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

[Joel]

The majority is not so much telling conservative Christians what those people have to mean by 'marriage', as opposed to simply saying "when we use the word 'marriage' we mean X". It is perfectly possible for two sub-cultures within society to use the same word with slightly different meanings and each mean a different thing by it. But there's no language-police who are going to go out and arrest people for using the word wrong.

Wait, so if Christians were to change the legal definition of "marriage" to their definition, then that's "arrogantly defining for everybody else what marriage is", but if you change the legal definition to your preferred definition, then that's fine?

The reasonable compromise (and the only thing that would be truly equal) is for the state to not define 'marriage' at all. Boilerplate property-rights contracts could still be made available for those who want them.

You are arrogantly claiming the right of your denomination to define marriage for an entire, diverse, multicultural nation.

Weird, that's the same thing Starlight said. But I'm not. If anything I'm suggesting that a denomination (or any person or group of people) should have the right to define "marriage" for themselves, and not have a legal definition forced upon them.

Whereas, the 'gay rights' movement does insist on enforcing their legal definition on everyone.

...there is no way to resolve conflicts when absolute beliefs are mutually exclusive...

That's not necessarily true. You can believe one thing, and another person can believe a mutually exclusive thing, and the two of you can live in peace.

If the culture in question ever allowed two people of the same biological sex to marry, then I judge that the statement "that culture had same-sex marriage" is then true. That's my criteria: By their definition of marriage, were two people born of the same biological sex ever allowed to marry within that culture? It's pretty simple.

Jesse doesn't get it because he keeps trying to insist that since those cultures' ideas of marriage were different to modern ideas of marriage that therefore those same-sex marriages were in fact "not really" same-sex marriages. To which I call BS.

If a person defines marriage as being man and wife, then, given that definition, it is necessarily the case that there has never been a same-sex marriage at any time in history, because it's not possible, because that's a self-contradiction.

If they regard it as a marriage, then it's a marriage.

"they regard it as a marriage" only implies that it's a "marriage" in their definition. It doesn't imply that it is a "marriage" under any other definition.

[Starlight]

You brought up the death penalty for gay sex. Sparko brought up gay marriage. Hamster brought up general punishment for being gay in India. Cerealman brought up Africa.

I was responding to you.

Oh, yes you were. Sorry, my mistake. I didn't trace that particular discussion back far enough. The general point I was making with that post - that I was responding to things other posters had said, and not simply "moving the goalposts" of my own accord, like lilpixieofterror had wrongly accused me of - remains true.

As far as your "two-spirit" crap - wikipedia?? really?

Is it not conservapedia enough for you? You know you can use google if you like to find other sources if you're not happy with wikipedia...? But wikipedia, like any encyclopedia, generally serves as a good starting point for a basic introduction to a topic for people not necessarily familiar with a topic, so serves as a good resource to link other people to in online discussions.

While I am sure there have been exceptions here and there

There are historical examples of cultures allowing same-sex marriages on almost every continent. It's not like there was this one isolated exception somewhere. And when you say things like "it being between a man and a woman for thousands of years" then it becomes highly relevant that the native peoples of your own country allowed same-sex marriage much more recently than that. It makes your statement false in fact.

[Starlight]

And yet, even when it's specified as not a marriage, you continue to claim it is one (as our other discussion proved).

That discussion ended with you simply refusing to even address the fact that the scholarly book you were citing as evidence for your absurd claims said exactly the opposite of what you were trying to pretend it said.

[Juvenal]

I wouldn't have except he has used that same tactic several times now. Even in the very post I was responding to.

Citing the post where he got it right, other than the misattribution, makes your whole argument a fail. Or better, makes your whinging on the "tactic" sound petty. What's upsetting you isn't how he played the game; it's that he scored. You're just a sore loser.

So please, don't play nanny.

My deepest, and most abject apologies, sir. In the future, I'll try my best to stick to more socially acceptable responses, like flaming.

:

[Starlight]

The first reference to gay or same-sex marriage I can find in this thread is by LilPix post #62. There's a good deal of back and forth after that between LilPix, Joel, Sam, Spart, etc., excluding Starlight, after that, but the topic had been well broached before Starlight's first reference to gay marriage in his home country in post #278.

At worst, his naming of you was a misattribution. The point that he had not initiated it in this thread was entirely accurate. I don't think you're justified in calling him a liar on this one.

Thanks for doing that.

I would also note that my reference to gay marriage in post #278 was simply an anecdote I shared with Tassman in response to one of his comments, which he seems to have appreciated. That was not me trying to "introduce gay marriage into the discussion" for the purposes of "moving the goalposts" as lilpixieofterror seemed to be claiming. Joel responded to me on the topic of gay marriage and I ended up having a discussion with Joel on that topic (and subsequently Sparko and Jesse), while simultaneously having a discussion with lilpixieofterror about the death penalty for gay sex (that subsequently came to include Cerealman, and Hamster) and it appears lilpixieofterror couldn't mentally cope with the fact that I was having two simultaneous discussions with two different sets of people on two different topics. But it does appear that it was a misattribution on my part to cite Sparko as the origin of the gay marriage discussion.

This thread is beginning to get ridiculously meta. Hopefully if I now no longer have to try and explain the discussion itself to lilpixieofterror, we can return to normal discussion instead of discussing the discussion. Although, to be honest, I think this discussion has run out of steam anyway, there's nothing really being discussed in this thread that warrants any further discussion, so maybe this thread can finally die in peace...?

[Starlight]

My deepest, and most abject apologies, sir. In the future, I'll try my best to stick to more socially acceptable responses, like flaming.

It's hilarious cos it's true.

TWeb: The discussion forums owned and operated by trolls.

[shunyadragon]

If a business owner refused service to me because I'm a Christian, I would shrug and go elsewhere. I believe in freedom of religion.

If no business would serve you nor hire you as happened to Jews under Hitler, could you just shrug and walk away, or blacks in many parts of the country in the past.

[Starlight]

If no business would serve you nor hire you as happened to Jews under Hitler, could you just shrug and walk away, or blacks in many parts of the country in the past.

Well that is why Christians in the US are so happy to allow discrimination. They know that since 83% percent of Americans identify as Christian that if any Muslim businessman says "I'm not going to serve Christians" and refuses to serve them, then (a) they can just go to the shop next door, and (b) be fairly sure that the guy will rapidly go out of business due to not serving 83% of his possible customer base, and (c) feel happy in the knowledge that they've "been persecuted for Christ" and finally been persecuted in the way that their martyrdom complex is desperate to see happen, yet in a way that personally cost them nothing at all, which is the best type of martyrdom.

Whereas they hope that allowing discrimination will mean that nearly all Christian businesses will stop serving gay people and that this will hopefully force gay people to rethink their sexuality and decide to be straight. And it will send a clear message to any children that they ought to choose to be straight.

[Jesse]

That discussion ended with you simply refusing to even address the fact that the scholarly book you were citing as evidence for your absurd claims said exactly the opposite of what you were trying to pretend it said.

No, that discussion ended with you still not knowing the subject matter at hand. But here you are, still trying to pretend that you do.

[Jesse]

It's hilarious cos it's true.

TWeb: The discussion forums owned and operated by trolls.

Odd for a troll, to have a problem with trolling.

[shunyadragon]

Well, he really has nothing else. Wikipedia and assumptions seem to be his bread and butter.

Nothing specifically wrong with Wikipedia, unless your looking for convenient scape goats. If you have a better source cite it.

[Jesse]

Nothing specifically wrong with Wikipedia, unless your looking for convenient scape goats. If you have a better source cite it.

Sure, here it is. I'm sure those of you who rely on Wikipedia are going to love it. I think it might even be more accurate. Please start using it.

[Juvenal]

... or blacks in many parts of the country in the past.

You see this kind of response so often on TWeb it's almost scary. It's as if they're so philosophically blinded to the consequences of their ideology, they've become divorced from the history of how it was, right here in the US in living memory including my own, when "We can refuse to serve 'those" people" was the law of the land.

[Zymologist]

Thanks for doing that.

I would also note that my reference to gay marriage in post #278 was simply an anecdote I shared with Tassman in response to one of his comments, which he seems to have appreciated. That was not me trying to "introduce gay marriage into the discussion" for the purposes of "moving the goalposts" as lilpixieofterror seemed to be claiming. Joel responded to me on the topic of gay marriage and I ended up having a discussion with Joel on that topic (and subsequently Sparko and Jesse), while simultaneously having a discussion with lilpixieofterror about the death penalty for gay sex (that subsequently came to include Cerealman, and Hamster) and it appears lilpixieofterror couldn't mentally cope with the fact that I was having two simultaneous discussions with two different sets of people on two different topics. But it does appear that it was a misattribution on my part to cite Sparko as the origin of the gay marriage discussion.

This thread is beginning to get ridiculously meta. Hopefully if I now no longer have to try and explain the discussion itself to lilpixieofterror, we can return to normal discussion instead of discussing the discussion. Although, to be honest, I think this discussion has run out of steam anyway, there's nothing really being discussed in this thread that warrants any further discussion, so maybe this thread can finally die in peace...?

A thread on tweb, dying in peace? HA!

[Joel]

Well that is why Christians in the US are so happy to allow discrimination. They know that since 83% percent of Americans identify as Christian that if any Muslim businessman says "I'm not going to serve Christians" and refuses to serve them, then (a) they can just go to the shop next door, and (b) be fairly sure that the guy will rapidly go out of business due to not serving 83% of his possible customer base, and (c) feel happy in the knowledge that they've "been persecuted for Christ" and finally been persecuted in the way that their martyrdom complex is desperate to see happen, yet in a way that personally cost them nothing at all, which is the best type of martyrdom.

Whereas they hope that allowing discrimination will mean that nearly all Christian businesses will stop serving gay people and that this will hopefully force gay people to rethink their sexuality and decide to be straight. And it will send a clear message to any children that they ought to choose to be straight.

Fallacy: appeal to motive.