Michigan House passes bill legalizing religious discrimination

[AggregateDemand]

If someone doesn't understand how the remedy of specific performance works, they need not burden the rest of society with their moral pronouncements.

[AggregateDemand]

Stop. Contract law isn't some magic wand, and it doesn't govern 90% of the interactions you will have with people and businesses in an average week.

That's nice, but in the real world same-sex couples sue bakers for specific performance.

This isn't the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s South. Bigot enslavement is not an appropriate remedy, especially since personal services and non-fungible goods are usually exempt, and specific performance isn't necessary in most of these discrimination cases. Furthermore, homosexuals should have the right to refuse bigoted religious customers.

Anything that restricts the law of specific performance is in our best interest, even if political hacks feign Christian virtue to appease their constituency. 

[AggregateDemand]

As you indicated in your original post, specific performance is just a type of remedy, not a cause of action. Its availability or unavailability in specific types of lawsuits has nothing to do with this Michigan bill. The bill would  prevent gay couples from bringing discrimination-related suits seeking monetary damages or any other type of relief.

What monetary damages exist, other than someone wishing to impose punitive measures? If someone causes actually monetary damages, it will be related to another contractual/criminal concept, not anti-discrimination.

The only thing this bill does is stop the judiciary from improperly enslaving citizens for political gain or under political duress. Specific-performance made sense during the civil rights movement to eliminate segregation. There is no segregation of homosexuals, and specific performance is not a proper remedy in most instances.

Everyone wins when the legislature restricts the judiciary's powers of specific performance.

[AggregateDemand]

The only ones that win when you legally allow discrimination are bigots.

Do you think a gay fashion designer should be forced to make a dress for the wife of a religious fundamentalist?

When the court forces someone to perform a specific service or to produce a unique non-fungible good, you're merely expanding the problem. Temporary enslavement of private citizens to reverse discrimination is only practical in extreme circumstances, like segregation.

I know Democrats believe in slavery, but you need to slow your roll. There are plenty of non-fundamentalists in business.

[AggregateDemand]

Is that so? By your own standard that is special pleading. Either you allow businesses to discriminate or not.

If it's okay to discriminate against gays then why not blacks, Jews, or anyone else for that matter? You can't have it both ways.

Actually, you can. The court system and legislators have devised different levels of legal scrutiny because the annotative and connotative meanings of "discrimination" in a legal context have little to do with its colloquial political use. Furthermore, the judiciary has established many limitations for the remedy of specific performance.

Most Americans understand that Christian fundamentalists are being obtuse, regarding their refusal to provide non-fungible goods and services for homosexual patrons, but you're supposed to find a remedy to any damages, not amplify the problem and undermine the US Constitution.

A world in which patrons can force businesses to perform is not a free world.

[AggregateDemand]

Again, you are making a special exception to this principle in regards to businesses refusing to serve blacks, ect.

It's the law. There are exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions.

What's your point? If I'm willing to make an exception for one demographic, I should apply no scrutiny to a claim made by another group? African Americans were struggling against segregation, which was a lingering cultural malady from a century of slavery in the US. The history of racial struggles in the US is not comparable to politically-correct political debates in the zeitgeist of modern times.

As I've explained before, a lion's share of the cultural friction between gay and straight is caused by federal regulations that treat married people as ubermensch and single people as cannon-fodder. You can fix that problem without forcibly enslaving anyone.