Pence signed it: Add Indiana to the list of states with "religious freedom" laws

[Brittain33]

It is my sincere religious belief that I need to go around poking strangers in the eye.

[Brittain33]

I've see variations on this argument on the Internet for 20 years. Trust me, people like Ernest and Shua are not going to change their minds on this or come around on the Indiana law.

[Brittain33]

The ink is barely dry on the law...

http://nationalreport.net/marcus-bachmann-refused-service-indiana-store-owner-assumed-gay/

[Brittain33]

I think part of the law should function to create social limits, what is and is not acceptable behavior.

Which is what led to Jim Crow Laws, Prohibition, Blue Laws, just to mention a few of the things from our own past let alone foreign travesties like the Nuremberg laws.  The creation of social limits is not something that should be a goal of the law, tho it sometimes is a side effect.

You're absolutely right, a law protecting gays from discrimination is exactly like a law empowering the state to discriminate against or criminalize gays. It's remarkable that more of us whiny gays don't see this clearly.

[Brittain33]

The ink is barely dry on the law...

http://nationalreport.net/marcus-bachmann-refused-service-indiana-store-owner-assumed-gay/

I realize that the National Report isn't as (in)famous as The Onion, but you do realize that was a satirical piece, not a real piece of journalism, right?

No, I had absolutely no idea.

[Brittain33]

Ernest, to be clear, when Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated for anti-discrimination laws, you apply the same logic to him? He should have known better than to have the government force public accommodations to take down their whites only signs, because that was equivalent to discrimination itself?

[Brittain33]

Is it the same exact law, though?

http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/what-makes-indianas-religious-freedom-law-different/388997/?utm_source=btn-facebook-pin

Also, doesn't Connecticut, unlike Indiana, have state protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation?

[Brittain33]

Is it the same exact law, though?

http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/what-makes-indianas-religious-freedom-law-different/388997/?utm_source=btn-facebook-pin

Also, doesn't Connecticut, unlike Indiana, have state protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation?

States that copy laws from other states frequently add language to clarify their intent when courts have made rulings since the original law was enacted. It looks pretty clear that IN did exactly that to make clear that RFRA gets the interpretation they want from their courts.

True. It seems to me that Connecticut passed its law under a different motivation in the 1990s (Muslims growing beards in prison, that kind of issue) and would not have introduced it under its new Hobby Lobby/gay discrimination gestalt.

[Brittain33]

We needn't structure our laws around a few nutters here and there, who for whatever reason, incorrectly believe that a wedding, by definition, has to be a religious ceremony. That's just a flatly absurd suggestion.

Please explain why anyone should be compelled, under penalty of law, to participate in someone else's wedding ceremony, religious, civil or whatever.

Again, we seem to be relitigating the Civil Rights Act of 1964. No one is insisting "anyone," this is about vendors who provide services to couples that are not religious in nature outside of people's tortured rationales.

[Brittain33]

That's all that RFRA laws do. They allow persons who feel an action would impinge upon their beliefs to raise that fact in court and place the burden upon the impinger.

No need for obscuring abstractions to "persons" and "actions" when we are talking about specific cases. The issue here is that Indiana considers persons to equal vendors, public accommodations, and businesses who participate in the economy and now would like to pick and choose among customers if they don't like gays. Back to my previous point, we are relitigating the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

[Brittain33]

It's interesting to read this case about a high school basketball player who came out and consider that the opposing team's behavior can be defended as a religious objection by these laws. Read it.

http://www.outsports.com/2015/4/1/8316867/dalton-maldonado-gay-basketball-kentucky

[Brittain33]

Most likely, swastika cakes are not a service that any bakeries (Jewish or otherwise) offer to anybody. The issue here is a minority getting the same service already offered to everybody else.  Are you being this obtuse on purpose?

Some bakeries will put whatever you want on a cake, no questions asked.  

Is it your belief that if one bakery does this, it compels all bakeries, in states in the absence of RFRA, to put naked pictures on cakes or make swastika cakes? Is that really your understanding of how anti-discrimination laws work?

You're smarter than this. Think it through.

[Brittain33]

I'll remind people that the issue with bakeries isn't having to bake a special kind of cake for gays, it's not wanting a cake you'd bake for anyone to be bought by people you find icky who will serve that cake at a same-sex wedding that your church doesn't recognize as a valid ceremony.

[Brittain33]

I'll remind people that the issue with bakeries isn't having to bake a special kind of cake for gays, it's not wanting a cake you'd bake for anyone to be bought by people you find icky who will serve that cake at a same-sex wedding that your church doesn't recognize as a valid ceremony.

The issue for bakers is usually not the cake and to whom it will be served, it's the decorations on the cake. They'll sell a standard unadorned cake to anyone, but some don't want to adorn it with a same-sex couple in wedding garb.

Do you have any links or resources that show that the plastic topping is usually the issue when bakers have turned down same-sex couples? Adding a cake-topper is literally a few seconds' worth of work, and the same-sex couples I know who have gotten married in Massachusetts have bought their own to provide to the baker. A baker who is interested in providing the cake but not the cake topper because they don't lake gay couples or gay marriage would be easily able to make that compromise... a waiter at the wedding facility can add it. The stories I've read indicate not wanting to serve gay couples at all.

I think this is an interesting theory but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny, much like the concern that same-sex marriage should remain illegal and same-sex couples denied legal protections because of the risk of bogus "Chuck and Larry" marriages for health care benefits.

[Brittain33]

Here's a link to the Oregon case where a bakery was fined for not providing a cake to a couple—specifically, they called their wedding "an abomination unto the lord" so at least you can't call them insincere. I'm not able to find any reference to a two-bride cake topper or even generic decorations (do people put icing on a cake in the shape of two tuxedos?) being the crux of the issue.

http://www.kgw.com/story/news/local/2015/02/02/ruling-gresham-bakery-discriminated-against-same-sex-couple/22760387/

Here is a case in Colorado where the baker objected to "baking a cake" for the wedding, not to decorating it with a two-groom cake topper.

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/colorado-baker-shut-shopp-serve-gay-couples-article-1.1815868