Indiana's governor signs bill allowing businesses to reject gay customers

[Starlight]

Um, except that's not the way that courts and governments in the States currently interpret that amendment.

Please don't tell me you're turning into one of those US Constitution-thumpers who arbitrarily declare that X is unconstitutional because they say it is...?

They're coming to get us all.

[Bill the Cat]

What's the problem? Under Article IV of the U.S. Constitution each state must recognize the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.

That's not quite what I meant.

AFAIK they want full recognition as citizens including the right to marry. What more are they after in your view?

At this point, my view isn't relevant to the point at hand. You said "And it is only the legal recognition of their marriage that most homosexuals are demanding AFAICT". Then you admitted that "legal recognition of their marriage" was not the ONLY thing they are demanding. Please admit that you misspoke and then we can continue.

[Epoetker]

Yes it is.

No, it's not. Society owes you nothing if your goals are contrary to its own.

You're free to look "askance" all you want, you are not free to discriminate against others based upon personal views. The intent of the anti-discrimination laws refers to the right of people to be treated equally.

If that intent becomes destructive and fragmentary of the host society, then too bad for the anti-discrimination laws. They're bad laws and need to be repealed.

[Tassman]

That's not quite what I meant.

OK. What did you mean?

At this point, my view isn't relevant to the point at hand. You said "And it is only the legal recognition of their marriage that most homosexuals are demanding AFAICT". Then you admitted that "legal recognition of their marriage" was not the ONLY thing they are demanding. Please admit that you misspoke and then we can continue.

Yes, the legal recognition of homosexual marriages within the context of their full recognition as citizens, which is obviously a given. What they’re not after are rights that other citizens don’t have, which is what you seemed to be implying.

No, it's not. Society owes you nothing if your goals are contrary to its own.

“Society” in the USA is comprised of its citizens and each citizen and has the right to equality within said society.

If that intent becomes destructive and fragmentary of the host society, then too bad for the anti-discrimination laws. They're bad laws and need to be repealed.

Who decides what these laws are that need to be repealed, your neofascist blogger friends?

What nonsense! The abolition of slavery, the repeal of the Jim Crow laws and women’s suffrage caused fragmentation and social destruction at the time, just as homosexual rights do today to some degree. But they were and are necessary for the sake of a just and equal society.

[Bill the Cat]

OK. What did you mean?

I mean they want every facet of society to consider their "marriage" as normal and to squelch any dissent as "hate speech". From the classroom to the boardroom to the church pews, they want it all. They do not simply want the legal recognition, they want the social recognition too. While those two CAN go hand-in-hand, they are not the same, nor are they inseparable.

[Tassman]

I mean they want every facet of society to consider their "marriage" as normal and to squelch any dissent as "hate speech". From the classroom to the boardroom to the church pews, they want it all. They do not simply want the legal recognition, they want the social recognition too. While those two CAN go hand-in-hand, they are not the same, nor are they inseparable.

Well it is

http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/orientation.aspx

This is the position of the APA and virtually every psychiatric and medical body, plus all related disciplines, around the world. Your particular religious world-view may not accept it as yet but then, religion has a long history of getting it wrong when it comes to social reform. But it usually gets there in the end.

[Bill the Cat]

Well it is “normal” so it is reasonable to expect society to recognize this fact:

“Both heterosexual behavior and homosexual behavior are normal aspects of human sexuality. Both have been documented in many different cultures and historical eras. Despite the persistence of stereotypes that portray lesbian, gay and bisexual people as disturbed, several decades of research and clinical experience have led all mainstream medical and mental health organizations in this country to conclude that these orientations represent normal forms of human experience…”

http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/orientation.aspx

This is the position of the APA and virtually every psychiatric and medical body, plus all related disciplines, around the world. Your particular religious world-view may not accept it as yet but then, religion has a long history of getting it wrong when it comes to social reform. But it usually gets there in the end.

A bunch of liberals take over the APA and then declare it "normal". Color me shocked. SHOCKED I tell you!!

[Epoetker]

“Society” in the USA is comprised of its citizens and each citizen and has the right to equality within said society.

Stop pretending that you believe in citizenism when you're among the biggest illegal-immigrant sympathizers and enablers.

Who decides what these laws are that need to be repealed, your neofascist blogger friends?

Plenty of lawyers among them.

What nonsense! The abolition of slavery, the repeal of the Jim Crow laws and women’s suffrage caused fragmentation and social destruction at the time, just as homosexual rights do today to some degree. But they were and are necessary for the sake of a just and equal society.

Seeing your so-called "just and equal society" 60, 100, and 150 years on, I think we all can safely say "Not worth it."

[Starlight]

A bunch of liberals take over the APA and then declare it "normal". Color me shocked. SHOCKED I tell you!!

I love the conspiracy theory that no scientific institution can be trusted because they've all been taken over by liberals.

Don't like any particular fact? Accuse it of being propagated by liberals who have taken over the institution concerned. Then reality can be whatever your imagination wants it to be.

[Darth Executor]

I love the conspiracy theory that no scientific institution can be trusted because they've all been taken over by liberals.

Don't like any particular fact? Accuse it of being propagated by liberals who have taken over the institution concerned. Then reality can be whatever your imagination wants it to be.

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/...man/74794.html

Haidt’s message hit home with many of his colleagues, among them Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers of Tilburg University, who describe the 2011 event in a new paper, to be published soon in Perspectives on Psychological Science. Inbar and Lammers decided to add some rigor to Haidt’s provocative but anecdotal findings, which they did in two anonymous, on-line surveys of personality and social psychologists. They wanted, first, to verify the widespread impression of a pervasive liberal bias in the field, but they wanted to drill down even further, asking: Are there really no conservative social psychologists, or are they just well hidden? Are some liberal on social issues, but perhaps more moderate—or even conservative—on economic questions, or foreign policy issues? And if they are deliberately hiding their politics and values, why?
Inbar and Lammers drew their sample from the membership of the Society for Personality and Social psychology, the same scientific group that Haidt addressed in 2011. They contacted all members on the mailing list, and got nearly 800 responses.
The findings clearly confirm the field’s liberal bias, but they hold some surprises as well. For example, although only 6 percent described themselves as conservative “overall,” there was much more diversity than anecdotal evidence suggests. Inbar and Lammers found an overwhelming liberal majority when it comes to social issues, but only when it comes to social issues. On economic issues, nearly one in five is a self-described moderate, and slightly fewer put themselves to the right of moderate. Similarly, on foreign policy questions, nearly a third of respondents called themselves either moderate or conservative. In short, there is much more ideological diversity among these scientists than generally thought.

That psychology is overrun by liberals (at least on social issues) is a fact, plain and simple. They don't even deny it.

[Starlight]

That psychology is overrun by liberals (at least on social issues) is a fact, plain and simple.

That bizarrely ignores cause and effect.

The big "social issue" of our time is, of course, homosexuality. The psychologists have been the ones dealing with that issue on a constant basis as part of their work. Whether it's gay people who have gone / been sent to a psychologist for counselling about their "condition". Or whether it's a request for the psychologist to help them "become straight". Or whether it's a suicide attempt that results in the gay person receiving compulsory psychological support. For whatever reason, most psychologists are likely to have met and talked in-depth to quite a number of gay people as part of their profession. The field of psychology likewise has studied gay people on a large scale in numerous scientific studies, to attempt to determine the causes and effects of that behavior, and judge the extent to which it is normal or treatable.

So psychologists are, overwhelmingly, the one group in our societies that is likely to have the strongest and most evidence-based opinion of homosexuality, because they are the group that encounters it on a frequent basis and deals with it regularly in their professional capacity. It is clear that psychologists in general, after having extensive in-depth counselling sessions with numerous gay people and studying the phenomena on the large-scale level, have reached the view that homosexuality is normal, not a mental disorder, and that the problems suffered by gay people are overwhelmingly due to social prejudice against them. This can lead to psychologists having quite strong views on the subject because they see gay person after gay person arriving in their office for counselling and the reason the psychologist has concluded they need counselling is because of social prejudice against them. Quite a number of psychologists subsequently get rather upset about social prejudice against gay people because they see it as harming a lot of people, and creating unnecessary work for them.

A consequence of this is that psychologists have been quite politically active on the issue of gay rights. It is upsetting to them that they have to mop-up the consequences of social prejudices, and all the evidence they have leads them to believe that if society gave gay people equal rights then less gay people would end up needing psychological counselling. One of my best friends is a psychologist who has followed this path from starting out as a conservative Christian who'd never met a gay person when I first knew him, to dealing with lots of gay people in the course of his psychology career, to public political support for gay rights.

In short, the evidence leads psychologists to support gay rights. That's the biggest social issue of our time, so they show up as being "liberal" on social issues. No surprise there. The surprising thing is when you try and reinterpret this across-the-board support for gay rights among psychologists as being some type of liberal infiltration and conspiracy, which is just a weird and bizarre idea and doesn't really seem at all plausible.

[Darth Executor]

That bizarrely ignores cause and effect.

Not at all. We just have a disagreement on which way it flows.

The big "social issue" of our time is, of course, homosexuality. The psychologists have been the ones dealing with that issue on a constant basis as part of their work. Whether it's gay people who have gone / been sent to a psychologist for counselling about their "condition". Or whether it's a request for the psychologist to help them "become straight". Or whether it's a suicide attempt that results in the gay person receiving compulsory psychological support. For whatever reason, most psychologists are likely to have met and talked in-depth to quite a number of gay people as part of their profession. The field of psychology likewise has studied gay people on a large scale in numerous scientific studies, to attempt to determine the causes and effects of that behavior, and judge the extent to which it is normal or treatable.

So psychologists are, overwhelmingly, the one group in our societies that is likely to have the strongest and most evidence-based opinion of homosexuality, because they are the group that encounters it on a frequent basis and deals with it regularly in their professional capacity. It is clear that psychologists in general, after having extensive in-depth counselling sessions with numerous gay people and studying the phenomena on the large-scale level, have reached the view that homosexuality is normal, not a mental disorder, and that the problems suffered by gay people are overwhelmingly due to social prejudice against them. This can lead to psychologists having quite strong views on the subject because they see gay person after gay person arriving in their office for counselling and the reason the psychologist has concluded they need counselling is because of social prejudice against them. Quite a number of psychologists subsequently get rather upset about social prejudice against gay people because they see it as harming a lot of people, and creating unnecessary work for them.

A consequence of this is that psychologists have been quite politically active on the issue of gay rights. It is upsetting to them that they have to mop-up the consequences of social prejudices, and all the evidence they have leads them to believe that if society gave gay people equal rights then less gay people would end up needing psychological counselling. One of my best friends is a psychologist who has followed this path from starting out as a conservative Christian who'd never met a gay person when I first knew him, to dealing with lots of gay people in the course of his psychology career, to public political support for gay rights.

In short, the evidence leads psychologists to support gay rights. That's the biggest social issue of our time, so they show up as being "liberal" on social issues. No surprise there. The surprising thing is when you try and reinterpret this across-the-board support for gay rights among psychologists as being some type of liberal infiltration and conspiracy, which is just a weird and bizarre idea and doesn't really seem at all plausible.

Abortion is also a major issue, and one of more relevance to normal people.

I never said anything about infiltration and conspiracy anyway. While it's almost certainly a part of it, no conspiracy is actually necessary. We know from history that scientists can be extremely inflexible, even on matters of hard sciences that involve no ideological biases. Given that we still don't know what exactly causes homosexuality, to have an entire field label it perfectly normal with such uniform conviction is, in fact, abnormal, especially when you consider that for the most part psychology isn't even science. At the end of the day it's all a matter of how gullible you are, and on that front you seem to win top prize.

[Starlight]

Abortion is also a major issue, and one of more relevance to normal people.

And is again an issue that a lot of psychologists will have had to deal with in their profession on a regular basis. They will almost certainly have strong evidence-based views as a result.

[Darth Executor]

Yeah reproductive biology and ethics are right up the alley of people who can't figure out why a human brain that misidentifies appropriate reproductive partners is not functioning normally.

[Tassman]

A bunch of liberals take over the APA and then declare it "normal". Color me shocked. SHOCKED I tell you!!

Judging by your smiley not even you can take yourself seriously, certainly nobody else can. The thing is that it's not just the APA, is it? It is the professional opinion, after several decades of research and clinical experience, which has led ALL mainstream psychiatric, medical and mental health organizations worldwide to conclude that homosexual orientation, represents normal, albeit minority forms of human experience.

Thus, to attribute the professional expertise of the vast majority of experts in the field worldwide to a left-wing conspiracy theory is paranoid in the extreme. But it's not them it's you; clearly you intend to retain your bible-based bigotry come what may.