Ok so a mass murderer is forgiven as long as he repents before he dies? But someone who is gay and follows his heart shouldn't be forgiven? You would rather hire a repentant mass murderer then a unrepentant gay person? Sorry to put it in those terms but that is the logical conclusion to that argument.
You invoked the teachings of Jesus on forgiveness...and I informed you that you were mistaken.
My religion doesn't require that I hire, or refuse to hire either. But the government should also not force me to hire either. Jesus chose to eat with sinners, and he didn't rebuke those who chose not to do so. A person with deeply held religious convictions should not be forced by the government to embrace sin, or be forced to invite sin into their business. Whether that is paying for abortion or contraception, or hiring people who engage in behavior the owners religious beliefs codify as sinful.
That is religious freedom.
It's not like we just made this stuff up last year...it has been a part of our religion for millenia. The prohibitions against homosexuality are recorded in the very first book of the Bible...Genesis 19:4-5 and continue through out the Old Testament and into the New...Jesus reiterated the proclamations that God had made them male and female...and that a man should leave his father and mother and be joined with his wife. There isn't any room for discussion in that statement.
Two meanings of religious freedom/liberty:
1. Freedom of belief, speech, practice.
2. Freedom to restrict services, hate, denigrate, or oppress others.
1. The historical meaning of religious freedom:
This term relates to the personal freedom:
•Of religious belief,
•Of religious speech,
•Of religious assembly with fellow believers,
•Of religious proselytizing and recruitment, and
•To change one's religion from one faith group to another -- or to decide to have no religious affiliation -- or vice-versa.
The individual believer has often been the target of oppression for thinking or speaking unorthodox thoughts, for assembling with and recruiting others, and for changing their religious affiliation. Typically, the aggressors have been large religious groups and governments. Freedom from such oppression is the meaning that we generally use on this web site to refer to any of the four terms: religious freedom, religious liberty, freedom of worship and freedom to worship.
2.
A rapidly emerging new meaning of religious freedom: the freedom to discriminate and denigrate:
In recent years, religious freedom is taking on a new meaning:
the freedom and liberty of a believer apply their religious beliefs in order to hate, oppress, deny service to, denigrate, discriminate against, and/or reduce the human rights of minorities.
Now, the direction of the oppression has reversed. It is now the believer who is the oppressor -- typically fundamentalist and evangelical Christians and other religious conservatives. Others -- typically some women, as well as sexual, and other minorities -- are the targets. This new meaning is becoming increasingly common. It appears that this change is begin driven by a number of factors:
•The increasing public acceptance of women's use of birth control/contraceptives. This is a practice regarded as a personal decision by most faith groups, but is actively opposed by the Roman Catholic and a few other conservative faith groups.
•The increasing public acceptance of equal rights for sexual minorities including Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender persons and transsexuals -- the LGBT community (); and
•The increasing percentage of NOTAs in North America. These are individuals who are NOT Affiliated with an organized faith group. Some identify themselves as Agnostics, Atheists secularists, Humanists, free thinkers, etc. Others say that they are spiritual, but not religious.
One interesting feature of this "religious freedom to discriminate" is that it generally has people treating others as they would not wish to be treated themselves. It seems to be little noticed among those who practice or advocate "religious freedom to discriminate" that this way of treating people is a direct contradiction to the Golden Rule, which Jesus required all his followers to practice. See Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31, and the Gospel of Thomas, 6.
Source:
Religious freedom & the freedom to discriminate
