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

[bedstuy]

Goddamn, I mean I knew Indiana was mediocre, middle-tier, and tolerable at best, but if this asshole gets relected in 2016 and/or the law still stands, I'm done with this state. Not even Lake County or Indianapolis would be tolerable.


My own damn representative (Bill Fine) voted for it. Can't wait to vote against him and Pence next year.

Why are you surprised? 

[bedstuy]

"Religious freedom" means the freedom to practice your religion, things like building a church, attending religious services, observing certain holy days and such. 

"Religious freedom" does not mean this freestanding right to divest yourself of any contact with people you dislike.  I would hope we all agree for example: A religious person could not create a taxi service or an airline that banned Jews or Catholics.  Religious people who are really serious can simply choose not to start businesses that cater to the general public.  And, people who only want evangelical Christian customers can easily find a way to attract those customers anyway.  Gay people don't want to hire homophobic people and besides, there are more gay weddings in San Francisco than Wichita.

[bedstuy]

"Religious freedom" means the freedom to practice your religion, things like building a church, attending religious services, observing certain holy days and such. 

"Religious freedom" does not mean this freestanding right to divest yourself of any contact with people you dislike.  I would hope we all agree for example: A religious person could not create a taxi service or an airline that banned Jews or Catholics.

It certainly would be against current law.  It certainly would be economically stupid to limit one's market, even without taking into consideration the boycott of such a business by those who would object to such discrimination despite not being personally affected.  However, the prevention of stupidity by itself is insufficient to pass a law banning a practice however much even a majority finds objectionable.

Insufficient by what metric?  You seem to think discrimination isn't a big deal.  You're also someone who is not discriminated against in any way.  

I think part of the law should function to create social limits, what is and is not acceptable behavior.  There's a basic right to be treated like a normal member of society, regardless of your race, gender, religion or sexual orientation.  That's a norm we ought to enforce, even as we allow people to make up their own mind and conscience.  

[bedstuy]

You're also someone who is not discriminated against in any way.  

that's a pretty huge assumption to make about someone you only know from online conversation.

Ah, you're right.  He's not someone who is unfairly discriminated against in any way.

[bedstuy]

You're also someone who is not discriminated against in any way. 

that's a pretty huge assumption to make about someone you only know from online conversation.

Ah, you're right.  He's not someone who is unfairly discriminated against in any way.

You say this how?  Because he's not on your short list of approved discriminated against identities so therefore he must never have experienced any prejudice? That's incredibly small minded.

And what is this that some discrimination against people is fair? It's okay if its groups of people you don't like?

He's a straight white Christian man in America.  Ergo, not discriminated against.

And, yes, I differentiate between the two major definitions of "discrimination."  One is unfair discrimination, IE unfairly treating a person on account of race, gender, sexual orientation.  The other is distinguishing two things.  

So, perhaps people treat you differently if you're a pedantic weirdo.  You may know the sting of that discrimination.  But, it's totally fair.  People can treat you differently based on how you act, or your character.  That's fair.  Get it?  

[bedstuy]

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.

Anti-discrimination laws led to the Nuremberg laws.  No...  That didn't happen.

Listen, everyone's freedom is to an extent reciprocal.  As a member of the public, you depend on being treated with a basic measure of human dignity, IE like a member of the general public.  You take that for granted, but it's very important.

You just can't put someone being black or gay on a par with someone hating blacks or gays and wanting to discriminate against them.  Nobody moved to America from Discrimination-vania.  It's amazing that you can't see the irony.  "I want to have the freedom to impose my hatred on other people!  Not fair!"

[bedstuy]

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.

Anti-discrimination laws led to the Nuremberg laws.  No...  That didn't happen.

For once you're right.  It didn't happen.  But my point wast that those laws led to anti-discrimination laws, but that both spring from the same source, viewing the law as a primary agent for forcing social change on people.  You see the possibility of some good coming from the changes you seek to force, but so did the people who passed the laws I referred to.  The primary lesson you draw from history is that the wrong social changes were imposed while the primary lesson I draw from history is that it is bad to be imposing social changes via the law.  It sometimes is necessary to deal with even worse problems.

You always make that assertion.  That we're depleted some precious life-force by having anti-discrimination laws and we've reached some breaking point where one more will lead to some nebulous bad outcome.  

Nobody knows what the hell you're talking about.  And, frankly, as a gay Jew, I'm personally offended that you would compare treating gay people with dignity to the Nuremburg laws.  That's a blatantly stupid thing to say.  And, that's just a basic fallacy.  Changing a law was bad once, so we can never change a law ever.  What about abolishing slavery?  Was that bad?  It certainly upended southern society by changing the law.

Laws are there to make people avoid anti-social behavior, killing each other, arson, stealing, etc.  Now, if you think arson or discrimination is fine, then it doesn't make sense.  But, your argument just pre-supposes that discriminating is not really a problem or truly anti-social behavior.  The non-green avatars simply assume that discrimination is valid behavior that ought to be protected, without telling us why.  We don't assume that discrimination is a trivial matter and all victims of discrimination are just crybabies, you do.  Make that argument, don't just skip to the part where you say, trivial things don't deserve legal redress.  I don't think it's trivial, convince me of that.  

[bedstuy]

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What does this even mean? Your language is so empty and vague and broad that it means absolutely nothing, and can be interpreted in an infinte number of ways.

Religion can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways?  Imagine that!

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If by antisocial behavior you mean limiting one's social interaction in certain ways, yes, it very much is for a great many religions.   You are free not to like it, but do not pretend you are not thereby restricting religious freedom in a time-honored fashion.  Wide scale persecution, at least in the modern Protestant West, has rarely been merely on account of belief in the abstract divorced from social manifestations.

Fundamentally, this is about where Christians freedom ends and my freedom starts. 

Can I really have freedom in a society where it's acceptable to fire me, to deny me housing, transportation, a place to live or the basic right to be a member of the "general public?"  No.  We don't live in our own libertarian unabomber shacks.  If it's legal to discriminate against gay people, I'm not truly free because I can be treated like a pariah just for who I am. 

It's not like I go to Christian churches and business and demand that I be allowed to sing show tunes and have a drag show.  Nobody is forcing anyone to love gay people or stop being religious nutjob.

The pro-discrimination crowd is having things both ways.  They want to have the benefit of being open to the general public, but they want to exclude certain parts of the general public.  But, it doesn't work that way.  Either you accept the general public as it is, or you create a private membership club.  Simple as that.