Equality and Tolerance: A Purely Objective View

[Bfgrn]

Interesting. If I ever had the power, perhaps I should force each of you to work against what you believe. Tolerate what you don't accept, believe in what you don't want to believe. Then you yourselves would be howling about how unfair and oppressive it is.

That is EXACTLY why liberals are fighting so hard to prevent conservatives from gaining that power.

George Lakoff: What Conservatives Really Want

Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.

In the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama accurately described the basis of American democracy: Empathy -- citizens caring for each other, both social and personal responsibility -- acting on that care, and an ethic of excellence. From these, our freedoms and our way of life follow, as does the role of government: to protect and empower everyone equally. Protection includes safety, health, the environment, pensions and empowerment starts with education and infrastructure. No one can be free without these, and without a commitment to care and act on that care by one's fellow citizens.

The conservative worldview rejects all of that.

Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don't think government should help its citizens. That is, they don't think citizens should help each other. The part of government they want to cut is not the military (we have 174 bases around the world), not government subsidies to corporations, not the aspect of government that fits their worldview. They want to cut the part that helps people. Why? Because that violates individual responsibility.

In conservative family life, the strict father rules. Fathers and husbands should have control over reproduction; hence, parental and spousal notification laws and opposition to abortion. In conservative religion, God is seen as the strict father, the Lord, who rewards and punishes according to individual responsibility in following his Biblical word.

Above all, the authority of conservatism itself must be maintained. The country should be ruled by conservative values, and progressive values are seen as evil. Science should not have authority over the market, and so the science of global warming and evolution must be denied. Facts that are inconsistent with the authority of conservatism must be ignored or denied or explained away. To protect and extend conservative values themselves, the devil's own means can be used again conservatism's immoral enemies, whether lies, intimidation, torture, or even death, say, for women's doctors.

Freedom is defined as being your own strict father -- with individual not social responsibility, and without any government authority telling you what you can and cannot do. To defend that freedom as an individual, you will of course need a gun.

This is the America that conservatives really want. Budget deficits are convenient ruses for destroying American democracy and replacing it with conservative rule in all areas of life.


Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
Barry Goldwater

 

[JoeB131]

Interesting. If I ever had the power, perhaps I should force each of you to work against what you believe. Tolerate what you don't accept, believe in what you don't want to believe. Then you yourselves would be howling about how unfair and oppressive it is.

Hey, dude, I will totally write a resume for any teabagging, bible thumping asshole who pays me money to do it.

I actually did write one for some chick who admitted she stopped listening to Michael Savage because he wasn't conservative enough. (I've often wondered what Savage's audience looked like, and after that, I was sorry I aked.)

She wanted a job with the Ayn Rand institute. And I totally wrote one up for her without telling her w hat a twit I thought she was. (I also gave her useful advice on job searching and did a more generic version of her resume for other job searches.)

If you run a business, you have to provide the services AS ADVERTISED.

 

[JoeB131]

[

My bigotry? What about yours? Forcing Christian proprietors to tolerate and serve people against their beliefs isn't bigotry? Here's the deal, your hypocrisy ends where my rights begin. Don't like it? That's simply too bad.

Remember, don't come crying to the government when the exact same thing is done to you.

Your rights end when you put out a shingle and advertise services offered.

you've offered the service. You have to provide them to anyone who is able to pay for them.

We had this discussion back in the 1960's, btw.

 

[NYcarbineer]

You did not read or did not comprehend what I posted. Which is it?

You said the businessman could refuse service to anyone he chooses, thus, you sided with him in refusing to serve a Jew, because he was a Jew.

That is an act of anti-Semitism. You chose to make it government sanctioned.

If you wish to dispute that, do so with some elaboration beyond repeatedly badgering me with a useless question about whether or not I read your post.

God and goddess, this is like talking to a mental patient! Supporting someone's right to do business (or not) with whomever he chooses IS NOT THE SAME as agreeing with his choices!

Yes it is. Allowing businesses to discriminate against Jews is an endorsement of anti-Semitism;

it's a choice. It's a choice of whether or not you want acts of anti-Semitism to be civil rights in your country.

It would be no different than if you supported Americans publishing child pornography, as an exercise of freedom of the press,

even if you yourself wanted nothing personally to do with child pornography.

 

[NYcarbineer]

The author of this thread claims to be objective, but his lack of objectivity is blatantly obvious.

His belief is that there is a hierarchy of civil rights in this country, and that rights based on religion, especially Christianity, are at the top of that hierarchy,

and the rights of gay Americans are far far far down the line, near the bottom.

 

[Seawytch]

I live near a town of about 20,000 that now has a grand total of 2 supermarkets. If by some chance, in a different sort of America, they were both owned by Christians who didn't want homosexuals on the premises, and the law allowed them to discriminate,

all the known to be gay people in that town would have to do their grocery shopping in the next town down the road,

about 20 miles away.

That would be the penalty, or a penalty, that being gay would impose on those people, with the blessing of the Constitution of the United States of America.

That is also, in just one example, what modern American conservatism looks like.

According to a staffer for a GOP rep, gays can just grow their own food.

Hero GOP Senator’s Office Tells Gays To Go Grow Their Own Food and Gasoline

 

[Seawytch]

Objectively speaking...Jesus didn't discrimminate. He served everyone didn't he? He turned no one away.

Why would Christians choose to discrimminate?

Because gays are icky. Surely when Jesus said "Love thy neighbor as thyself", he didn't mean those icky gays.

 

[paperview]

I just read a good article I'd like to recommend where the writer takes apart a NYT op-ed:

<snip>

Step 3: Find an audience-appropriate euphemism for &#8220;discrimination.&#8221;

Douthat knows the typical Times reader is sophisticated enough to see past the hackneyed doublespeak of &#8220;religious liberty,&#8221; so he lands on a clever new euphemism for anti-gay discrimination: &#8220;dissent.&#8221; According to Douthat, the Arizona bill was just a way for &#8220;religious conservatives&#8221; to &#8220;carv[e] out protections for dissent.&#8221; He refers to anti-gay Christians as &#8220;a dissenting subculture,&#8221; and hopes more states pass Arizona-style laws that &#8220;let the dissenters opt out.&#8221;

By rebranding anti-gay bigots as dissenters, Douthat transforms them from retrograde homophobes to virtuous objectors, unwilling to bend their beliefs to match public opinion.

This makes them seem appealing&#8212;until you remember that their &#8220;dissent&#8221; is a hatred of gay people so vehement that they&#8217;ll violate non-discrimination laws just to make sure they never, ever have to provide a gay person with a basic service. That&#8217;s not the kind of righteous political dissent Times readers like to see, but Douthat shows us that with enough elisions of logic, the two can be made to bear some spurious resemblance.

Step 4: Dog whistle to homophobes.

How can Douthat distinguish religious homophobia from religious racism? He can&#8217;t, of course: As ThinkProgress&#8217; Ian Millhiser explained, racists across America raised analogous&#8212;indeed, often nearly identical&#8212;objections to non-discrimination protections for blacks, which were definitively struck down by a near-unanimous Supreme Court in 1981. Yet Douthat scoffs at these comparisons, labeling them &#8220;mendacious and hysterical.&#8221; I&#8217;d love to hear a strong argument as to why religious homophobia is so much more acceptable than religious racism, but sadly, Douthat doesn&#8217;t even attempt to give us one.

Since this argument&#8212;that there&#8217;s no parallel between 2014 Kansas and 1960 North Carolina&#8212;is really the crux of Douthat&#8217;s column, I wish he&#8217;d given us even a glimpse into his rationale. But I have a decent idea of why he didn&#8217;t. At the core of Douthat&#8217;s argument is a tacit shrug that, well, obviously anti-gay discrimination isn&#8217;t as bad as racism:

The Bible&#8217;s hostility toward gays is a good deal clearer than its distaste for blacks. But Times readers would have no truck with such base bigotry, and so Douthat slips it between the lines, embedding it in the scaffolding that holds up his central premise.

By the internal logic of Douthat&#8217;s piece, homophobia is simply more defensible than racism. Nothing else could explain why denying gay customers is OK while denying black customers isn&#8217;t.

Ross Douthat religious liberty: homophobia is more acceptable than racism.

Some very good points in that article.

 

[zeke]

Hey lets pretend that the very best cancer doctor in the USA is Jewish (this is not pretending much).

Should it be ok for this Jewish doctor to refuse to help red neck jew haters? And lets pretend that you Carmac, are the red neck with cancer that the doctor won't treat.

That would be perfectly acceptable. Right? I mean, it is only your life on the line.

And don't bother me with the "Hippocratic oath shit. That can be ignored just like the COTUS and our laws.

 

[paperview]

I live near a town of about 20,000 that now has a grand total of 2 supermarkets. If by some chance, in a different sort of America, they were both owned by Christians who didn't want homosexuals on the premises, and the law allowed them to discriminate,

all the known to be gay people in that town would have to do their grocery shopping in the next town down the road,

about 20 miles away.

That would be the penalty, or a penalty, that being gay would impose on those people, with the blessing of the Constitution of the United States of America.

That is also, in just one example, what modern American conservatism looks like.

According to a staffer for a GOP rep, gays can just grow their own food.

Hero GOP Senator’s Office Tells Gays To Go Grow Their Own Food and Gasoline

Amazing. Some people, eh?

I enjoyed the other story linked at the end -- (me loves me the Wonkette)

Little Green Footballs brings us the heartwarming News Journal tale of this Texas man a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ about how he don’t want no “negroidal person” touching his food, while bagging it at the grocery store.

The store owner — who has just earned himself an Opposite Day Chick-fil-A love-in — told the crazy bigot he couldn’t shop at that grocer’s no more. And now the crazy bigot has filed suit, because they oppressed his religious freedom to not have black people bag his food.
Brothers and sisters, let us now have some block quote.

A Hawkins man is claiming his civil rights and religious freedom were violated earlier this year when a black man sacked his groceries and a Big Sandy grocery store owner banned the customer from the business.

DeWitt R. Thomas filed a federal lawsuit in July against Keith Langston, owner of Two Rivers Grocery & Market.
According to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Tyler, Thomas entered the market on March 5 to buy food.

He stated in a nine-page, hand-written lawsuit that he told the grocery sacker, a black man, “Wait a minute, don’t touch my groceries. I can’t have someone negroidal touch my food. It’s against my creed.”

Thomas claimed the cashier was “perplexed” by his request and yelled at him to take his items and leave.

In a telephone interview Wednesday, Thomas said, “It’s pretty simple. They treated me really bad because I told them it was against my creed.”

According to the lawsuit, Thomas went on to explain he meant a black person when he used the term “negroidal.”
The sacker, Aaron Menefee, said he thought Thomas was just kidding around.

“The first time he said it, I thought he was joking,” Menefee said. “Then he just kept repeating it.”

Menefee said once he realized Thomas was serious, he called for someone else to sack the groceries, at which time Menefee went to another part of the store.

“I didn’t feel physically threatened,” Menefee said. “I just felt verbally assaulted.”
​

Read more at ?Religious Freedom!? Cries Crazy Texas Bigot What Don't Want No "Negroidal Person" Bagging His Vittles

Which speaks directly to that last point made in my previous post.

Most of these "christians" here who say they should be allowed to discriminate against gays and lesbian because of their religious beliefs would say, yeah, but that guy is negroidaly wrong, cause Jesus don't say 'scriminate the blacks. (even though for hundreds and hundreds of years the bible was used that way...)

Yet, it was that man's religious beliefs to not have a black boy bag his vits; it's true, there's a tacit acceptance anti-gay bigotry is 'not as bad' as racial bigotry.

Protip: It is.
​

 

[NYcarbineer]

If Homosexuals want to be accepted, they need to some accepting. Otherwise this perpetual cycle of hatred and intolerance will continue. Nobody likes to be forced to do anything, but somehow one group can foist themselves and their lifestyles on another with utter impunity. What would you rather do, breed further hostility? Or come to a mutual understanding?

Allowing bigotry to flourish by putting it in a costume of religion is what will perpetuate a cycle of hatred and intolerance.

1. You want to expand what qualifies as a religious belief to whatever someone claiming to be religious says is part of their religious beliefs.

2. You want religious beliefs, and the actions stemming from them, to be unlimiited civil rights, unassailable by the government.

3. The result? You get what the Supreme Court warned against in Reynolds v United States, the case that upheld the outlawing of polygamy:


...the only question which remains is whether those who make polygamy a part of their religion are excepted from the operation of the statute. If they are, then those who do not make polygamy a part of their religious belief may be found guilty and punished, while those who do, must be acquitted and go free.

This would be introducing a new element into criminal law. Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices.

Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship; would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice? Or if a wife religiously believed it was her duty to burn herself upon the funeral pile of her dead husband; would it be beyond the power of the civil government to prevent her carrying her belief into practice?

So here, as a law of the organization of society under the exclusive dominion of the United States, it is provided that plural marriages shall not be allowed. Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief?

To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and, in effect, to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.

Sadly, there is a considerable support on the Right nowadays for exactly what the last paragraph is warning us of.

Reynolds v. United States - 98 U.S. 145 (1878) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center

 

[NYcarbineer]

So Bigotry goes to the Halloween Party dressed up as Tolerance, and wins the prize for best costume.

Congratulations, TK.

 

[editec]

Why must one person's happiness come at the sacrifice of another's?

Well at times because one's person ceiling is another man's floor, lad.

Other times that is not the case.

 

[TemplarKormac]

Why must one person's happiness come at the sacrifice of another's?

Well at times because one's person ceiling is another man's floor, lad.

Other times that is not the case.

So why must a man of faith be the floor in this case?

 

[TemplarKormac]

Me? I'm a vegetarian, I could give two shits about Chic-Fil-A either way.

Then why make an issue out of it?

I didn't. You're the one who brought it up.

Yet you're discussing it, after explicitly stating you didn't care.

 

[Sunshine]

As far as Christian beliefs and homosexuality go, equality is something that both sides need to observe. Tolerance likewise, should work on an equal plane; respect for beliefs on both sides should be equal, but without one or the other sacrificing what they are or believe in for the other. Gay or Christian, it is wrong to bully one or the other into submission. I am a Christian who inherently believes homosexuality is wrong, but on the other hand, what right does that give me to force a homosexual to change him or herself because of it? It isn't my right to change them but God's if he so chooses. He created all of mankind, so it stands to reason that he has the ability to change them as well.

But it also stands to reason that a levelheaded homosexual shouldn't expect a Christian to change what he believes to sate their demands for tolerance and equality either. To change the beliefs anyone in my opinion, changes the essence of who they are. What right does any man or woman have to forcibly mold another person to fit their idyllic views of their society? But back to equality: Forcing a person to serve a homosexual couple against what he/she believes and adheres to is no better than if the converse were true. Forcing someone to exchange their beliefs for the tolerance and acceptance of another set of beliefs is wrong. There is a fine line between service and belief that needs to be addressed.

When running a business means you have to sacrifice your beliefs to keep the peace, what good is running the business? Is this what the founders meant by "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" When you can't run your business and hold on to your beliefs, are you truly happy? Are you being allowed to live your life the way you see fit? If not, then the laws designed by our government to ensure equality among men only breed discord and malcontent from one group to another, and vice versa. As noted author Tom Robbins says about laws: "Laws, it is said, are for the protection of the people. It's unfortunate that there are no statistics on the number of lives that are clobbered yearly as a result of laws: outmoded laws; laws that found their way onto the books as a result of ignorance, hysteria or political haymaking; antilife laws; biased laws; laws that pretend that reality is fixed and nature is definable; laws that deny people the right to refuse protection. A survey such as that could keep a dozen dull sociologists out of mischief for months."

Why must one person's happiness come at the sacrifice of another's?

You read Tom Robbins. I'm impressed. So does my doctor. It's so nice to have a doctor who gets it!

 

[Sunshine]

Is homo hate inherent to Christianity? I do not think so. Hating groups of people for what they are is a learned behavior, there are many more enlightened Christians who feel that how you treat people is far more important than blind adherence to ancient scriptural dogma, how many people do you think reject Christianity only because so many Christians seem to be overly-pious pricks?

Is Christian hate inherent to homosexuality? It would seem so.

 

[Sunshine]

Sorry but if a gay wants to buy some M&M's from your store you have to sell it to them. And if you, an infidel, go to a store with a muslim manager they have to sell you groceries.

If you don't like it there are several countries in the world experimenting in segregation and discrimination. They are in the middle east and Africa, the most wonderful places in the world

But a muslim store can fire an employee for eating a BLT. It's happened.

 

[NYcarbineer]

The right to discriminate and the right not to be diiscriminated against cannot co-exist where one stands against the other.

You have to pick a side. You have to deny one party or the other their 'happiness' as the OP calls it.

 

[Sunshine]

The right to discriminate and the right not to be diiscriminated against cannot co-exist where one stands against the other.

You have to pick a side. You have to deny one party or the other their 'happiness' as the OP calls it.

No, actually, you don't. The courts in this country have, from the very beginning, been 'balancing' the rights of all citizens. This issue will be no different.