Discussion for article #234941
As a non-believer I don’t have any religious values to wrestle with in my mind. People are people, and categorizing consenting adults for what they do with their junk seems downright childish and silly to me.
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As someone in the service industry since the 1970’s, it would be inappropriate for me to think I was celebrating or participating in any wedding or event I worked. Yes, that is the proper word “worked.” It is the word used, “Are you working the wedding Saturday?” The choice of words of these folks is strange, like me they are the hired help.
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"Two men went up to the temple complex to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee took his stand and was praying like this: God, I thank You that I'm not like other people--greedy, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector."
If I had a business, I would not cater to elected officials (it is my believe they are all corrupt —the whole lot of them), people who lend and borrow (doing so is against Bible’s teachings), people who eat non-kosher food, prostitutes in all forms, etc. In other words, I’d only serve holy people, and celebrate their holiness.
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I never quite got how catering a wedding or providing flowers implies moral, philosophical or personal agreement with the couple. What’s next, florists demanding to interview the couple to ensure they are a compatible match? “We’d be happy to provide the flowers if you married an Aries, but you will not be happy with a Sagittarius, so no roses for you.”
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You should open a donut shop - win win!
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All round, this entire situation is just another good example that man created God in his own image: confused, confusing, intolerant, sexist, homophobic and violent.
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
–Stephen Roberts–
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This is the common sense, base idea, that should be worked from if this religious freedom crap has to be brought up at all.
But, even this is being kind to the bigots. No one is writing laws to make sure that their special group is denied rights or singled out, oh no, that would be a fire & brimstone storm of epic proportions if the extreme Christians were shunned.
The reason that the Christian wackos do these things is because they want to recruit others to be just like them. The fact that they do this sort of discriminatory bullshit chases people away from them. How God Damned ignorant can they be? This is anti to their mission, are they blind?
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How can someone be “against” something that doesn’t concern him in the least?
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He got some criticism from a few folks in our church who believed that by building a house for a lesbian couple, he was supporting “the homosexual agenda.”
wow, really? Is anything short of stoning them to death “supporting the homosexual agenda”?
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what if the couple are planning on having an open marriage? The florist better inquire with every straight couple to make sure he or she is not “participating” in an adulterous relationship!
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This is a great idea, but why limit the questions to a practice that is not terribly common? Better to ask each heterosexual couple if they have ruled out oral and anal sex, and other “perversions.” Recall that the very concept of “perversion” is grounded in the Hebrew Bible’s pronouncements about God’s insistence that all sex be for procreation, thus classifying all things non-procreative as an alteration of sex from its original course and purpose.
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And one of the biggest problems with so much of the debate around Indiana’s new bill, from both its supporters and its detractors, is that it conflates Christianity with denying people cake.
It’s worse than that. It equates Christianity with bigotry.
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Amen and hallelujah
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Excellent point
Thank you for an interesting and stimulating article. Kudos to your father; he understands what it actually means to follow Christ’s teachings. He’s a real “Christian,” not the Dominionist/theocrat so many really are. Love thy neighbor, not “judge them” because their sexual preference differs from your own.
Whatever happened to the simple passage of, do unto others as you would have them do unto you?
Christians aren’t automatically exempt from dislike, many people despise the Christian way of imposing their beliefs onto others. But, they aren’t trying to pass laws to discriminate against Christians. Shit, Christians get special tax breaks because, who knows why and what that has to do with religion. Christians God gets his name advertised for free all over the place and our money is backed by the words, In God We Trust, which is horseshit of the highest.
The neo-Christians need to back down several degrees lest they wake the sleeping giant that will remove all the perks that Christians already get for free.
Get Christianity out of our government or tax the living hell out of them for the right to be included.
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“As long as I’m free to express my beliefs, that doesn’t allow me in the public sphere to deprive people of their social rights,” he told me. “That’s something different. I’m serving the public, and I can’t discriminate like that. I think the conservative evangelical church has made a mistake in how they approach this whole issue.”
Yes. Conservative evangelicals are treating this like a war, and so the pizza place that won’t cater a gay wedding, but will still serve homosexuals in their restaurant, is really just trying to win a political battle against gay marriage. Clearly they can’t stop people from being gay (they can’t even know if someone that comes in and orders a slice is gay or straight), but they can still make an effort to support laws that keep marriage away from homosexuals.
Arguably (and we’ve all heard this before), if you are opposed to gay marriage because homosexuality is a sin, then to be consistent you have to also be opposed to a Hindu marriage, because the first commandment is pretty clear about which god you are supposed to worship, so that would be a sin also. Why would homosexuality (which isn’t even mentioned in the Ten Commandments) trump the very first commandment?
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So most Christians aren’t wacky right-wing nut-jobs. It must really pain them to see the ones that are act up in public and give them a bad name.
“As long as I’m free to express my beliefs, that doesn’t allow me in the public sphere to deprive people of their social rights,” he told me. “That’s something different. I’m serving the public, and I can’t discriminate like that. I think the conservative evangelical church has made a mistake in how they approach this whole issue.”
Is your father available for the lecture circuit?
Excellent article about real American values.