Talk Elections

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2015/06/tenn-hardware-store-owner-displays-no-gays-allowed-sign/

Even CCSF should see this as a clear overreaction to the SCOTUS ruling.

inb4 shua tries to tell us that this guy clearly has no problem with gay people whatsoever

In other news, gay = sin religious folks are reading up on the law books, to find legal ways to discriminate (http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2015/06/christian-right-issues-anti-lgbt-manuals-teaching-legal-discrimination/) against the sinners. I hate to break it to them, but reclassifying the lawn maintenance folks or whatever as "ministers" isn't going to fool those Godless, secular humanist homo-agendized Courts.

Actually I was planning on making a lame joke about either The Village People or North Caucasian Tartars (http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/nogays.shtml).  But instead I'll sit here and wonder why you are incapable of making rather crucial distinctions.   This guy is not saying he won't make them a wedding ring out of electrical wire.  He does not want gays in his store at all.  I suppose unless he has well-developed gaydar the ban involves self-deportation.  The cops are not going to enforce this ban thankfully, and hopefully the only business he gets in the future is from complete flamers.  

So ltqbnation is the new CNN?

Freedom of association is a two way street. People are free to boycott this store, and I am sure the public outrage and typical hysterical reaction of the media will be more than enough to take down this sign.

His freedom of religion protects this expression of his spirituality and faith. You can't ask him to take down this sign, it's like asking an orthodox Jew to feed bacon to his baby.

I do - but I don't like people like this guy being grouped in w/ Memories Pizza, bakeries etc.

See I agree with this - but the public never will.

His religion proscribes selling bailing wire to gays? It is not really even speech in the sense that it is really a message that he is discriminating illegally. I suppose that if I went into his store anyway, wearing a rainbow flag shirt holding hands with Dan, and he said hi Torie, and sold me the bailing wire, not carrying out the policy on the sign, that might make an interesting case as to whether that converts the sign to mere speech. He would be legally safer to change the sign to "I don't like gays" or something.

Are you being serious?

The free market always makes the choice. If a business owner is doing something objectionable, he will no longer get business.

That's why all those segregated lunch counters never survived on the free market, right? Oh, wait. Also, how does this shop keeper believe he can tell who that's shopping at his store is gay? Will he question any two men who come up to the counter together?

No he can't and he won't.  He's making his statement.  But how can you deny that people who find this sign objectionable, like me, would avoid shopping there?  It's just common sense.

There is simply no comparison between some wacko in a hardware store in Tennessee to centuries of systemic discrimination and dehumanization of blacks. Sorry.

lmao

The truth is funny?

There is no comparison between this person and someone like Baronelle Stutzman, who treats her gay customers and employees as human beings but does not believe in using her talents as directly part of a ceremony she believes is sacriligeous.  This guy is more like the person who sued her, as in both cases they treat people as means rather than as ends (full human beings in their complexity) in order to make a statement and advance their political agenda.

Per TheBlaze:

But on Tuesday, not long after word of the “No Gays Allowed” sign started spreading, Amyx replaced it with a sign that reads, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who would violate our rights of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.”

Partly. I don't want to see the Civil Rights Act repealed, though in an ideal world, people should be free to discriminate in their personal lives if they choose to live life like an ass-wipe. CNN will talk about this story for a week, people will shame the owner, and the sign will come down. It's a pretty simple chain of events.

Sign has already come down and been replaced with a religious freedom sign.

You could also legalize punching your customers in the face under the same theory. 

As for freedom of association, that's not under threat here.  This person opened a store that caters to anyone who walks by.  So, he chose to associate with anyone who walks by, aka the general public.   Running a store is not "your personal life" at all.  It's public. 

It's kind of amazing that gays can get married in all 50 states but in over half of them they still can be discriminated against for service, housing, and jobs.  I suspect that within a few years they will have the same protections afforded by gender, race, religion and disability.

Of course as I have noted before, I still find it ironic that religious people are protected under the law when religion is clearly a choice, but LGBT aren't.

I walk by the local country club a lot. But I can't golf there whenever I want. The owners of the country club "associate with the general public." What is the difference? They both are private, for profit establishments and should be allowed to cater to whomever they want.

A country club is a private club.  A hardware store is not a private club. 

The country club owner is clear from the beginning that the business does not intend to serve 100% of the public, and defines clear requirements for membership that can be met regardless of sexuality.

The Hardware store owner serves everyone for x years, then suddenly adopts a new requirement for service that certain people cannot meet because of how they were born, as a clear overreaction to a court action that he disagreed with yet had absolutely nothing to do with his business. If he had been asked to come to a wedding and perform a service, or if he had been asked to make something that had an explicit "gay" theme, that's one thing and I think there are legitimate issues of religious freedom to address there. But that's not what is happening here.

Indeed - Sanchez is dead wrong here. A private institution like a country club or even a university, makes clear there are qualifications for access and inclusion. A store, whilst being privately owned, still has no expectation of denying access based on any qualifier.

The store is being actively discriminatory and is now throwing up "muh religins freedumz" to get the usual suspects to back him.

Are people under the impression that gays are a protected class under the 1964 Civil Rights Act? They are not. You can legally turn the gays away all day long if you choose to do so. Also, the racial segregation that existed in the lunch counters of the 1950s existed because of local and state laws. Stores would have been breaking the law not to segregate their facilities. The free market had no role to play. How businesses would have acted without those laws is mere speculation.

Of course, it's not about whether they legally can turn customers away, considering you have marriage equality nation-wide but still have a majority of stares where you can still be fired for being thought of as gay... But whether it's "right"

Within days, these owners will be millionaires just like sh**tty pizzeria from Indiana. I wish I owned a business and could scam right-wingers out of their money like this too.

The pizzeria got support because it closed down for a while after they were threatened with violence for responding to a hypothetical question asked by a reporter about catering a gay wedding.  They did not go out of their way to antagonize or make gays excluded.  That was not like this.

And why can't this idiot in TN operate his business as a private club? Who gets to decide what is private and what isn't?


Have you ever seen a sign at McDonalds saying "we reserve the right to refuse service?" They have a choice to refuse service for whatever reason. When they do refuse service, it happens after the customer enters the store expecting service.

Sure, the point of those signs are to prevent unruly customers from remaining in the establishment after being asked to leave, but the point is they exist to give the owner options. And in this situation, the owner is using those options.

Of course, this isn't an issue of religious freedom. Its an issue of economic freedom. People have the right to be assholes. And people don't have the right to not get their feelings hurt.

It's exactly like this. Some two-bit pizzeria realized all they had to do to become millionaires was say they don't like gays, and lo and behold, the money rolls in. It was obvious from the beginning that whatever local backlash they received would be more than made up for by the gullible Right.

We'll see if this hardware shop goes the same way, but I have no doubt the owner is trying for that.

That's a creative interpretation you got there.  Too bad it didn't make it onto the Snopes  (http://now.snopes.com/2015/04/01/memories-pizza/)page about what really happened.

Well this is horrible. As Shua said this is not the same as the pizzaria in Indiana. He is of course, perfectly within his rights to put up a sign, but if it isn't illegal in Tennessee for him to follow through with it, it should be, unless of course there is some utterly absurd explanation here that escapes my attention.

Can someone tell me why one would care what the sexual orientation of your customers is? Money is money. Seems like this is more an attempt to get attention than anything else.

I supported the Gofundme for the pizzeria.  I won't be supporting this guy.  There is a difference. You cannot compare the two.  Not wanting to participate in a ceremony is far different from saying "I don't serve gays."

In general you wouldn't. Certainly for selling hardware you wouldn't. It mainly comes up in the news when it has something to do with a gay wedding ceremony itself.

Yes, this owner is probably an attention whore, and a bad one at that.

Obviously I can't prove the owners knew exactly what they were doing, but it didn't take a genius to know once the story broke that they would soon be set for life. And sure enough, they were.

It's equally obvious that this hayseed in Tennessee is trying to get a big payday with the same strategy, and he probably will.

Some people think that selling goods, food, etc. to gays is a violation of their religious faith and requiring them to engage in a blasphemous act.

Very few people

Of course. The owner is hoping to make a killing of this and become the next conservative hero, ala Joe the Plumber. He never cared about gay customers before the SCOTUS ruling, I guarantee you that.

So nice of the reporter to show up and start asking them questions about this issue. The death threats must have all been part of the plan too.  How deliciously devious.

Who will be the first Republican candidate to make a pilgrimage to the store? Looking on a map, this is a very isolated spot.

Family rejection by a white family of the mulatto children resulting from the white sons 'sowing their wild oats' among slave women.

On the other side -- literal beatings of both.

Matthew Shepard = Emmett Till

Matthew Shepard wasn't killed because he was gay. However, the killers used his sexuality to lure him to rob him. It was awful.   They should have been given the death penalty for what they did.

But the point I'm trying to make is, that this  nut in Tennessee, is not Memories Pizza. Its not Baronelle.

Good to see the idiot owner adopting a somewhat more reasonable policy.  I'm still confused on how the selling of hardware has anything to do with homosexuality. Maybe they rent equipment that could be used at a celebration? Even that's a stretch unless they decorate such equipment.

 I try to avoid McDonalds - as you pointed out, the right to refuse service is based almost entirely on mitigating liability. A bar has a right, as well as a responsibility, to refuse service to the already intoxicated. A restaurant has the right to refuse you service if it feels you are a threat to the comfort of fellow customers.  A cab has the right to refuse to pick you up etc etc. But this is overt discrimination towards a particular group, even before entering a store. If the sign said "no blacks" or "no Jews", I mean, you're at least consistent in the mindlessness of your ideology, but if the owner said, as the owner of several lunch counters in the South said, that integration was an affront to his religious beliefs, would the same knee-jerks be defending him?

Doing business with someone can be considered endorsing their lifestyle choice, and also expose other customers with traditional values to a lifestyle choice they disagree with and which conflicts with their faith. We have to respect the freedom of conscience of the other customers of the store and members of the community who do not with to be implicated in sin nor have their children unexpectedly encounter people who are gay and get the wrong message about what's ok and not ok. What he's doing is legal, as others have said, and we have to consider this a legitimate expression of his religious faith (whatever that happens to be.)

Private business owner has the right to refuse service to anyone he wants, just like everyone else has a right to boycott him for being a narrow minded douche.

I love the imagery of taking down the "I hate gays" sign and putting up a "religious freedom" sign instead. Real good symbol of the religious rights new way of fighting equality.

We get it: you don't understand religion.