Apple, Symantec, other tech heavies challenge anti-gay legislation

Re: We aren't back in the Jim Crow days

And why is that? Oh yes, it's because we have laws against discrimination.

Something tells me that a restaurant in Arizona refusing to serve white people or Christians would be in legal trouble pretty quickly.

Why should they be forced to provide service/product to people they don't want to?

Well, if you read the article it appears that there is no need for this law since in Arizona private businesses DO have the right to refuse business to anybody. The law being argued is needless qualification and so highly suspicious as to long-term goals of the people lobbying for it.

I am so sick of being swatted with the Bible Belt. Sometimes I wish these hick States *would* secede, implement their stupid curricula and educate their children into an unemployable generation and be done with it.

Of course, then it would all be everyone else's fault like it was last time. 8o/

Re: Guess I'll be the bad guy

Simple test to see if this stills feel OK.

Change the reason you're refusing service from "because they're LGBT" to "because they're Black/Jewish/Muslim/Christian/disabled/gypsy/Native American/your personal belief group here[*]" and see if still feels right to you.

"Sorrry we don't serve Blacks in here because they offend my beliefs" or "Disabled people make me feel uncomfortable, so please go away" doesn't quite feel right to me, but hey, what do I know?

[*] I exclude Mime artists and quote Terry Pratchett 'Vetinari banned all mime performances from Ankh-Morpork shortly after taking power. Mime artists who violate the ban usually find themselves hanging upside down in Vetinari's scorpion pit while reading a sign saying "learn the words."'.

Re: Guess I'll be the bad guy

Replace "LGBT" in said law with "Jewish", "Black", or "Female" - all of which various religions have found to have reasons to discriminate against. Does it suddenly become reprehensible? Then perhaps it's a bad law, and the fundamental reason that "human rights" trump "local legislation" in most free democracies. "Freedom of religion" does not mean "freedom to infringe on the rights of others".

If you're going to offer a service to the PUBLIC, then you have take ALL the public, not just a subset. It would seem to me that the whole "it's a private business so it can do what it wants" falls apart if that business if providing services to the public.

Re: Guess I'll be the bad guy

And if you're the only business supplying that item in that location? There's enough trouble with religious bigot pharmacists refusing to supply "morning after" contraceptives in so-called more "evolved" locations (Australia, NZ, most recently).

Sure, you may be able to obtain the item elsewhere, if it's not time-critical like the morning-after pill. But why should anyone - colour, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, whatever - be econonomically and time-penalised compared to their neighbour?

Yeah, I don't like serving people with WWJD and religious trinkets dangling all over themselves, because I know what they nearly all think about my "lifestyle". But the social contract is that we deal/trade with each other until such time as someone goes out of their way to disadvantage us.

Re: Guess I'll be the bad guy

Because "no dogs, no blacks, no Irish" is disgusting and those who want it shouldn't be allowed to have it.

Re: Meh, these always backfire anyway...

"What they DO is allow non-bigots to identify religiously oppressive businesses to deny custom (and profit) to."

It probably varies from country to country, but here in Australia, religious businesses CAN AND DO discriminate based on religion - and it's legal!. Try working for one, and part way through, casually mention you're an atheist. It is with absolute certainty your days there will be numbered.

However, as you say, one right they can't take away from us is our ability to vote with our wallets. Paid any taxes lately Sanitarium?

Re: Meh, these always backfire anyway...

That's what the Jews said about Hitler. Also Gypsies, homosexuals and itnellectually disabled people.

Re: Easy

Apple is probably being paid several times the cost of the glass factory in incentives and tax breaks to open it there. As soon as these incentives are paid/expire the factory will be closed anyway

Re: What am I missing?

Being a private business that serves the public, they legally can't arbitrarily refuse anyone. That law is probably very specific as to the behavior or dress of the person that they can refuse. Federal law would pretty much beat the hell out of a company that violated Constitutional protections... the 14th would be used by gays to have this struck down. This isn't about religious freedom, it's about religious priviledge to force beliefs on others. If a private business is serving the public, then they serve everyone equally (notwithstanding the legally allowed specifics for behavior/dress that would be considered hazardous to a business/other customers). There are a lot of religious writings that would prevent women from being served, some that could be used for colour, the standard anti-gay crowd... pretty much you could find a religious passage to justify refusing to serve anyone.

Re: What am I missing?

As has been noted in the biblical quotes and as outlined by mainline Christians, it is the behaviour and not the person which is considered undesirable. Homosexuals should be welcome in church. Homosexuals who flaunt their sexual-behavioural preferences however, would be considered to be setting themselves up against God's explicit instruction in the same way a hetero having an affair would be. Under Christianity, everyone is expected to control their sexual conduct.

I doubt that there is an expectation that gays will be denied the ability to buy potatoes at a grocer's shop (though I realise this is the US we are talking about...), but those offering services where morality does come into play, should be different. The classic case is the B&B, where a UK couple had their business shut down. They had been denying service to unmarried heteros for years as part of their practise of not allowing their business to support behaviour which they could not approve of, but a gay couple took them to court and with their "protected" status forced them to close or go against their conscience. They closed. It is effectively illegal for Christians to run businesses in the UK in alignment with their personal beliefs.

This is not the same as racism. I've never heard anyone say that their religion tells them not to serve a different race.

It appears that liberalism is the new intolerant autocracy - we can no longer agree to differ, we must all agree or be banned.

Re: America, land of the stupid shopkeeper (probably)

No, Arizona, land of blither drool etc. Didn't we all just go through the State/Federal law thing only two days ago? Why is this concept so hard to grasp FFS? Anyone who can figure out the scope of a variable in a computer language should be able to understand the difference, or at least, acknowledge that there is one.

And 'about as hateful and petty as people' is the answer to your second paragraph, question.

People (both in America and the UK) I'd never have suspected of being so idiotic have told me in as many words that they felt their own wedding vows were "lessened" by the advent of Gay Marriage laws. I can't even parse the logic behind that myself. When I jumped the broom I made a promise to my wife founded in my own ethics, not some third party's. How an external change in law could impinge on it in any way is beyond me.

Which is the same wellspring from which such bigotry comes I guess. If one's core belief is that behavior x or condition y is wrong then no amount of education or legal restraint is going to change it. It's an emotional problem and you can't shift those with intellectual levers. Such stuff requires a profound personal epiphany to loosen, and those don't come around often in a lifetime.

Re: My thing is this...

It comes up. Two men renting a single-bed hotel room would be rather suspicious. Catering, transport and photography contractors for a same-sex wedding would quite quickly realise there may be gay involvement somewhere. Even just going to a restraunt, the staff might well notice the holding of hands and longing gazes, and ask the couple to leave.

Re: My thing is this...

"who never entered into a sexual relationship with a woman. That Jesus guy "

But he did - with Mary Magdelene - and Jesus was married...

err... no.

1 'pursuit of happiness' is from the declaration of independence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness

2 even if it were in the BoR, it just guarantees _pursuing_ happiness, it doesn't say a damn thing about _catching_ it.

If you refuse to serve, and if the person so refused can establish that s/he is a member of a 'protected class' (black, Hispanic, gay, disabled, some others) and if said person can also establish that the reason why you refused to serve is because of his/her membership of the protected class, you're in deep, deep, DEEP trouble and sinking fast. Even if it can't be proven that the reason why you refused is because the person is in the class, you've got a problem. Unless you can establish some clear, precise, and compelling reason which does NOT have anything to do with your problems with the class.

This means that if you are in the business of making wedding cakes and a gay couple orders a cake, you're gonna have to make that cake unless you want to go to court and establish why not. And you'd better be able to establish that you _couldn't_ make the cake for reasons entirely unrelated to the gay couple's gayness, or it's game over. If you have a waiting list three months long and couldn't make a cake for the couple anyway, you're okay. If you have workers standing idle and an unused oven, you're in trouble.

Now, if the persons who want the cake are _not_ members of a protected class, then you can refuse to make the cake all you want. At the current time, gay couples _in Arizona_ are not members of a protected class. This may change. This means that this idiotic law is completely unnecessary; Arizona businesses could, and can, simply post a note that they refuse to serve gay couples, and that's that. There is one gentleman who has posted a large sign in his business that he reserves the right to refuse to serve members of the Arizona legislature. http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/26/opinion/rocco-pizzeria-arizona/index.html?hpt=hp_t1 As members of the legislature are not members of a protected class, he is free to do so. And he has.

This 'law' is nothing more than religious-themed imbecilic grandstanding, and _will_ bite the Arizona legislature on the ass. And it won't last long before it gets challenged and gets to the US Supremes and they rule that it's unconstitutional... and place gays in the 'protected' class. I suspect that this is not something that the religious nuts want.