Where should there be "The right to refuse service"?

The answer is 'no'. Good, we're done, at last.Can you think of other legitimate concerns that might crop up socially or in the courts regarding this kind of legislation?

You say we will not be forced to recognize gay marriage but there has already been one case where a Christian woman in New Mexico was fined for refusing such a service and the higher court refused her appeal, a bakery in Oregon had to close its shop and retreat to having a home business, and a baker in Colorado was ordered by the court to provide the service, as reported HEREAnd two other businesses have refused this service and one of them has been sued.So you are wrong and how can it do anything but get worse? This is very definitely the fascist trend in our legal system that is growing. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What a strange service. Does New Mexico have a lot of shops who provide the service of recognising a marriage? I know. But they weren't being forced to recognize gay marriage. We already discussed this case. I've given you a link to the actual order by the court. The order was not'You must provide the service of recognising marriages to gay people'
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'You must bake a cake for same-sex weddings'In fact, the court only ordered the baker to STOP doing something, not start doing something.

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Cease and desist from discriminating against Complainants and other same-sex couples by refusing to sell them wedding cakes or
any other product Respondents would provide to heterosexual couples

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So there you go, they can do what they like, but whatever services they provide must be provided equally to homosexuals and heterosexuals. Nobody is being forced to recognise same-sex marriage. Nobody is being forced to provide services that can be construed as endorsing same-sex marriage. Well I'm right, but our definitions of better and worse may vary. What will happen is those currently over 60 will start dying off over the next 20-30 years. Meanwhile over the same 20-30 years the 50% or more of parents will be raising children to believe in equality, and probably more children yet will have adopted that position (We will watch your generation with great interest, Z) . At this point they will start having children, and hopefully the effect will snowball rapidly. Then almost nobody even thinks to refuse the service and some people question the necessity for the law.My nation castrated a(t least one) WWII hero for being gay in 1952. That's during the time my parent's generation were being born. My grandparent's generation and their parent's had the power then. He was pardoned though. In 2013. 59 years after a lethal quantity of cyanide found its way into his body.You'd probably think that America has finally gone over the moral edge into corruption and depravity to see this degree of social change, I suspect you wouldn't be last tragic group of people who get to live to see the nation they loved transformed so rapidly away from their ideals. I'm sure I'll have my day too, if I make it.

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the fascist negations of anti-liberalism, anti-communism and anti-conservatism; nationalist authoritarian goals of creating a regulated economic structure to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture; and a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth and charismatic leadership...

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"a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism"

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(From wiki) Also on wiki is this quote from Robert Paxton

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{Fascism is}a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion

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What you are doing is making a vile substitution of the word 'bully' with the word 'fascist', which changes the meaning of your words and dilutes the term which can lead to distortions about history, which can lead to us repeating it...

Pay attention to the discussion, ringo. It is not the verbal assult by the asshole that is a matter for the police. It can be a police matter if the SOB doesn't leave the shop when ordered out.Happens all the time. Ask any barkeep. Drunk patron hits on the waitstaff or gets rowdy, out he goes, if he doesn't leave, call the cops. Maybe you don't get this fine class of people the way we do. This happens a couple times a month in nearly every bar in Phoenix. Phoenix PD even has a 2 per month call limit before they start charging $75 per. You do know we are talking about barring one specific individual and not some class, right? You do know that some people just do not play well with others, yes?Let's take what appears to be an extreme example ('cept it actually happen). Some rude customer keeps berating, loudly, his waitress (and for the most minor crap). She finally has enough and tells the creep she is going to get the manager. As she storms off Mr. Attitude picks up his water glass and throws it at her. What is a proprietor to do, ringo? In your world you don't want him able to do anything?Edited by AZPaul3, : spln

The problem with this thinking is that being a Christian is not a matter that people grow out of. I was a complete heathen atheist for most of my life, would

The problem with this thinking is that being a Christian is not a matter that people grow out of [abe: This wasn't clear. I meant to say that it isn't something that can just disappear from the world by people being educated against it or any other means./abe] I was a complete heathen atheist for most of my life, would probably have agreed with most of you here about all these things. But conversion to Christ is a life changer, a total life changer. I fought a lot of it at first, but what happens is you get transformed, literally made different and you recognize that the Bible is indeed God's word and you believe it and try to live by it. There will be new Christians in every generation. Even if you got rid of all the evangelists there would be new Christians in every generation because it is a supernatural work done by God and there is no way to escape it. If He's decided to save you you will be saved whether you want to be or not. And when that happens you come to know and love His law. And His law clearly requires us to refuse to honor gay marriage. You may not think it does, liberal Christians may not think it does, but it does and those who know God will know that it does and will obey. I'm sure political opinions can die out but Christianity cannot. You'll just have to throw us in the dungeon.Edited by Faith, : add abe sentence

I'm not proposing people will grow out of it. I'm saying that Christians like you are largely represented by the over 60s. The young 'ens are either Christians who disagree or simply not Christians, your choice. So either Christianity is trending towards rapid extinction, or Christian morality is changing over each generation. But the trend seems to be that there will less new Christians in every generation (as you define Christian). Maybe, but God made no guarantee that there will be any American Christians (except perhaps in LDS doctrine). You don't have to honour gay marriage under US laws. I believe that in your minority religion God has made refusal to honour same-sex marriage against His Law and that He goes on to dictate that providing services or products for use by homosexuals during the celebrations of the signing of a contract with each other and the government in non-mixed-sex combinations, is honouring same-sex marriage. That's because Christianity changes. There are no dungeons. Instead {true} Christians will either migrate to business models that don't put them in conflict with the laws written by a secular and democratically elected legislature and their God's Law OR they will lose their business licences/get sued or boycotted into oblivion and never go into business again.So, the problem will resolve itself as it has with other legislation that has come into effect. Not always for the better, maybe, but that's freedom and democracy for you.So fast forwarding to the point where this is regarded as a non-issue. Are there any other contexts refusal of service can be justified? You can stick to Christian examples if you like. There's probably some interesting examples to be trotted out there. Wedding services for a man marrying a 9 year old. Wedding services for a divorcee has already been raised. Wedding services to polygamists (who aren't Jewish kings)? Wedding services for Satanic Weddings?And what about 1 Corinthians 7? Would it not be loving if a Christian couple seek to wed to consider refusing and warning them that

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But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord:

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But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.

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I mean unless the man is a sex pest, of course (1Co 7:36) and even then to remind them that 'he that giveth her in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better.'Are there any non wedding related refusals you can think of? Any of them likely to happen? Any of them from the perspective of a non-Christian?

I understood exactly what you meant and I answered it. Neither is happening, nor can either happen. But truer and more committed Christians because the fewer there are and the more hostile the environment the stronger they will be. It's the Christians who compromise with the world and compromise the Bible and are in it for comfort rather than truth who drop away.

Maybe you've never said exactly that, but you've made it clear in many ways that's what you believe. E.g. you have explicitly said (although you tried to walk it back later) that your interpretation of the Bible is infallible, and that you know the Mind Of God. And you've called those who disagree with you "faux Christians" and several other epithets I don't remember.Do you have perfect knowledge of the Bible? You obviously think so. Do you use any other sources to figure out what God wants? I bet not.Arrogance and pride. I don't hate you, I reserve that for people who have done great evil. But you are disgusting. Remember God knows your heart.

Do you stay up nights thinking up stupid stuff to post? "Belief isn't belief until it's acted upon"? WTF.

Irrelevant. Belief is not a synonym for faith.

OK, we'll just skip past the part where you wrote a 100 word argument about Christians never becoming apostates and further words on how new people will become Christians in the future. And we'll ignore the fact that even you felt it necessary, after I made my reply, to revise your post. Yes, you've asserted without support some theological argument as to why Christianity will never entirely vanish. My point was that there are less Christians every generation, not that there will be no new ones. See Message 298. Christians may continue on in Uganda or some small churches in the Near East/Saudi Arabia, but they seem to be growing ever rarer in the USA. In any event, at best an even smaller minority of Christians will exist in the USA to the point where the same-sex marriage refusal situation is almost entirely not a concern...and given 80% of Americans already feel that refusal to serve homosexuals is wrong, given 70% of people born between 1980 and 2000-something happen to support same-sex marriage in the USA...the evidence this well on its way seems pretty clear. Any argument you might have that these laws are 'against the will of the people' looks to be false. The number of people that think secular same-sex marriage is against the will of God seems to dwindling.So fast forwarding to the point where this is regarded as a non-issue. Are there any other contexts refusal of service can be justified? You can stick to Christian examples if you like. There's probably some interesting examples to be trotted out there. Wedding services for a man marrying a 9 year old. Wedding services for a divorcee has already been raised. Wedding services to polygamists (who aren't Jewish kings)? Wedding services for Satanic Weddings? Marriage in general?Are there any non wedding related refusals you can think of? Any of them likely to happen? Any of them from the perspective of a non-Christian?Remember: this thread isn't just about you, Christians and same-sex marriage. You've given your view on that, you know ours. Let's move on unless you have something new and interesting to say on the subject.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Faith writes: Actually I was glad you brought pedophilia up. Getting back to the topic, would it be okay for a baker to refuse to bake, say, a birthday cake for a known pederast? You know, like one of those Catholic Priests? How about a rapist or a murderer? How about anyone convicted of a felony? How about petty theft? Jaywalking? See, there is a line of egregiousness above which you may be justified in refusing service. And below which you are not. To paraphrase George W., it's fuzzy math.The SCREAMING difference for me is that, in the case of pedophilia acted upon, there are VICTIMS. For your garden variety same-sex marriage, it is between 2 consenting adults - there are no victims.You might have noticed that I used the phrase "case of pedophilia acted upon" above, to echo your other strange sentence, from Message 284: Does someone who knows he is a pedophile, but only admits to it and never acts upon it still deserve to be refused service of a birthday cake? I'm thinking of Allen Ginsberg and his membership in NAMBLA. This a more general question to this audience and not specifically addressed to Faith.More fuzzy math.Jimmy Carter famously admitted to having lusted in his heart, but he never acted upon it. He deserves to be served the cake.

"If you don't do your job we'll have to let you go." There are consequences for your actions (and inactions). I mentioned it in Message 37. The proprietor can "get away with it" in this case. Getting away with murder doesn't mean that the community standard allows for murder.

I didn't say it would be okay. It would be effective. "Oops! I'm sorry sir. Just let me mop up that blood. Would you like a bandaid? [pause] Haven't I seen you somewhere before?" Try to remember your own story. The non-event didn't happen again. Your wife wasn't even there on the second non-occasion. It isn't a different scenario. I don't consider the proprietor to be a feudal lord with unlimited power in his fiefdom. Because his business has to be licensed, the proprietor is essentially an employee of society. We're not talking about a rude co-worker or a rude customer. We're talking about a co-worker and/or customer whom you have subjectively taken offense to. You shouldn't expect society to spport your subjective feelings.