LGBTQ+ Rights and Religion

If he wins, can I call a Christian bakery and order a cake saying "God doesn't exist"?

I'd get one saying "God is dead, and we have killed him." And, then, below that "Happy Birthday" Then, below that, "Even if your age isn't real and your body's an illusion."

There's a guy on my facebook defending this customer He's comparing it to the case of the bakery that was forced to close because they refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding, insisting that if they can be made to bake a cake for gays, the other bakery can be made to make an anti-gay cake.

Doesn't the Bible condemn revenge more often than godless sodomy, however?

Well, the difference in these cases is that in the first case, the baker refused to make the cake at all. In this more recent case, the baker agreed to make the cake but refused to write the message (but provided icing and tools so the customer could write the message himself).

I'm not 100% sure the difference here is sufficient, but I can see the argument that it would be.

If they win this, couldn't this set a precedent allowing people to demand almost anything put on a cake. Like "Heil Hitler" for the local Neo-Nazi meet up?

Sure, along side lying, being an arsehole, disrespecting your kids and/or parents, pre-marital sex, worshiping false idols, being self important, judging others, gluttony, and pretty much everything else. There are very few things condemned in the bible as little as homosexuality, it gets very few mentions in the bible. The sin of homosexual acts is so unimportant in the bible that Jesus never bothers to mention it, and he's the guy that puts the Chrst in Christianity.

edited 24th Jan '15 7:41:46 AM by Silasw

The guy who's arguing with me is such a believer in laissez-faire that he thinks yes, such things should be legal, because the freemarket will drive such people out of business on its own. That human history - the entirety thereof - proves that theory wrong is alien to him. A true extreme personal freedom believer, though if that freedom is not to be discriminated against then it doesn't count.

He argues that there is no difference at all between the cases of the two bakeries, and that since "baking the cake is often the easy part" the fact that she's refused to ice it in this case still makes it discrimination. He also says that in both cases the customers could have gone elsewhere or made the cakes themselves.

The argument about what the Bible says seems specifically based in a single verse from Leviticus, and the fact that it actually predates Christianity seems irrelevant to such bigots.

To me, the key thing is that discrimination against homosexuality is not a core tenet of the religion. If anything, it runs contrary to the ten commandments (love thy neighbour). While those are not in themselves the only aspects of Christianity, it's fair to say they're some of the main ones, and they are I believe part of the original basis for British law.

There's also several parts from Paul, who had a rather disproportionate amount of sway in how the early church developed its more specific doctrines. And even though Sodom and Gomorrah wasn't actually about homosexuality, fundies like to lock on to the attempted gang rape to subjugate outsiders and say "see, they were all GAY!"

edited 25th Jan '15 12:24:02 AM by Pykrete

Just a nitpick, but in my experience, the fundies mostly refuse to refer to homosexuals as gay, because it's a word they "stole". They insist on referring to gay people (and non-cishets in general) as homosexuals, like the technical term hurts us somehow. Or sodomites. They love that term.

Note: I don't consider cishet a slur. It's just shorter than saying "cisgender heterosexual". If it offends you, feel free to suggest an alternate term (though it had better not be "normal").

edited 25th Jan '15 5:34:21 AM by Morgikit

What about saying "normal" while rolling your eyes and with utter contempt in your voice at the prospect of being normal and a look of disgust on your face. Like, "Ugh, this couple is so normal. Ergh."

I have considered redefining (another word fundies and bigots love) the word "normal" to mean "conceited". It takes a big ego to say "Oh, I'm not like thooooose people. I conform to the traditional time honored standards of our society. I'm noooooormal."

Normal is a numeric qualifier. Nothing else.

I prefer the redefinition of "normal" as "boring". Like, "He's normal. There's really nothing about him that's interesting. We can pass him over for someone more interesting."

Nobody's normal anyway. Abnormality of some fashion is so ubiquitous that anyone who actually was "normal" by conventional definitions is abnormally normal.

I actually do agree with that by either the standard definition of normality and my redefinition of normal.

Or, well, I think normal exists, but normal is imposed, not emergent. That is people are forced through social pressures to conform to a normal, and eliminating those social pressures would cause that "normal" to disappear.

I'm sure why people would get offended, as you don't use it as a slur there's nothing to get offended by. When people use it as a slur it's offensive, but that's because of it being used as a slur, not because of the word. This applies to most terms, it's the malicious intent that's the problem.

Just because you don't intend offense doesn't mean people won't get offended. They may not say "this really offends me", but I've heard enough accusations of generalizing and people insisting that Not All X, I wanted to cover my bases.

Also I learned the term cishet from tumblr, which seems to have a bit of a hatedom on this forum, and I was trying to avoid being labeled an SJW.

edited 26th Jan '15 6:20:23 AM by Morgikit

Unfortunately, that's possible. On the other hand, you could reasonably say that the pro-plaintiff arguments in the Arizona case were doomed to lead to precisely this kind of nonsense. Having legally carried the day, one can't just put that logic back into the box and make it off-limits to future applications.

Doesn't change the fact that the gay community is being punished for the actions of a handful of members (as usual). And if the perpetrators get away with it, the community has even less incentive to "play nice" with the rest of society than it did already at this point.

edited 26th Jan '15 8:26:43 AM by Morgikit

Whether they "get away with it" depends on how well their logic turns out to parallel that of the earlier case's plaintiffs: we'll have to hide and watch. Regardless, it might be a trifle naïve not to expect escalation: currently, neither side has any reason to credit the other's willingness to "play nice." Also, the current plaintiffs might argue that "playing nice" went out the door with the Arizona case anyway, and that no one much objected to the "handful of members" doing their thing earlier. In their view, it's probably time to see how much powder the other side's petard actually packs, and to what purposes it can be turned.

edited 26th Jan '15 9:10:00 AM by Jhimmibhob

Fair enough. But if the people who supported the original lawsuits are supposed to learn something from this case, they won't. They'll only be further convinced that people in this country have a vendetta against them, a belief that frankly isn't unfounded.

Not to mention it's one thing for the government to allow someone of a religious persuasion to display hate speech in public, and something else entirely to force private businesses to endorse said hate speech against their will.

Well, one doubts that either side is much interested in learning anything from the other at this point. For better or worse, the vendetta (which definitely runs in both directions) is on, I'm afraid.

And to your last observation: I fear the current plaintiffs would answer that the other side had its chance to wonder whether it was okay "to force private businesses to endorse x against their will." Having decided in the affirmative then, they've got to live with the unintended consequences now.

edited 26th Jan '15 1:13:16 PM by Jhimmibhob

If the plaintiff truly believes a same-sex wedding cake is on the same level as hate speech, I'm afraid he has problems no lawsuit can solve.

Calling one of the positions "hate speech" doesn't make it less privileged in the eyes of the law. They're both controversial positions that a defendant finds morally offensive, wants nothing to do with, and would prefer not to have to humor as the price for staying in business. Depending on what the state law says, these similarities might suffice to make the earlier decision adequate precedent for a second plaintiff win.

edited 26th Jan '15 1:28:00 PM by Jhimmibhob