of every corrupt law that has ever existed. Freedom of choice when it doesn't aggress against anyone is a rational defendable position.

When people start to use the persuasion of words instead of laws, of freely operating choice to crush bad decisions, of focusing on true freedom of choice over getting exactly what they want even if it removes freedom from other people, this would be a fair world.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". It pains me to have to defend people I fundamentally disagree with, but I have yet to hear a rational argument against freedom of choice.

It's religion based legislation.

I have never had a problem working with, hiring, or selling goods to gay people. Personally, I don't see doing so as giving approval to a lifestyle the Bible says is wrong.

Other people have a different opinion. That is the way of the world. I cannot think of one single person who I have ever agreed, 100% with, on every single issue.

Our differences are what make us unique.

It's almost as if Freedom of Religion was a key tenet of our constitution.

I'm studying up on the subject a bit more. The RFRA dates back to 1993 as a federal law. It didn't do much about states so since then 28 states (Indiana being the 28th state) have passed their own versions of it at a state level.

Here is a good synopsis of the RFRA and what it actually entails.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/indi...641.html?page=1



And as an aside. I think the NCAA and myriad of nearly immediate backlash against this bill from a business standpoint clearly demonstrates the market can handle bigotry just fine.

I'm seriously promoting the right and freedom for business owners to put up "No gays!" posters. I think the WestBoro church should be allowed to make a restaurant if they want. But they will be demolished by the market and it will be a moot point.

The opposite of this bill (and these cases are quite rare) is to say people can not make choices for their business. So you can legally sue people for refusing to make cakes and flowers. I can't find any logical reason that is fair or valid.

As a passive aggressive aside, thank you for your critique of my philosophical deconstruction of the duality of choice and discrimination and the implications it has on freedom.

Thanks Kingcob, I was just about to post a similar thing.

Pit, rockdogg, PDR, and whoever else is against this bill, please quote to me the exact part of the bill where it gives someone the right to discriminate based on their religion:

Indiana Senate Bill No. 568

Now, compare that to the federal bill that was signed in 1993, by none other than Bill Clinton:

US Title 42 Chapter 21B

In fact, a version of this bill has been signed in 20 other states!

Religious Freedom Restoration Act Wiki

Oh no!!! People must be getting discriminated against! I see all kinds of "No gays!" signs all over the country! All you guys better move out of this intolerant country! And none of you better vote for Billary Clinton, or else you are the biggest hypocrites for denouncing Pence for signing this law.

So really, why is this law such a big deal? Swish, you claimed you are the only "conservative" on this board because you are against adding more power to the government...how is this bill not for smaller government?

I have no idea why the liberal media is making such a big deal about this bill. It's been the liberal media's direction to label anything religious as bigoted and hateful for the last decade or more, and it's getting old. And the bad thing is, most of you guys believe it without doing any research at all. You just gobble up the spoonfuls and spit them back out to anyone who will listen.

This law is not a big deal. Like I said before, you guys are acting exactly the same as the people you make fun of who think gay marriage will lead to people marrying animals. And it's ridiculous.

I am afraid it is a right. Freedom of religion, speech, and the press; rights of assembly and petition
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Every religion discriminates against those who do not follow the tenants of their faith, thus the sinner. I can speak freely and discriminate with my speech freely. I can assemble, or associate with others freely. If I do not wish to associate with drug addicts, criminals, degenerates, etc... I am free to not associate with them. You would not force me to associate with criminals would you?

The First Amendment to the Constitution is my protection and your protection. Your rights end where mine begin. If you wish to be a Democrat, Republican, Unitarian, etc... you are protected by the 1st Amendment to be so. However, if you wish to force me to be a Democrat, Republican, Unitarian or to accept your speech as the only truth that I must comply with under penalty of law, you are becoming a tyrant and violating my rights.

Please allow others to have views contrary to your own. Please do not say that I do not have a Constitutional right to make my own choices, live my life my own way as long as I do not infringe on your rights. A homosexual may have a right to be wed in the USA. But they do not have a right to force others to not only accept their sexual preference as legitimate but to force them to violate their own religious beliefs. The best course of action for the homosexual would be to find a merchant that agrees with their point of view.

As for Swish's argument using secondary sources who have an agenda as proof, I think it would be a better idea to go to the Constitution itself and use it to help one determine what rights one has. We as a people have given the determination of what rights we have to politicians, pundits, scholars, judges? I am a free thinking man. My sexuality is none of my neighbor's business. It is not my government's business.

Here here... I agree entirely.

I like the way you think

King Cob,

The Jim Crow laws was the government dictating to the population what it can and cannot do. You cannot vote if you cannot pay a poll tax. You cannot drink at this water fountain if you are not a certain race or gender. Does anyone believe that every person in the jurisdiction of the Jim Crow laws agreed with them? It was the force of the government that was the problem. The same thing is being used now to argue against discriminating in whom a merchant may or may not sell their goods to. This is offensive to my core. My soul hurts when I hear fellow Americans arguing to oppress me using the government and at the same time claiming I am the oppressor.

Precisely what I was trying to point out.

Jim Crow wasn't freely chosen action of individuals and businesses to discriminate.

It was a law that fined and arrested you for NOT discriminating.

Now people want to flip the table and fine and arrest you FOR discriminating.

Either way they are fining and arresting people for acting on their beliefs and limiting freedom with their threats of fines and jailtime.

It's hard for people to argue against bigotry in society without reaching for the gun of the state to impose it. It's a bummer for sure.

Here here OrangeCrush. I agree. Any law that restricts my rights is a bad law. My rights to religious freedom or even freedom from religion is protected under the Constitution. I think it is possible to never step foot into a church. I think it is also possible to go to church daily. God Bless America. Or Goddess Bless America. Or maybe Blessed Be America. Or my favorite, Bless the random formation of cellular structure force America.

King Cob,

Want to know a secret. In 2008, I was chosen as a delegate from my district to go to Austin to represent Hillary Clinton. I am a Democrat. I guess I am one of those Reagan Democrats, though I did not think Reagan all that and a bag of chips. I am more likely to vote for a Green Party candidate than a New York Republican. They both are out to limit my freedoms. One actually believes what they say, guess which one.

I am one of those educated Democrats. Silly me going to school to learn. hehe Silly me for learning to use critic thought.

Actually studying and basing your beliefs on evidence and thinking?

Non sense! I believe what my dad believed and what the news tells me. If it feels right it is the truth!

I'm less surprised now that you mention you're green, but a democrat at first was surprising. What do you base your beliefs around that ended up with you leaning that direction?

Personally I am apolitical and think eventually a society raised to respect eachother's rights will lead to anarcho-capitalism. But it is multigeneration and basically I think the evidence points towards politics being an emotional reaction rather than a thought out process of building beliefs. (basically like being a browns fan) The evidence to me seems to be pointing towards better parenting being the lever for improving society vs. political power being the lever. Cure the emotional lust for power people seem to have, the willingness to violate others rights, seems more powerfully to be a result of childhood than any political sphere to me.

King Cob,

I believe I became a Democrat because I was young and thought the world owned me a living. I grew up on Cleveland Punk Rock. I was not a good kid at best. Then I joined the Army. I learned the value of discipline and awareness of things other than my immediate surroundings.

I became a disc jockey and enjoyed the life of partying, drinking, just being a free spirit. Then I came to realize that my bills needed to be paid, my stomach needed to be fed, and I enjoyed smoking Marlboros. They did not just appear in my pocket. So I went back to school and got my degree in education and certified as a teacher. I quickly found this was a mistake as I was only just beginning to grow up. The students deserved more than a teacher who was hardly able to put a matching outfit together. So I took a job that led me to a career that I enjoyed outside of teaching.

Then my best friend died. I came to the realization that I was just spinning my wheels and fooling myself. My life was being wasted and I was not truly happy being just a cog in the machine. I returned to school. I got my Masters in Education and Counseling. I am a certified school counselor, teacher, vocational counselor. I became associated with unions as a disc jockey, teacher and I have been asked to be a representative of the SEIU union local in NY. I turned it down as I find they do not always have the best interests of their members at heart.

I read a book called Fountainhead, and then a book called Atlas Shrugged. It opened my eyes to things I saw daily but could not put my finger on. I listened to Rush Limbaugh since the mid 80's but mostly for entertainment value, sort of like some of my friends watch Jon Stewart. I realized that my own actions are the only thing I can truly control and that control is what life is about. If you are not controlling your own life, then others or events are. I decided I will not live that way. So I read the Constitution, of course my brother, anarchy2day encouraged me to do so.

I work in social services. I work with those with mental disabilities. It is not an easy job but it is a fulfilling job when you have success. I am a Dallas Cowboys fan who has come to like the Browns through my brother.

I was a Green because the Democrats and Republicans promised the world but never delivered it. I was a Green more in opposition to the establishment parties. I am registered Independent in New York. I am not represented well in Congress by either Katko, Schumer, or Gillibrand. My city is falling apart. I see the old Cleveland flats everywhere in Syracuse. I am disappointed in politicians and feel I can only live my life. Perhaps through living a good life, I can influence others. I hope that helps answer your question.

Further, Jesus' entire purpose for coming to earth was to die for our sins. That is the only reason He allowed Himself to be born into human form.

But religion is not the victim in this case. Fundamentalists are the ones reaching for the "government gun" to legalize the denial of rights to Americans.

It seems even the Gov. of Indiana sees a need to clarify that law.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/03/...objections-law/

I see nobody addressed my point at all. If the reason people wish to oppose serving gays is based on their "sinful lifestyle", you are they planning on including drunkards, drug addicts and other sinful lifestyles? Or simply single out gays?

Because regardless of the law, this is what people seem to be promoting. When and if you try to use religion to single out one sinful lifestyle only, it becomes bigotry.

Yep.

We can get nutty with things, and it can go badly, but over time logic and reason do tend to win out.

These types of laws will one day be struck down by higher courts.

These types of laws will one day be struck down by higher courts. [/quote]

PDR, why do you think courts are any better at determining Constitutionality of a law than politicians? Courts are the government. The Constitution states you have rights and they cannot be taken from you by Congress, Presidents, or Courts. I believe part of the problem is that the citizenry has come to accept the government decides their rights. The courts ruled slavery was Constitutional in the past. I am certain that as an American, you would not wish to limit any citizen's rights? The idea that the government can force anyone to submit to the will of another citizen on the basis of stopping discrimination has surrendered their liberties to the government.

Just for the sake of understanding the argument, what would you opinion be if the courts came to say that it is not only your right to discriminate against a group but you must discriminate against them? If you agree that would be tyranny, then you must admit that government forcing a person to submit their religious freedom rights to accommodate another group is also tyranny. What other rights are you willing to compromise in order to stop discrimination? Can the government now limit your freedom of speech because one group may express hatred of another group, such as those who call Christians, hate-filled or bigots? This is not a slippery slope, it is a cliff. Fight for your fellow citizen's rights because when one citizen loses their rights, we all lose them.

BTW, I am certain no one believes there is a right to a cake or am I to take that you do believe that a person has a right to a cake?

I think you miss the point many of us are making. It has nothing to do with the actual religious beliefs of the people involved. It has more to do with the fact that they have a Constitutional right of freedom of religion. The government should NEVER involve itself in religious matters. I think the idea of opposing religious freedoms because you do not agree with the religious tenants is interjecting the government into religion.