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Double Standard?

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  • mossrose
    replied
    Originally posted by Sparko View Post
    So now bible verses are "hate speech?"
    Of course they are! Haven't you read anything from Canada over the last decade or so? We are far more enlightened than you Yanks when it comes to forbidding the very mention of scripture that says homosexuality is a sin!

    Leave a comment:


  • Sparko
    replied
    So now bible verses are "hate speech?"

    Leave a comment:


  • hamster
    replied
    Originally posted by starlight
    Social prejudice and discrimination leads to gay people suffering stress, anxiety and depression in massive numbers, and leads to large numbers of suicides as well as them resorting to smoking and alcohol for stress relief, both of which carry significant dangers of their own.
    I'm well aware of the stress and the toll of being gay, having experienced suffering from tolerable to agonizing for over 20 years. But even in places where gay people experience less discrimination and prejudice(like places in Europe and the place where I live, the San Francisco Bay Area) the suicide rate for gay men is STILL much higher than that of straight men, even gay men in steady relationships. Gay men are apparently more vulnerable to clinical depression, I have it myself to such a degree that I can't even be helped by medicine.

    And the 'gay community' is pretty damn depressing in and of itself. Find a video or picture gallery of things like the folsom street fair in San Francisco. Do it from home though because the content will probably get you fired. Imagine growing up expecting to have a normal family life and a spouse to have children with. Then at 13 or so you realize you're gay and that, among other things, is how you see gay people behaving. And as for marriage, half of gay men in same sex marriages don't even remain faithful to their partner. On gay dating apps and websites, there is a checkbox for "Married."

    There is also a difference between not condoning something, not wanting to participate in it, and wanting it to be illegal for everyone who seeks it. I don't condone heavy drinking but I don't want to make it illegal. I can't be part of a gay wedding because of my religious convictions but I don't try to make issues that are almost purely religious into binding law for the public.
    Last edited by hamster; 04-06-2015, 09:33 AM.

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  • Mountain Man
    replied
    Originally posted by Sam View Post
    Your subjects are a bit messed up:

    "The Constitution of the United States prevents the government from compelling someone to publish another's speech but allows for generally-applicable and neutral laws to impinge on the religious values of certain individuals."

    Not that this incredibly over-simplified sentence of yours was the content behind the "double-standard" initially stated. There, you were making a reference to a specific situation and conflating events that were not, in fact, identical in the context of what's being discussed. In that respect, you were clearly wrong on several important counts.
    It is a double standard. Just because there's a questionable legal justification for it doesn't stop it from being a double standard. For one thing, it depends on an unreasonably narrow definition of "speech". Otherwise, the bakery should have been compelled to create the imagery even if they refrained from adding the text.

    So, double standard.

    Leave a comment:


  • Starlight
    replied
    Originally posted by Sam View Post
    A person can be wrong and not be malicious, after all.
    That's true. And I do know that that majority of the opposition to gay rights is based in ignorance and not in malice.

    It's just that it's hard, as someone who's aware of the harm that these people do in ignorance, to not get extremely angry about it. Mass murder done in ignorance is still mass murder. The people still suffer and die. Ignorance and stupidity as a defense only gets you so far.

    This estimate suggested the death toll was around 2000 gay people per year in Canada, primarily due to the chronic stress suffered as a result of general social prejudice. That estimate seems carefully calculated, and their numbers on gay suicide rates agree with numbers I've researched myself with regard to the US and NZ. The numbers are pretty simple and clear: Anti-gay Christians kill far more Americans than do Muslim terrorists. Social prejudice and discrimination leads to gay people suffering stress, anxiety and depression in massive numbers, and leads to large numbers of suicides as well as them resorting to smoking and alcohol for stress relief, both of which carry significant dangers of their own. (Interested people should read this explanation of the health effects of discrimination on gay people.)

    So when someone says "I don't hate gay people, I just...xxxxxxxx" I find it really really hard to not simply mentally substitute in "I don't hate gay people, I just make them feel socially disapproved-of until they kill themselves" as I read the sentence, because I am well aware that that is what it boils down to.

    And frankly, when it comes to the topic of marriage, I'm not prepared to grant much clemency to the anti-gay Christians on the grounds that they're ignorant: Christians go on and on and on about how important their marriages are to them. They know how important a marriage can be to an individual on a personal and psychological level and in a day-to-day experience way. So they should be well aware of just how much harm and suffering they can cause a person by setting out to deny that person a marriage. On this of all topics, they of all people, should be aware of just how offensive and personally injurious they are being by attacking gay people's marriages. They are reasonably able to plead ignorance when it comes to not really understanding long term medical effects of chronic stress, or not really understanding how 'one or two' instances of discrimination experienced by a gay person might lead that person to have a generalized fear and anxiety about the possibility of future discrimination, or not really understanding how gay people come to feel when they think that "everyone's against me" and "maybe I'm better off dead, like they say", but they surely absolutely have to know that by attacking these people in their marriages they are hitting them where it hurts on a psychological and personal level because they know how central marriages are to people's lives and how meaningful they are to them as a person.

    Leave a comment:


  • Epoetker
    replied
    Discrimination is about being negative towards a particular group of people based on their personal characteristics. Do you understand the difference between being negative and positive? Let me explain, because you don't seem to get it.
    Does this definition of dualistic and intrinsic Good and Evil come from the yin-yang religion, the Ahura Mazda/Angra Mainyu religion, or the Hydalyn/Zodiark religion? Can I use the terms interchangeably?

    If someone is having a wedding, and celebrating the happiest day of their life, then baking them a cake and helping them celebrate the happiest day of their life is a nice thing to do. It's something positive. Helping others celebrate their happiness on the most special day of their lives is something something nice, sociable, loving, kind, people would want to do.
    But the joy and happiness of a wedding for most people is to see a definite and presumably final step in their personal development: Marrying two fundamentally different people to start a new family. Showing happiness toward gay weddings tends toward the silly (most won't even keep having sex with each other exclusively, making the marriage at most just a party with better food and clothes) or ghoulish (most lesbian marriages take a turn for the sexless, utilitarian, and abusive in short order.) Taken merely with a knowledge of how these arrangements tend to go, the effect of the spectacle is only to diminish the good memories of actual weddings between people actually trying to build a life rather than people forcing applause at the gates of an insane asylum.

    Whereas, if you say "no, I can't have you being happy, because you have some personal characteristics I despise and hate, and my religious beliefs tell me to be nasty to you. Therefore rather than help you celebrate your happiness I'm going to be as nasty as possible and express my objection to your wedding even though I wasn't asked, and in no way support you in your celebrations of your happiness and try my best to make you unhappy on your special day." That's a negative thing to do. Being out to stop the happiness of others and doing their best to ruin the most special day in someone else's life is something nasty, anti-social, hate-filled, malicious people would want to do. And doing it due to their personal characteristics (being gay) makes it "discrimination".
    Your extreme dualistic religious sympathies aside, there is a time for love and a time for hate, a time for praise and a time for rebuke, a time for presence and a time for absence. "Negativity" and "positivity" are meaningless as legal constructs.

    Now in this example, the guy wanted "two cakes with anti-gay messages" according to your quoted article. Let me break "anti-gay" down for you. There is the negative component: "anti". And there is the personal characteristic: "gay". Combine those together and you get discrimination. The guy wanted a cake baked with a discriminatory message. The bakery turned him down because the bakery doesn't approve of discrimination. In this example, the man wanting the cakes baked is trying to express nastiness and hate towards a select group of people based on their personal characteristics - he is the one trying to discriminate. Whereas the bakery are the ones refusing to be a part of such an act of discrimination.
    The law should not concern itself with trifles. On that note, please stop raping the English language to promulgate your legal and religious fan-fiction.

    Leave a comment:


  • myth
    replied
    Originally posted by Starlight View Post
    Being out to stop the happiness of others and doing their best to ruin the most special day in someone else's life is something nasty, anti-social, hate-filled, malicious people would want to do.
    Your insistence on attacking the character of people with whom you disagree is damaging to your credibility. If you'd like to convince anyone of...well, anything...then perhaps you should stop.

    Leave a comment:


  • Sam
    replied
    Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
    "You can't compel me to publish your speech, but I can compel you to violate your religious values."

    Double standard.
    Your subjects are a bit messed up:

    "The Constitution of the United States prevents the government from compelling someone to publish another's speech but allows for generally-applicable and neutral laws to impinge on the religious values of certain individuals."

    Not that this incredibly over-simplified sentence of yours was the content behind the "double-standard" initially stated. There, you were making a reference to a specific situation and conflating events that were not, in fact, identical in the context of what's being discussed. In that respect, you were clearly wrong on several important counts.

    Leave a comment:


  • Mountain Man
    replied
    Originally posted by Sam View Post
    Can't be compelled to publish another person's speech. Simple as that.
    "You can't compel me to publish your speech, but I can compel you to violate your religious values."

    Double standard.

    Leave a comment:


  • Sam
    replied
    Originally posted by Starlight View Post
    Okay, so your beliefs are incoherent and your views self-contradictory...
    I guess that's not overly surprising for a Christian.
    You're talking about two different categories of things: a propositional affirmation or rejection and an emotion; just as a person could support same-sex marriage and hate gay persons, a person can oppose same-sex marriage and not hate gay persons. A person can be wrong and not be malicious, after all.

    No benefit in casting all opposition as emotionally-based.

    Leave a comment:


  • hamster
    replied
    It's part and parcel of ongoing attempts by those Christians who are anti-gay to make having a gay wedding as difficult as possible. Firstly it was making sure it's illegal. Then it moved to making sure Churches were banned from hosting, clergy were banned from officiating. Now it's moved to caterers not catering.
    I see no reason why not feeling comfortable participating in a same sex marriage makes a person part of a large political conspiracy. That's like saying a person's vegetarianism is necessarily part of a larger move to bring down the beef industry

    Okay, so your beliefs are incoherent and your views self-contradictory...
    Really? Someone does something you don't condone so you experience hatred for them? You must hate a lot of people.

    I mean, seriously? Is your emotional spectrum THAT simple?

    Vegetarian? Hate people who eat meat
    Sober? Hates people who drink
    Doesn't condone playing videogames all day? Burns with a hatred for gamers so intense its light and heat can be experienced from the surface of the moon
    Last edited by hamster; 04-05-2015, 06:14 PM.

    Leave a comment:


  • Starlight
    replied
    Originally posted by hamster View Post
    Not making a cake for someone does not ruin their wedding reception unless they happen to be the only bakery with the recipe for cake
    It's part and parcel of ongoing attempts by those Christians who are anti-gay to make having a gay wedding as difficult as possible. Firstly it was making sure it's illegal. Then it moved to making sure Churches were banned from hosting, clergy were banned from officiating. Now it's moved to caterers not catering.

    It's just the latest in a long line of things aimed at making gay people suffer as much as possible. People who are out to get other people and make them suffer are evil.

    I don't understand why you and others assume "hatred" is involved.
    I can't know people's hearts, but I can judge them by their actions. When their actions are full of hatred and evil, that's what I have to assume their hearts are full of.

    I don't condone same sex marriage and I certainly don't hate gay people
    Okay, so your beliefs are incoherent and your views self-contradictory...
    I guess that's not overly surprising for a Christian.

    Leave a comment:


  • hamster
    replied
    Therefore rather than help you celebrate your happiness I'm going to be as nasty as possible and express my objection to your wedding even though I wasn't asked, and in no way support you in your celebrations of your happiness and try my best to make you unhappy on your special day." That's a negative thing to do. Being out to stop the happiness of others and doing their best to ruin the most special day in someone else's life is something nasty, anti-social, hate-filled, malicious people would want to do. And doing it due to their personal characteristics (being gay) makes it "discrimination".
    Not making a cake for someone does not ruin their wedding reception unless they happen to be the only bakery with the recipe for cake

    I don't understand why you and others assume "hatred" is involved. You don't condone something, so you can't support it, you wish the person well and say goodbye. I don't condone same sex marriage and I certainly don't hate gay people
    Last edited by hamster; 04-05-2015, 05:52 PM.

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  • Sam
    replied
    Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
    I know what you're saying, and it clearly is a double standard, but legally, the fact that the baker was willing to meet the request halfway is almost certainly what made the difference in court.

    But it does beg the question: Why is it O.K. to refuse half the order but not the whole order? Especially when the impetus behind both actions is identical?
    It wasn't a decision from a court and the agency that made the decision cited the "derogatory language and imagery" being ordered for the cake:

    Source: Denver's Azucar Bakery wins right to refuse to make anti-gay cakes. Alan Gathright, Eric Lupher. ABC7News, Denver. 2015.04.04



    The agency's decision found that the baker did not discriminate against Jack based on his creed. Instead, officials state the evidence shows Silva refused to make the cakes because the customer's requests included "derogatory language and imagery."

    The baker said "in the same manner [she] would not accept [an order from] anyone wanting to make a discriminatory cake against Christians, [she] will not make one that discriminates against gays," according to the decision.


    "The evidence demonstrates that [Silva] would deny such requests to any customer, regardless of creed," the civil rights agency's decision stated.

    © Copyright Original Source



    Can't be compelled to publish another person's speech. Simple as that.

    Leave a comment:


  • Mountain Man
    replied
    Originally posted by seer View Post
    But haven't liberals been telling us that no one should discriminate, for any reason? And of course the decoration was the main part of the order.
    I know what you're saying, and it clearly is a double standard, but legally, the fact that the baker was willing to meet the request halfway is almost certainly what made the difference in court.

    But it does beg the question: Why is it O.K. to refuse half the order but not the whole order? Especially when the impetus behind both actions is identical?

    Leave a comment:

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