Shopkeepers who don't discriminate are somehow "bullying" a certain kind of Christian

After a bill recently passed in Mississippi allowing shopkeepers and providers of goods and services to withhold such services on religious grounds (i.e. not serve gays) another group has produced decals saying that they're happy to provide such services and won't discriminate.

In the utterly twisted logic of the American Family Association a spokesman proclaims:

"It's not really a buying campaign, but it's a bully campaign," he says, "and it's being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture."

http://www.towleroad.com/2014/04/af...stickers-are-bullyi/comments/page/2/#comments

So a business displaying a non-discrimination decal is "trampling the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture?

Excuse me but what exactly is offering to serve people they don't like doing to stop them from living according to whatever "dictates of scripture" they choose to follow? They got their way, they can refuse service to people they don't like but if anyone else offers such services it's encroaching on their religious freedom?

I'm scratching my head on this one. Can anyone help explain this to me?

(BTW I deliberately categorized this as "a certain kind" of Christian because elsewhere in the news, Christian groups are putting their weight behind measures which seek to further equality. It would be wrong to tar all believers with the same brush).

 

It's the American Family Association. If you scratch you head over their actions you won't have any hair left.

 

Exactly.

 

I'm thinking his comment is taken out of context. If you have another link on this story from an unbiased source, please provide it. Just as I do not go to Stormfront for opinion on race issues, I will not go to pro homosexual sight to get unbiased information on gay issues.

 

OK, here's a link to the story as it appears One News Now which is owned by the AFA:

(hardly un-biased but biased in the opposite direction, if you know what I'm saying)

http://onenewsnow.com/business/2014/04/28/miss-businesses-stick-it-to-religious-freedom#.U2FNx1eI0fz

I think the comments section says it all.

 

I don't think that comment really can be taken out of context. I just looked at their site. It sure seems like something a spokesperson would say for them.

 

See, if you DON'T hate gays.....you're discriminating against the people who do.

It's quite simple.

 

Try being a little more honest and read the rest of his quote:

"They don't want to hear that homosexuality is sinful behavior – and they wish to silence Christians and the church who dare to believe this truth."

Smith offers a word of caution for those who do business with facilities posting the decal supporting homosexual activism. "If you do that, you are agreeing with these businesses that Christians no longer have the freedom to live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience," he tells OneNewsNow.

And he is absolutely right. The far left's Nazi style tactics of trying to force religious people to serve a group that cannot prove their "condition" is more than a choice violates their Constitutional rights which are actually listed in the first amendment unlike gay marriage which is nowhere in the Constitution.

No black man could walk into a store, get a cake then leave announce he is white then demand the same business recognize him by his declaration and everyone has to pretend his new choice is more than a choice. Only homosexuality can make that claim. Race and gender are out of luck backed by science. Goths could make the same claim and have the same amount of solid evidence that their choice is not of their own making.

 

Thank you for the alternate source. It appears that the context was correct and Mr. Smith was claiming that any business that uses that sticker is 'bullying' Christian establishments. While I agree in part with the bill, I do not see businesses that display the sticker as 'bullying'. If some businesses have a right to deny business to some people, other businesses have a right to indicate they hold no such reservations.

 

Why are you still calling these people Christians?

 

The stores that display the sticker realize it is more important to make money then make a statement. If you don't like homosexuals that is fine. But don't blame your competitor for taking the business you don't want.

 

Nonsense they can say whatever they like. They're even free to discriminate who they do business with. What more do they want?

Who's saying they can't live out the dictates of their faith and conscience. They're completely free to do that and others are completely free to ignore them, so what's the problem?

Nonsense they're free to not serve a group whose condition they believe to be a choice they just think that everyone else should be in lockstep with them even if they A) Don't think it's a choice or B) Don't care if it's a choice or not because, if it is it's a choice they're free to make.

Care to focus on the question in the OP. Are businesses who are happy to serve gay patrons oppressing the type of Christians who would like to and have earned the legal right to not serve those patrons?

Surely they should be happy that there are people out there that are eager to serve the people they don't want to serve?

Isn't that a win-win?

 

Call it what ever you want it doesn't sound very Christian like to discriminate, and hate on anybody who purchases things from people who don't/won't.

 

Well it's what they call themselves and I was very careful to say: A certain kind of Christians.

 

The bold is the problem.

 

Oh! I'm pretty sure it is, yes!

 

You are assuming it ends there. With the businesses destroyed by the homosexual movement there is plenty of proof it doesn't.

 

If that were true 2 bakeries and a photographer in 3 states would not have been run out of business by the gay advocates.

Because it isn't true. I've already given you 3 examples.

Complete BS. You really need to read about the businesses attacked and destroyed by the gay advocates in Oregon, Colorado and New Mexico.

That wasn't what the man said. He called it bullying the community by adding the BS phrase "we don't discriminate" instead of simply saying "gay friendly" The idea is to shame businesses into complience if not force them as they have done in other states.

If that were the end of it but it isn't. I've already given 3 examples proving its not.

If the Nazi tactics ended and businesses could simply identify their preference without retaliation I would be all for it. But the history does not back up that assumption of yours.

 

What businesses? I see no references to businesses in Mississippi being destroyed.

 

Choosing to serve a group isn't the same as using legislation to force someone else to serve them.

The AFA's argument is baseless. They could make this argument against legislation that forces Christians to serve gays, but they can't make it against competing shopkeepers that voluntarily serve gays while they won't.

 

But we're talking about a state where they have the discriminatory laws they want and yet they're still not happy, they're still whining

Irrelevant to this state where they have enacted the kind of laws they want but it's still not enough.

This thread is specific to Mississippi which has the laws you presumably want and yet still the social conservative far right religious groups are still playing victim. How much will ever be enough?

Why would they be ashamed to be associated with the lord's work?

Three examples which are irrelevant to this thread.

So businesses pointing out that they follow a different service model is retaliation? Retaliation to what exactly? Divisive and discriminatory laws maybe? Whatever happened to freedom of speech? They're not forcing discriminating businesses to close are they? Just offering people an alternative.

 

Likely, a certain CEO of Mozilla would still have his job, too.

 

You don't seem to have much appreciation for nuanced positions.

The merchants feel that the organization that is distributing the gay friendly merchant decals is pressuring business to put decals in their window too or face boycotts when they do not want to place a pro-gay sticker up because they are not pro-gay. It does not mean that they actively discriminate, just that they do not want to endorse the gay movement.

This has gotten absurd, but it is the fault of the gay community trying to play the "We are just like blacks--see look at the Jim Crow laws". The odds of pretty much any store I shop at knowing I am gay or straight or bi or asexual, or a hermaphrodite, or a black lesbian trapped in a white man's body are slim to none.

 

You're off your rocker.

They're trying to say at businesses who announce hey are willing to do business with gays are somehow trying to restrict their religious freedom.

So only Christian businesses are free to do business with whom they choose? And anyone who tries to do otherwise are abridging their right to religious freedom.

So the religious are only free if they are allowed to dictate everyone else's freedom.

Not on your life.

 

Oh really and there was I thinking irony came in drips not floods!

This whole decal debacle came as a reaction to state time and treasure being allotted to measure SB 2681 which had as its principle and primary purpose to allow institutionalized discrimination against, mostly, gay and lesbian citizens but also just about anybody else its backers and "consultants" including The Family Research Council, Focus on The Family and the Rutherford Institute: all well known political lobbying firms (and in some cases, documented hate groups) deemed unfit for the protection of the parabola of law because the former did not comport to the latter's worldview.

My position from the legal perspective is that such measures, beyond the possibility that they are likely unconstitutional, are also unworkable if taken at face value. People already have religious freedom, they can believe whatever they want or, similarly, nothing. That said, do we really want new and unnecessary statutes on the books that support the idea that a Jewish baker should be able, with the backing of law, to refuse to serve a Christian a bagel just because he's a Christian even if he previously had a right to refuse service to anyone for any reason as is often the case? How about a Catholic Pharmacist refusing to sell contraceptives to a Methodist? Or any number of a plethora of similar situations you can spend your time dreaming up. Whatever your perspective, I hope you'll appreciate in a nuanced way that it's probably not the best course of action for legislators to be actively taking sides against any particular members of their own electorate in this way.

My position from a personal perspective is that I'd like to see this play out in a way in which people can arrive at accommodations without reaching for the law at the first available opportunity. In places where non-discrimination ordinances are in place I would like to see conservative religious establishments displaying signs as discreet or as blatant as they choose, stating that they would prefer persons who don't comport to their world view to take their business elsewhere but that, absent that possibility, they will carry out the business request while withholding endorsement of the activity. The same would apply to a gay bar holding an evangelical Christian wedding reception.

I'm sure that, if this were to happen, both would pretty soon get fed up with the goading and go their separate ways in short order.

Which merchant's, where? I'm sure there are plenty of merchants not displaying the decal that aren't ardent supporters of SB 2681. Maybe they don't even know what it is (I'm sure most people and businesses don't), maybe they don't think it will affect their customer base in any significant way. No one's forced into this, not least genuinely anti-gay businesses because as is the nuanced point of this thread, they actually have got the law on their side. They're laughing all the way to the courthouse regardless of what happens. They win by default so if that's the case, why should they even care if another group of businesses decide not to play on a wholly voluntary and unenforceable basis? Instead they decide to act all butt-hurt about it. Hardly a dignified response to a win?

There is a difference when the words "discriminate" and "endorse" are used in a personal versus a legal context.

Nobody is under any obligation to display a decal and not displaying a decal does not indicate an "anti-gay" business.

Because they're the ones spending hours in, taxpayer funded, committee, drafting laws which, if they only share a law degree between them, they must know will not withstand constitutional scrutiny; thereby constraining their constituents to further, future expense they can, frankly, ill afford? Yes, on the one hand I do agree that it is absurd but I really can't see how that's the fault of the gay community?

The point with most of these laws and for most of the people concerned by them is that it never affects you until it affects you. In most cases it probably NEVER will but if it ever does happen, do you want the law to offer an open avenue to redress or do you think your chance of a fair trial should be stifled because the law preemptively supports someone else's idea of what you deserve based on what they think you are?