SCOTUS under Trump

Yeah, isn’t it funny (aka: horrific) that there’s so much insanity and bullshit going on that the outright theft of the SCOTUS seat isn’t even a story anymore?

I don’t see how this turns out any different than Hobby Lobby. Small, closely-held private companies are going to be allowed to discriminate based on religious freedom.

I don’t think that folks should be forced to sell goods and services to other folks. While this guy may be a dick for homophobia, I feel like his choice of who to engage in business with is his to make.

Rather than trying to force actions upon folks through laws, I would force the change through public condemnation of the business. Don’t buy his stuff. Boycott his business.

But the mere fact that same sex marriage is a right protected under the constitution doesn’t mean I should be forced to support it. Voicing hate speech or support for Donald Trump is also a protected right under the constitution, but I should absolutely be able to osrtacize those people and refuse to serve them.

Well fuck.

So 2 points for religious discrimination , 0 for sanity?

So much for the separation of church and state and keeping religion out of commerce.
(Whether or not it’s logical, allowing people to deny service base on religious objection opens up a huge number of issues that can only end badly. Not that it matters since we’re going to end up with a far right SCOTUS for the next 30-40 years.)

The GOVERNMENT isn’t allowed to make decisions based on religion.
Individuals absolutely can. Otherwise you are preventing them from exercising their religion by saying it can only apply to trivial aspects of their lives.

Again, you don’t need the government to step in here. Just boycott the guy’s store.

This is a hugely thorny issue that doesn’t really have a clear solution other than tue kind of common sense litmus test we’re increasingly incapable of making. There is huge tension between having beliefs and being able to act on those beliefs. Not being compelled to photograph a gay wedding is pretty low on the scales of injustices - and honestly I’m not sure why you’d want to use a photographer that explicitly told you they would prefer not to photograph your family - since in most cases there are lots of alternatives.

But obviously the extreme end point of that logic is Jim Crow.

The precident is the problem of course - whole swathes of red country would suddenly close themselves to “outsiders” on the pretense of religious conviction. I mean at the extreme end you could refuse to serve someone because they were a Democrat and Democrats support abortion.

Yep, you start moving into “doctors won’t treat gay patients,” “pharmacists refuse meds to the ‘wrong sort’ of people” territory pretty easily with “MUH BELIEFS” bullshit like this.

Except that Jim Crow involved the GOVERNMENT acting against people.

Sure, you could. And I think that’s peoples’ right.

And so you boycott those people. You ostracize them from society, and punish them for doing such things.

Except, hey, in large parts of the US, those people are society, and when you’re a scared, helpless gay teen stuck in rural Mississippi, the last thing you need is to have the tiny handful of people who might be reasonably expected to actually help you to turn on you because of their hateful religious views, too.

So what if every business in Mississippi sets out signs that says NO HOMO ROMANS 1:18-32? No government involvement at all?

So it goes. Trying to enforce change from the federal level isn’t going to make life in those places better for a gay teen.

If society as a whole rejects those changes, then you do what we saw with other states that tried to put bad laws in place. You boycott those states or localities. It works.

That’s not really something I’m willing to accept.

“Sorry kid, you were born in the wrong part of America. Guess you’re probably just gonna have to kill yourself.”

This isn’t goddamn Qatar.

What if aliens come down and enslave us all? I mean, it isn’t gonna happen. It’s a silly hypothetical. It’s not the case that 100% of the people in Mississippi hate gay people.

But ignoring that, if every business in Mississippi did that? Then other states boycott Mississippi. Don’t go there. Don’t do business with any of those businesses. They don’t exist in a vacuum.

You think that having the court issue some decree from on high is gonna help things for that kid? You think that his life is gonna get BETTER when some redneck gets told he has to serve that kid? Cause guess what? As someone living in a pretty rural region, THAT SHIT DON’T FLY. If anything, it makes it worse.

The problem is that’s the equivalent of saying “self sort! Go west young gay/black/Muslim/trans person!” I mean, ok, that’s like why some dumbasses founded Liberia. Go back to Africa, please. Go away. And that’s exactly what Mississippi (or North Carolina Republicans) would want!

Yeah, since this is a civil rights issue, I just replace “gay” with “black” or “a woman” and think about how that feels. Gross. Not the society I want to live in.

But we’ve seen that you can affect the way some of these backwards places work, through purely economic means.

NC passed their lame bathroom bill… and they got boycotted by major groups, like the NCAA. And it led to them repealing it.

The same thing happened in Indiana.

Money has a major impact, and doesn’t give homophobes or xenophobes a single target to organize their rage against, like they can when “the government” issues a decree.

Nor should you. You should boycott those businesses or localities. You should organize against them.

Harboring those beliefs should result in them going out of business… but it shouldn’t be illegal.

And this is where you and I part ways, philosophically, @Timex. I am of the belief that man is a deeply unworthy, unkind animal in desperate need of taming by his betters. The hand of government must be leveraged against these kinds of people.