Good. Hopefully they can also get sexual orientation added to a protected class, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Mike Pence (Indiana Governor) signs Religous Freedom Bill into Law
- Thread starter jbug617
- Start date
- Status
Good. Hopefully they can also get sexual orientation added to a protected class, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Skiptastic
Member
It's a start. If Pence runs for governor, he'll have this stain on his record that might push folks towards a moderate Democrat. When/if he runs, you'll get ads about "Hey, remember when Mike Pence made Indiana look bad and cost the state millions?" So that could be good. I still think the legislature will stay very Republican, though it may lose some seats so there is no supermajority.
But yeah, unless businesses put the gun to their head, I don't know if sexual orientation will be listed as a protected class anytime soon. It would be great for the businesses to do that, but we'll see.
Maybe when we get Governor David Letterman.
Skiptastic
Member
"Uhhh, Speaker Bosma...uhhh, you got any gum? HAA HAA!"
No, but seriously, we voted for Barack Obama and Joe Donnelly in this state. Pence won the governor's seat in the same election as Donnelly but got fewer votes than Joe. Probably because Richard Mourdock made extremely right wing statements about abortion and lost credibility. You could apply that same logic to Pence now and people would easily buy in to that.
Pence easily lost a lot in this debacle. You have the local newspaper basically calling him out as out of his league, businesses are pissed and will probably donate to his competition.
If the Democrats can find a well known Democrat in the mold of an Evan Bayh, they would stand a perfectly decent chance at winning the governor's seat.
EDIT: Speaking of the Star, here was an interesting graphic I saw on their website:
EDIT 2: And Angie's List is standing firm against the fix, saying there need to be LGBT protections statewide, not just a statement in the RFRA.
Good as time as any to keep pushing for this while people are pissed off about it. This fix only increases the chance that people will stop caring and LGBT protections become less likely.
CornBurrito
Member
Lol wut. I'm not a lawyer but I also never made that sort of thread.
Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
The invisible hand at work, as nature intended.
btw, this is how it would go if Libertarians had their way. They think discrimination should not be illegal. It should up to the business- let the free market sort it out. Unfortunately, you'd have hate groups spreading their money around to support those businesses, regardless of the community's rejection of their discrimination.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Except their religion does not say that and THEY KNOW IT!
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
That's not what the pizza place is doing. Freedom does not entail the power to force another person (who isn't the government) to do what he or she doesn't want to do.
Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
If what the business doesn't want to do is adhere to the prevailing decency of civilization, then they should be forced.
Audioboxer
Member
I feel genuinely sorry for anyone living in the state, like yourself.
And on a bigger scale, sorry for Americans still poisoned by nonsense like this in their home country.
Dude Abides
Banned
Sure it is. If you can get pizza from N-1 pizza places, you are less free than if you could get it from N pizza places.
Link
The Autumn Wind
Gonna be hilarious when the owners just decide to shut down and retire with the money they've gotten and say "Peace out!" to their supporters.
outlawedprod
Member
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/02/living/indiana-religious-freedom-pizza-feat/index.html
Not sure if this was posted in the other news article. Has video with owners and some residents.
Not sure if this was posted in the other news article. Has video with owners and some residents.
You Are Viewtiful
Member
I wish the religious would concern themselves more about things like charity and loving thy neighbour, rather than bullying gay people :/
But don't you see, they are the ones getting bullied! They are getting bullied into silence, oh the humanity.
You connect yourself to the public roads and resources and participate in the social contract. You can't say "I sell pizza" but then selectively elect who can or cannot come in and buy pizza.
It's not an extra burden for a gay wedding to buy pizza than a straight wedding, or for a gay or trans person to buy pizza from you vs a straight person. They aren't asking the pizza location to sponsor the wedding, nor are they being forced to say "we support gay weddings". They are offering a product and are trying to have their cake (all the benefits of being hooked into the social infrastructure) and eat it too (reject components of the social structure they don't like)
The actual truth of this strategy by conservatives is that the road to defeat is pretty clear, so they've moved on from imposing their views on everyone else via law and are attempting to make it financially / structurally harder to be a non-Christian non-straight person. You hit a critical mass of businesses pulling this shit and people have to fake being straight or Christian just to live life. Hence the government has to step in as a referee and ideally tell everyone that you have to serve customers your advertised product or don't sell product at all.
And many business didn't want to sell to blacks after De-segregation.
A telling statement.
A country where someone has to wonder whenever they enter a public establishment, "will they serve my type here?"
Nice.
Monocle
Member
America, America, God shed his grace on thee.
metalslimer
Member
lol, in your fantasy world what is exactly is discrimination?
Also it's pretty incredible how completely social conservatives have lost the battle regarding gay rights as a country wide issue. I can't wait to see this issue come up in the republican primaries and watch as the candidates further implode their chances.
Mercury Fred
Banned
Yay, let's!
I'm going to make a list of kids who killed themselves and/ or were beaten to death because they're gay to start
Seriously. Pence & this wave of RFRAs are like the Fred Phelps of legalized discrimination against gay people. They're ultimately helping LGBT people way more than hurting.
Yay, let's!
I'm going to make a list of kids who killed themselves and/ or were beaten to death because they're gay to start
I'd be a hell of a lot more magnanimous in victory, but that ship sailed a looooooong fucking time ago, its trail littered with bodies and ruined lives along the way. Surveying the wreckage, I'd say that having to make pizza for anyone who walks through the door seems pretty damn insubstantial compared to what we've seen.
And I'd take the advocates of "religious freedom" much more seriously if they were consistent in their alleged devotion to a belief set, but the picking and choosing of which sins to focus upon points to something else.
Mercury Fred
Banned
Exactly. Guilless's arguments are almost obscene to me. As if this hasn't been a long, bloody, painful battle for LGBT people to start to have a safe, open, equal place in society. The notion that religious oppressors are somehow victims is fucking disgusting and thankfully it's being seen by everyone now as the complete joke that it is.
And municipalities were passing ordiances not allowing gay discrimination.
why don't you start by listing all the straight kids you know who were beaten and/or killed for being straight
actually let me help you and link you to this handy dandy list of victims
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/02/politics/indiana-religious-freedom-law-fix/index.html
"... what was intended as a message of inclusion - inclusion of all religious beliefs - was interpreted as a message of exclusion, especially for the LGBT community. Nothing could have been truer... *ahem* further from the truth, but it was clear that the perception had to be addressed. Hoosier hospitality had to be restored." - Brian Bosma, Indiana House Speaker
Hah, what a slip of the tongue.
"... what was intended as a message of inclusion - inclusion of all religious beliefs - was interpreted as a message of exclusion, especially for the LGBT community. Nothing could have been truer... *ahem* further from the truth, but it was clear that the perception had to be addressed. Hoosier hospitality had to be restored." - Brian Bosma, Indiana House Speaker
Hah, what a slip of the tongue.
Box of Kittens
Banned
At least I find it heartening how badly Pence's attempt at a dog whistle backfired. It shows how far, and how fast, society has come along. Still a long way to go of course.
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
I'm honestly not a fan of the moral-busybody model of government. Lots of people believe lots of things that would offend notions of prevailing decency. The LGBT movement probably wouldn't be where it is today if we adopted your theory of forced conformity.
Oh, and that "prevailing decency"? Doesn't really support you on this. Shall we enforce it, then?
This begs the question of whether freedom entails entitlement to the services of others. It doesn't. It may well be a good idea for the government to require that merchants provide their services without discriminating on the basis of certain innate characteristics, but we don't have to pretend that that requirement isn't an imposition limiting the freedom of the provider; or that it's absence is an imposition limiting the freedom of the requester.
[1] I don't buy most arguments that are based on a "social contract." Where in the "social contract" does it specify that taking all comers is a prerequisite (or consequence) of doing business? The answer is, "nowhere," because there's no such thing as a social contract. There are laws that should be followed (natch), but when there isn't a law on point--and in most U.S. jurisdictions, there isn't--you'd need more to justify creating a new law than, "But roads!" That reasoning justifies every requirement imposed by government. "You use the government's roads, therefore you must do X" becomes true for every value of "X," which can't be right.
In any event, government impositions are the opposite of "freedom," which is the subject of the current discussion.
[2] Which side just destroyed a small business because the owners' daughter gave the wrong answer to a purely hypothetical question?
Box of Kittens
Banned
Yeah, I understand the libertarian point of view on this issue and can see the appeal, but in reality it's dreadfully naive and pretty much always advanced by people who wouldn't ever be denied services they wanted/needed.
JesseEwiak
Member
Can I please be destroyed to the tune of $200,000 of wingnut welfare?
Now you're pure joke status
Link
The Autumn Wind
Now?
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
Is the charity of your political opponents supposed to mitigate the viciousness demonstrated by your political associates? Because it kind of does the opposite.
Fenderputty
Banned
Did you just imply that gay people are better off having suffered through discrimination and various forms of violence instead of a hypothetical government forced conformity happening years ago?
Mercury Fred
Banned
What in the fuck
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
Is this a real question?
If so, you misunderstand what I mean by "prevailing decency." It doesn't mean "standards of decency prevailing in the present," but "standards of decency prevailing at a given time."
Again, I find your hard-on for words and the way they are arranged in sentences fascinating. How many times have you asked someone to define "is" or "it"?
Fenderputty
Banned
I'm focused on the "gays rights movement wouldn't be this far along with forced conformity" thing. It seems to imply the struggle had to happen for people to start giving the movement and gay people respect.
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
What medium do you propose Fenderputty and I use to communicate, if not words? And if words, do you propose that I permit a person to misunderstand me, or that I correct his or her misunderstanding?
No, it doesn't. It means that laws enforcing prevailing decency would have (and did) cut against LGBT folks for most of our history. That standard also suggests that we should provide exemptions from serving same-sex weddings based on the religious beliefs of the service-provider, given the poll results I linked to above. If you think there's an argument against that--or if you think that Scalia is wrong when he says laws against homosexuality are A-OK based on public morality--then you agree with me that "prevailing decency" is a bad standard for judging laws.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
Seconded. He's either a joke poster who likes argument for the sake of argument or an actual bigot
Indeed.
Shit like this is a prime example. No option for Metaphoreus' misunderstandings to be corrected, they only want to correct other people, and still ignores actual issue raised by the poster by dancing like a monkey on the sides of it.
Just don't bother guys, it's a losing scenario.
Mercury Fred
Banned
Dude Abides
Banned
Says who? I think the people who sat in at Woolworth's may disagree with this specific and rather narrow conception of freedom. however much it may hold sway in the Federalist Society.
We certainly don't have to pretend that. But nor do we have to pretend that laws that permit businesses that hold themselves out to the public to refuse service to a segment of a public don't deny a type of freedom to that segment of the public.
- Status