Indiana's freedom to discriminate law

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Magical Realist, Mar 29, 2015.

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  1. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    It's easy to see because you are a bigot.

    The problem is that your characterization is all wrong. And that really is an interesting question; even throwing coins you should be able to find a head in there somewhere, but all you're showing us is ass.

    It's like the conversation about child labor laws. Why did the evil liberals pass them? It's not like people would exploit children, right? Well, except that's how it went the first time. What do I mean, the first time? Well, go back and look at how we treated children in the labor force before there were child labor laws. You'd be amazed at how many Americans don't know that part of of our history.

    Similarly, the reason we make these laws is because enough supremacists create the need.

    Your construction puts the judgment entirely in the creation of the laws, as if the bigotry and discrimination didn't exist.

    Think of it this way: Starting with indigenous peoples and blacks, the American heritage is a running string of hatreds. Even people who generally stand together today as "white" fought over "racial" issues. Jews, Italians, Irish, Chinese, Catholics in general, hispanics, women. It is as if we cannot learn, as a society, that hatred is wrong, so instead keep cycling through a list, looking for a coincidence of the right time for hatred and the right people to hate.

    Questions of discrimination protections would not arise without a question of discrimination. In the end, the argument comes down to being mad at the government for not endorsing really bad behavior.

    You're unable to establish your "dual standard" in any remotely real context. Hey, is that another "dual standard"? One in which people taking part in a discussion must meet disparate standards? You know, like anti-discrimination has to be impossibly perfect, and halfwitted bigotry only needs to exist?

    I mean, we get that much, and the thing is that if you could be honest about your disability―be it developmental or delusional or antisocial or whatever―this community is entirely capable of making certain accommodations. After all, look around, there are people here who think anything but the most concise of posts equal trolling, whether or not that idea of concision is even communicatively functional. And as it is, you've taken far more words than the five required to simply say, "I am an angry bigot!"

    And that part we already knew.

    But beyond that, it would probably be helpful if you started making sense. And here's a helpful hint: When you're trying to establish a concept in the discourse, such as an alleged "dual standard", it helps if (A) that dual standard can be objectively demonstrated with evidence, and (B) you actually do so. Another thing that would help is to state the principle clearly, so that anyone else reading might have a clue what you're on about.

    But since you can't define this dual standard coherently, and can only sputter spittle and fury, nobody actually knows. As far as we can tell, the horrible dual standard you're talking about is that one more target of Christian hatred is about to come out of the crosshairs.

    In which case I would remind the Christians pushing for discrimination laws that they really do need to stop calling themselves Christians.

    Here's something more like a dual standard: "My rights are a Christian are violated as long as that person's rights are intact!"

    We've been hearing versions of that for years:

    "My First Amendment rights as a Christian are violated as long as that author is not censored."

    "My equal rights as a Christian are violated as long as I can't fire that person from his civil service job because I, as his publicly paid civil service manager, find him unsatisfactory to my Christianity."

    "My equal rights as a Christian are violated as long as she has access to medical treatment that offends my assertion of Christianity."

    "My equal rights as a Christian are violated as long as I cannot refuse service to people with other religious outlooks I find unsatisfactory."

    At some point, it looks as if the Christianity is tailored to suit the fancy. There is a reason Christ is so absent from this iteration of Christian faith.

    Look, I'm not black. Neither am I female. But I am gay, and I am eurasian, and I did grow up in a backwater. That is to say, I don't hold much of a market share, but I've taken my licks over the years. And I mention this because in recent years traditionally empowered blocs have been laboring to cast themselves as disempowered minorities suffering some kind of bigotry. Whatever the reason for this fantasy, I can assure them that it is not fun, is not rewarding; that is, it's not as glamorous as they think. But they seem somewhat envious of the care we show our neighbors' injuries, so they want to be similarly injured because otherwise they cannot reconcile their own desire for human compassion.

    And in this particular context it really is one of the saddest things I've ever seen. While it is always a risky endeavor to psychoanalyze any collective in a singular context, there is a strangeness about this particular iteration of Christian faith that seems to say, "Go away go away go away! Hey, why am I so lonely?"

    And when one's identity is to stand apart from other people in order to harm them, it's true, the rest of us just don't have much sympathy for their long dark nights of the soul.
     
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  3. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Religious discrimination has been a hallmark of Christianity for centuries. In particular, they have been discriminating against Muslims since that particular offshoot of Abrahamism became more-or-less standardized into the two major sects we know today: Shia and Sunni, who themselves have been at each other's throats since the death of Muhammed, when his followers began the eternal argument over who should have become his successor.

    The Crusades were nothing more or less than an attempt to (at best) marginalize Muslims and (at worst) annihilate them in order to establish complete and permanent rule over Jerusalem. The battles of the Crusades occurred continuously for two centuries, and ended in victory for the Muslims.

    As the Jews were stifled by Arab rule, the Diaspora kicked into high gear and thousands of them emigrated to Europe. Before long the European Christians became just as intolerant of them as the Arab Muslims--and eventually more so. Pogroms flared up at random intervals, with Jewish villages being burned down, often with their populations annihilated.

    The Jewish tradition of personal hygiene and domestic cleanliness resulted in their modest death toll during the Plague, which the Christians (who believed that it was sinful to immerse oneself in water) saw as the result of collaboration with Satan. This made them even more reviled and the pogroms became more common.

    Later, as the illiterate Christians misinterpreted a line in the Bible to mean that it was sinful to lend money at interest (when in fact the Jews, nearly all of whose males were literate in Hebrew and often also in the host languages, read it correctly as prohibition of usurious interest rates), the Jews were the only people in Europe willing to lend money. Naturally, as their money-changing enterprises grew into what today we call "banks," the thanks they got from the Christians for keeping the entire continent's economy from collapsing was--you guessed it: yet more pogroms.

    After the Treaty of Versailles (which ended WWI) left Germany disgraced and impoverished, a wacko named Hitler easily directed the wrath of his "good Christian" subjects toward the Jews. In the "fog of war" during WWII, his armies managed to slaughter a significant portion of the continent's Jewish population--at least 2 million, although since Perestroika opened the records of the governments of the former communist countries to Western scholars and journalists, the figure now seems likely to be at least double that--perhaps half of the Jews in Europe.

    In other words, it cannot be denied that the world's Christian population is absolutely no better than the members of any other religion.

    Your rendition of their guiding philosophy: "My rights are a Christian are violated as long as that person's rights are intact!" is as accurate as any other, and in fact it seems a little understated. What other religious community has been attempting to literally annihilate another religious community--one which prays to the same God and shares half of its holy book--for more than half a millennium?
    Christians assert that, somehow, their own personal rights include the absolute necessity to stop non-Christians from doing things which they find unhealthy, ugly or blasphemous.

    Of course we all get a little squeamish when people we don't even know treat their children or spouses--or even their pets or farm animals--in ways we find cruel; or when they try to maintain an Industrial Era lifestyle by working at Iron Age occupations; or when they spoil the environment that supports all of us; or even when they simply make too much noise or turn their neighborhoods into slums and junk yards, reducing our own property values. But this is a far cry from actually enslaving them, or even killing them, for nothing more than a philosophical disagreement based on differing interpretations of legends that were invented in the Bronze Age and with every passing century appear to be, indeed, nothing but legends.

    This is what the Christians have been doing to the Jews for centuries, and (as if there actually is a cosmic scorecard somewhere) it's what the Muslims are doing to the Christians now.
    How bizarre. The vast majority of Americans continue to identify themselves as Christians, and the wing-nuts--oops I meant to write "fundamentalists"--have stormed funerals, erected so-called "Creation Science" museums, and even burned the holy book of a different sect of Abrahamism. And that's only in the last few decades! In my lifetime, they turned against other Christians who happened to have more melanin in their skin, killing quite a few and preventing millions of others from getting good jobs or living in pleasant neighborhoods.

    If we go back to the late 19th century when my ancestors arrived here, the ancestors of today's Christians were happily killing off the Native Americans, even though a great many of them had converted to Christianity--albeit at gunpoint, one of the most popular historical techniques for creating converts

    The beloved creator of our "Wizard of Oz" books, L. Frank Baum, was editor of the Aberdeen, South Dakota newspaper, prior to his fame as a novelist. In an editorial in 1890, he wrote, "The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; it’s better that they should die than live the miserable wretches that they are. [The U.S. government should] wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth."

    In 2006, 87 years after his death, two of Baum's descendants, Gita Morena and Mac Hudson, traveled to a South Dakota reservation to ask for forgiveness, apologizing to Sioux families whose ancestors were killed in the great massacre: "We stand before you and before the citizens of both our great nations to suggest that 'The Wizard of Oz,' a great American fairy tale, and the Massacre at Wounded Knee, a great American tragedy, be forever joined in the hearts, minds and memories of all our people."
    They don't really want anyone to go away. Their driving instinct is to convert everyone to their own religion. This is also true of the Muslims.

    The Jews, ironically, not only do not place great emphasis on conversion, but they actually discourage it. The only way you'll be even slightly encouraged to join their community is to marry one of them--particularly if you're female, because according to Jewish law, the children of a male Jew are not Jewish unless their mother is also Jewish.
    They just do not see it as harm. They believe that they are saving us by bringing us into the fold of the "one true religion" so that we'll have our chance at going to Heaven when we die.

    The only reason that some of them believe it's all right to persecute some non-believers is that those particular non-believers are encouraging others to be non-believers, thwarting their mission to bring everyone into their fold.

    Of course they're as irrational about this as they are about practically everything else, including cosmology and evolution. Many of them honestly believe A) that homosexuals put a lot of effort into "recruiting" children into becoming gay or lesbian and B) that people who are heterosexual can be "converted" into being happy as gays or lesbians.

    They support this contention by trumpeting their "successes" at "converting" a few gays and lesbians into "reforming," when all they've really done is to find members of the tiny percentage of the human species who are genuinely bisexual, and coaxing them into swinging the other way for a while.
     
    Last edited: Apr 12, 2015
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  5. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    True, but insofar as value is in the eye of the beholder, the problem is that the behavior is repulsive in the eyes of the intended converts. Years ago, in this site's religious debates, I would occasionally raise a version of a point about, "Why would anybody want to be like you?"

    In a way, that principle is sort of in play in the real world. Personally, I find Justice Thomas' dissent in Strange v. Searcy iconic; the essential argument was, "Come on, this is going to be over in a few months, so why can't we give them just a little longer to enjoy being assholes?" And that's the thing. With oral arguments drawing nearer by the day, it would seem the supremacists are bringing supremely weak tea (see #76↑ above), and in the end even someone as hostile to gay rights as Justice Thomas can be, the question at some point transforms to, "Really? This is it? This is what it takes?" And no, generally decent society will not go that far in order to support its own bigotry. Most people give over once the disparity in their outlook becomes clear to them; it's part of how we know we're doing okay as a society.

    Even when it was just watching the televangelism testimonials about how he came to Jesus because he saw the ghost of his son standing at the bus stop one day six months after suicide, and something, something, something, God was speaking to me so I asked Jesus to please please please come into my heart and take over my being and all that. Oh, right. Even when it was just that sort of stuff, the question whispered. "Really? That's what it's like?" And for many of my generation, the answer was, "Yeah, you know? If the phone doesn't ring, it's me."

    No matter how we frame our own behavior for our own perspectives, the functional value is what it equals in the world. I don't worry so much about how the gay rights movement looks in the eyes of these religious conservatives; we know they're kind of nutty to begin with, if not outright delusional. But if the point is to convert others to their own way of thinking, it's hard to think of a more repulsive way to go about it. If this is what it comes to, then why would anybody want to do anything other than bolt in the opposite direction?
     
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  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    People who can be cajoled into joining a religion have, more often than not, some terrible unresolvable issue burning inside them. An evil deed they performed because they were not strong enough to withstand the temptation. A good deed they didn't perform because it was too difficult or risky. How about the parent who blames himself for his child's suicide, because he was too busy earning money to pay attention to his family? The notion that God will forgive them is very attractive. After all they can't even forgive themselves. And of course the notion that they'll be reunited in Heaven with all their loved ones is powerful--even though they gloss over the obvious drawback that the people they hated will also be there. Not to mention... what do you do when you've been widowed three times and all three of them will be waiting?

    I would join the Rastafarians right now if they could promise me that I won't see my parents in heaven. (Well okay, I suppose they'll have some really good weed up there.

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    )

    There's also a notion prominent in Christianity that all of your burdens can be off-loaded to Christ. My reaction to that (which has nothing to do with whether he is real) is: Hasn't the poor fellow already suffered enough?
     
  8. Photizo Ambassador/Envoy Valued Senior Member

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  9. CEngelbrecht Registered Senior Member

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    What about all the prophets, who had more than one wife? That's half the Bible discarded, right there.
     
  10. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Someone else.
     
  11. CEngelbrecht Registered Senior Member

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    Some-thing else, surely.
     
  12. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Or nothing. I mean anything is better than taking sex advice from the same people that are obsessed with cutting off foreskins.
     
  13. CEngelbrecht Registered Senior Member

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    Not the worst thing you can do, by the way.

    Sorry, sharing too much.
     
  14. Photizo Ambassador/Envoy Valued Senior Member

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  15. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    Good for them. Bigotry should be classified as a hate crime.
     
  16. CEngelbrecht Registered Senior Member

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    How would you define bigotry? Legally, at least?
     
  17. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    The religious attitude toward sexuality formed long ago and was connected to disease. Most of the liberal lifestyles that are resisted only persist because science is able to fight the diseases they create. Humans did not always have science and modern medicine. The ancients could still observe and narrow down what forms of behavior were safe; without needing special propping up. Behavior that did not need artificial support is natural and was assumed from God.

    Back in the 1980's, when the closet was opened and gays were out in the open, they began to fall like flies from a new sexually transmitted disease called AIDS. The lions share of the first 100,000 deaths, due to AIDS, were from this small minority group; 2%-6% of the population. If science had not interceded, to prop this up, we might not be having this discussion today, due to the extinction of the gays.

    Or, if religion had had more leverage than atheism, hundreds of thousands of human lives may have been saved due to consciousness of natural thinking. One now knows the precautions needed to cheat natural but this is not the same as natural, since natural is self standing and does not need PC to prop it up with a dual standard.
     
  18. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    So God told Jews they needed to circumcise as a hygienic measure? Perhaps you can provide the scriptural basis for that assertion? Then again, perhaps not.
     
  19. Photizo Ambassador/Envoy Valued Senior Member

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    “After careful review by our team, we have found the ‘Support Sweet Cakes By Melissa’ campaign to be in violation of our terms and conditions,” it wrote. “[T]he subjects of the ‘Support Sweet Cakes By Melissa’ campaign have been formally charged by local authorities and found to be in violation of Oregon state law concerning discriminatory acts. Accordingly, the campaign has been disabled.”

    http://christiannews.net/2015/04/26...-bakers-claims-money-was-for-illegal-purpose/

    "God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them."
     
  20. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I am happy you have the honesty to admit that religion's parochial attitude towards sexuality was the product of scientific ignorance.
     
  21. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    Letting people get married doesn't destroy the sanctity of marriage, letting people get divorced destroys the sanctity of marriage.

    Why don't they campaign against divorce instead?
     
  22. Photizo Ambassador/Envoy Valued Senior Member

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    You raise a good point, one that I have been aware of and thought about...I stand by the Biblical, God ordained revelation concerning what marriage is. That would include by definition the notion of divorce as antithetical to that same revelation. My take is they do not campaign against it because they have been compromised in that area. No question, divorce is a scandal in the Church and one that opens them to the charge of hypocrisy. That said, there are movements that have risen up to curb divorce among Christians. The problem is, there is not much difference between them and non Christians with respect to behaviors. I think the responsibility for that can only be laid at the feet of the pastors...and beyond that, to the seminaries i.e. those teaching the pastors. What is being passed on has no correspondence to living the life of Jesus...it all has to do with transferring doctrine from one person to another...knowledge for the sake of knowledge with no clues as to practical outworking in the lives of anyone. Sad commentary.

    My point in posting the previous two articles has been to highlight what I perceive to be mean spirited, disingenuous actions...why not respect their issues of conscience? Why not remain friends, agree to disagree and go on to another place rather than force someone to violate their conscience, be charged as criminals, and forced to pay an exorbitant fine? To do such a thing strikes me as cruel in the extreme. What has been gained? Will not their own consciences bother them later? Maybe not.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    There is no God ordained revelation concerning what marriage is, in the Bible or anywhere else.

    If I am not mistaken, confusing what men create (marriage, money) with what God has created is condemned in every Abrahamic religion. The pithy version runs like this: "Render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's".
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2015
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