Dear MDR: I would probably agree with your points, but had as much trouble following your detailed elaboration as people have complained about mine.
1. Can you find and cite the exact language used in the Arizona bill that doesn't target homosexual orientation specifically, but is general enough to cover all cases?
I think this would back your point most clearly, that it can be used equally by all and is not targeting refusal of service to gays, for example.
2. as for the conflict with public accommodation/equal treatment and the First Amendment
NATURAL LAW tells us that you get what you give, if you go in discriminating against the business owner then you get the same in return; that is just natural cause and effect.
it defies logic to expect equal fair and inclusive respectful treatment from others
WITHOUT practicing the same yourself.
Unfortunately, there is nothing in the First or Fourteenth Amendment that requires people invoking this to "practice it themselves". That is inherent in natural laws but NOT written into Constitutional laws, which only require govt/public institutions to follow these laws protecting individual rights.
Now, if we are going to start extending these responsibilities to corporations, businesses, etc. then it follows to hold ALL people to the same standards for consistent enforcement.
Clearly, this cannot be legislated, but only chosen by free will. Where people recognize the natural laws: for equal inclusive treatment, it makes sense to respect the same of others.
SB-1062:
http://www.azcentral.com/ic/pdf/SB-1062-bill.pdf
As you may already know, Governor Brewer vetoed the bill . . . for an absurdly ambiguous and cowardly reason. But I expected that. She’s a typical career politician, “full of high sentence but a bit obtuse.” I’m an Arizonian. I know the inside politics. The real, unstated reason for Brewer's veto is because the NFL threatened to withhold the Super Bowl. We haven’t had a real classical liberal in the governor’s mansion in years.
Actually, I would have vetoed it too. As I have stated a few times on these threads, it’s clumsily drafted, and its too restrictive concerning the ridiculous burden it places on the respective proprietor or cooperate concern.
The biggest problem is that it incessantly goes on about religious convictions. That’s too narrow and, therefore, inconsistent with the actualities of natural, constitutional and case law. In spit of Jones’ self-serving leftist claptrap, not the law as it is, but what he would have it to be, given his statist-bootlick inclinations, one is free to refuse service for virtually any reason within the parameters of providing a service or a product that entails participating in any activity or making any expression that is ideologically abhorrent to the individual proprietor.
That is the legal test, the only one that matters, and the principle of public accommodation does not trump it. That can’t be repeated too often.
As you can see in the above, sexual orientation is not mentioned in the bill at all. In fact, it’s utterly irrelevant, except to the homofascists and their allies who are wont to impose their morality on others, push them around, bully and harass.
Anyone can invoke it on religious grounds, but if challenged in court one must provide a substantive justification, which brings us to its major flaws.
First, once again, the legal test goes to behavior in terms of participation or expression. Jones’ assertion that the matter hinges simply on the service or product provided everyone else is baby talk. The controlling principle is not public accommodation, but the paramount concerns of the First Amendment. The notion that one should have to redundantly justify their religious objections to any judge or jury given the ramifications of established law is absurd. That which is inalienable is potentially subject to nullification relative to the arbitrary calculations of others?! LOL! The way the bill is drafted, it could potentially be turned on its head, the result being the opposite of that intended.
Second, “religious convictions” could arguably be construed to negate the right of the agnostic or the atheist to object on his moral grounds.
Ultimately, what actually needs to be protected goes to the concern of protecting persons from frivolous lawsuits relative to established law who might otherwise be ruined by mindless, pitchfork-wielding barbarians who would that the government be empowered to nullify that which is inalienable in the name of “social justice”, i.e., the governmental imposition of lefty’s religion of collectivist moral relativism.
This bill was drafted by an incompetent legislator. Such a thing requires the deft and nimble mind of an expert on First Amendment case law.
Forget Brewer. She’s just another political hack--career above the well-being of the people. The reasons she gave for vetoing it demonstrate that she’s ignorant about the founding ethos on which this nation was founded and ignorant about case law too. A competent Governor would have simply sent the bill back to the drawing board, ideally, with a draft of a more sensible version attached.
Once again, make no mistake about it, the laws currently being contested by Christians in New Mexico and elsewhere are going to be struck down, just as ObamaCare’s impositions on the moral convictions of charitable enterprises that have paid staffs and provide healthcare benefits (like The Little Sisters) and for-profit enterprises as well (cooperate individuals like Hobby Lobby) will be struck down. We still have a slightly right of center Supreme Court that will hold to established case law and not create an entirely new principle out of thin air in violation of rights that are inalienable. As for the future . . . well, who knows. We are losing the cultural war, and so goes the government. It will be a bitter victory for the useful idiots though who don’t grasp the ramifications of their elite masters’ agenda at all.
You write: "Now, if we are going to start extending these responsibilities to corporations, businesses. . . ."
Corporations/businesses for all intents and purposes in this regard are individual citizens, yet another fact that falsifies the nonsense that lefty has been blathering on these threads.
Corporate personhood - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
