Discrimination ok, if based on religion? what else then?

I don't think the lawmakers should budge. If a religious institution chooses not to operate because it cannot do so in compliance with the law then too bad for it. If those agencies close then if there really is a demand, other agencies will open to fill the void; ones that are willing to follow the law.

I 100% disagree for the same reason that we have laws in the US that forces medical professionals to provide acute care regardless of the patients status or ability to pay. IIRC this applies even to private medical facilities.If the service provided to the public is important enough then no amount of privitization should protect them from discriminatory practices.Another argument is the practicalities of allowing private adoption firms operate in this manner. They could essentially keep children who would otherwise be adopted via public methods from being so by perfectly capable parents who just don't live up to Catholic standards.Also, by the same logic there would be nothing preventing them from allowing a totally unfit couple to adopt merely because they were Catholic. The parents may have a history of domestic violence or be sex offenders but once you allow standards to be comprimised by privitization then there is little logical recourse to disallow any arbitrary standards set by the private enterprise.

---

Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

The key here is that it is the government's job to regulate things that they are in the best position to regulate. Generally this applies to actions that a certain segment of society chooses to take which is in detriment to society as a whole. That is why it is a good idea for the government to enforce basic laws, regulate the use of and pollution of natural resources. Really the biggest difference between liberals and conservatives (real conservatives not neo-cons) is simply where to draw the line. As a liberal I believe the government is also in the best position to regulate healthcare and education where otherwise a more hands off approach would be detrimental to society as a whole because it is possible to have the exclusion of many for a variety of reasons.It should be illegal for a hyper religious male paramedic to refuse to do CPR on a patient because they are a women and it is against their religion to touch a women. If religion prevents you from performing what society has deemed as an important public service then you must either choose to abandon that principle of your religion or abandon your responsibilities as a practicioner of that service.In my opinion, regulating adoption is a perfectly valid course for a government to take to ensure the well-being of its children citizens. By that same course, if any institution, public or private, chooses not to follow the regulations imposed in order to adequatly execute their charge to the children of their country then they must either change their policy or abandon the business.

---

Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

In my opinion, this is a detrimental mode in which to operate. There are situations that are important enough that even if some activity is not a drain on public resources, the government still has an substantial interest in regulating the activity.We have decided as a society that acute medical care is one of those activities. You cannot run an urgent care or emergency room and not provide the best care possible to any patient that walks through your door. If you refuse patients or don't provide adequate care you can be shut down. Imagine the horror of private hospitals in some racist city in the south refusing to treat the victims of a motor vehicle crash of a family just passing through just because they are black. Worse than that, what if they refused treatment of victims of an ethnically motivated assault? Most people think that forcing standards upon something as important as acute care is a good idea even if you don't.The UK is simply decided that they believe adoption to be an activity that is of sufficient public interest to be regulated accordingly similar to the case of acute medical care. That is just fine because as a society we have not deemed acceptance into religious institutions to be an activity important enough that it needs to be managed by the government. That may be your opinion, but IMO that is a totally bad idea. A white supremacist doctor should be forced into providing the same level of care to a black patient and if it can be proven that he did not he should have his licence removed and be unable to practice medicine.In the news recently there was a case where a pharmacist refused to full a prescription for the morning after pill. One might argue that this is slightly different because it is not a matter of life or death but if such a thing is allowed then there is nothing logically different from a vegan pharmacist refusing to fill a prescription for emergency insulin even if it means the death of the patient. We are discussing institutional exclusion. While your scenario may play out that way in a standard medical facility it may not for some private urgent care clinic run by the KKK. THis is all hypothetical of course. Care to substantiate? There currently is no consensus public interest in regulating procreation even if they could. There may come a time in our course of human existence where there IS such an interest. You are missing my main point which is that the issue is not about public funding but of public interest in the action or service being provided. Once again, there is an issue of both concensus public interest and furthermore practicality. Most western societies believe very heavily in the rights of parents to raise their children as they please within the bounds of existing laws (no abuse, etc). Moreover, it is not very practical to impliment regulation that could stop such activities even if it was of public interest to do so. First I would like to respond to the bolded section. You most certainly DO have a say in what someone does even if your tax dollars are not involved. Our basic system of law enforcement is in direct contradiction to your statement. Someone does not have the right to rob the Quicke Mart down the street just because your tax dollars are not affected. This is an extreme case of "discrimation" but the argument is the same. We have considerable public interest in not allowing people to be thieves and moreover this interest is not at all related to the fact that the act of thievery does or does not use public dollars. As a society if we have standards that we feel are important enough to society as a whole then it is up to the government to enfore those standards regardless of the source of activies that may fail to meet them.You CAN tell your neighbor what he can and cannot do with his money. You can tell your neighbor that he cannot use his money to do something illegal by the simple fact that you are a citizen in a society in which certain activities are disallowed by law.

---

Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Yes. I thought you made a good point.

---

Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

I don't think you do agree with what I said. You make that pretty apparent with the rest of your post. I don't know how you could say this. Why shouldn't certain nonpublic activities not be regulated by the government? You really haven't given a good reason for that other than some vague notion of what you consider to be hypocrisy. Yes and that minority is protected by a set of fundamental rights laid out in the constitution. That is why your slavery example which you use later on is a false analogy. It fails because slaves happen to also be people for whom those rights extend. The 14th amendment in our constitution clarified that.Certain behaviors that are detrimental to society should not be protected by such idealism. Yes we have right to bear arms but that does not mean that we have a right to build our own nukes. There is a considerable public interest in NOT allowing some backwards militia to build missile silos with ICBMs yet I suppose if you were a constitutional purist you would say that this would be an infringement on their 2nd amendment rights.There is a major issue here of practicality alongside our political ideology. While it may be somewhat non-ideal in the seem of freedoms to force a racist doctor to treat the object of their racism, it IS practical and that is the business the government should be in.Furthermore, I don't see at all how that goes against the notion of a democracy, even the democracy that we live in. Frankly, and this is just my humble option, I think your opinion is total crap. For very legitimate reasons we have restricted this supposed right of medical professionals with a personal agenda because they perform such a vastly important service to society. There a plenty of other examples where the actions of private citizens or institutions are restricted legitimately. Thats just crazy and furthermore totally impractical. I don't know what this "true" democracy you are talking about is but if enough people by fiat of their elected representative want to restrict that activity then I think that is a perfectly valid use of democracy. The people HAVE spoken and said that they want medical professionals held to certain standards because we think that healthcare is that important. The people of the UK have spoken and said that they want adoption agencies to be held to certain standards because they feel that caring for orphaned children citizens is that important. I was just responding to your tangent about how there are things in society which you or I might consider detrimental and yet are not regulated. Even if a majority thinks something needs to be regulated that does not mean that it can be either legally or practically. One of the reasons why we don't pass laws restricting people from participating in certain religious groups is that there simply is no public interest in doing so. OBVIOUSLY there is another very good reason in that it is against the 1st amendment. I don't understand how your comment about torture is relevant. Citizens of the US DO have a right to be protected from cruel and unusual punishment. You must have something that you consider to be an idealistic view of democracy. I DO think this is exactly how a democracy is supposed to work. We can as a society, democratically, decide that we are going to both outlaw slavery and force standards of care upon doctors and adoption professionals. What part of that you consider to be undemocratic is beyond me. Just because the government protects certain rights of people does not mean that it cannot legitimately create restrictions on a private industry to govern the practicalities of life among its citizenry. There is nothing undemocratic about that.Here is what I consider to be a better example than the case of medical care. The government places restrictions on how much a private company can pollute the environment. I will not hesitate to say that you probably agree that this is a good idea. Now do you believe this to be an undemocratic action that restricts the rights of these companies? Is the government being hypocritical when they free slaves yet at the same time ban these companies from dumping as much mercury as they want into the public water system?Why do you think the government should be allowed to do this? I'll tell you why I think it should. The government should have the power to take away the "right" to pollute from industry because it is of considerable public interest to do so.Just like my robbery example I that you would say that this case is clear because polluting harms people. Failure to provide medical care also harms people. Mismanagement of adoption harms children. That is what makes these things so important to society. A racist doctor is stripped of this "right" in the exact same way a chemical plant is stripped of its "right" not to do anything about the byproducts of its manufacturing. Because not doing something harms people in a substantial enough way that we have decided as a society to regulate it. I think it is pretty clear by now that not only do I think your sense of rights is wrong but also that your sense of what a valid and practical democracy subscribes is wrong. The set of citizens that includes doctors who would refuse medical care based on race is not a minority group that needs protection. In fact it is quite the opposite that is true. It is society that needs protection from them. I see absolutely no correlation. If a racist doctor cannot perform his duties within the regulation then he has the choice of ceasing to be a doctor. A black person in your scenario had no choice to relieve themselves of the regulation. You are completely creating a false equivalency. No it is not a different story. Plain and simply, you don't get to ignore laws just because you think you can isolate yourself under the guise of privatization. Well then you are discussing something else because no one here is arguing that hospitals shouldn't have hiring standards especially when they must comply with the law regarding standards of care.The issue is and always has been if privatization of a particular industry protects you from regulation. Our case example from the OP is adoption agencies. What the heck does this have anything to do with anything we have discussed so far? If I have a company I can choose not to hire someone because they don't have the skills necessary to do the job. It is not Joe's right to be hired for any job he wants. It is Joe's right to receive standard acute medical care. If Joe is a kid in the UK, then he has the right not to have perfectly good prospective guardians eliminated based on discrimination. Slavery is not a public interest because it was determined that the slaves are actually a subset of the public itself!Explain to me how black people sitting in the back of a bus was ever public interest or for that matter equivalent to standards for medical care and adoption. Quite simply, we don't recognize racist doctors or bigot priests as social minorities in need of protection regarding the services they provide. It absolutely is NOT the same line of thinking with regard to the restriction of gay rights. If a racist doctor or a bigot priest cannot perform their duties under regulation then they can stop being doctors and adoption facilitators respectively. A gay person who is restricted from being considered kin of his/her partner cannot choose to do anything to be removed from that restriction. It is ABSOLUTLY different in all ways actual and practical. Refusing medical care harms other people AND harms the public.
Having inadequate standards for adoption harms children AND harms the public (prospective parents). So Apu is behind the counter of the quickie mart and is shot and we consider this bad because Apu is harmed by the action of the shooter.
But if Apu dies because he is refused medical treatment for his gun wound because the ER doc he was taken to hates darkies this is not harm?Inaction is action in this scenario. The difference is pure semantics. Why do you make the exception for cannibals and rapists? The DIRECT ACTION of the priests is not causing these children to be eaten or raped. Why should the government be allowed to step in regarding the INACTION of the priests to query the cannibal or sex offender status of the prospective parents yet not be allowed to step in regarding the discriminative ACTION of the priests that harms both children and gay couples. I would hope that things listed in the bill of rights would be an obvious exclusion to my statement but if not then let this be a clarification to that. Lets not forget though that even the bill of rights can be changed. The protection of the minority from the majority can be democratically removed just as it was democratically instituted. I am of course not advocating that but you seem to be of the opinion that "democracy" means "the things that we have currently decided are good by using democracy". Democracy is a process. It is not a bill of rights, a moral code, or any other kind of social standards.If Iraq is any proof, you can democratically do things that in our country we would consider oppressive. They can democratically institute Koranic law including things we would consider wrong such as censoring blasphemy and banning anthropomorphic art.Edited by Jazzns, : Fixed a stray bold tag. Sorry for seemingly shouting.

---

Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

I think one of two main points of contention is the issue of harm and your distinction of direct harm versus harm that occurs as a side effect of indirect actions (i.e. doing nothing)I would consider refusing medical care to be harm even though it is indirect. Harm on par with dumping mercury into a river.To me the distinction is not subjective and I'll explain why. You talked about how it is your right not to help someone who is falling over a ledge. That is your right because your chosen profession is not "saver of lives". That IS the profession of a doctor though and a chosen profession at that.It has nothing to do with the doctors choice or non-choice to be racist. It has everything to do with the racists choice or non-choice to be a doctor.The same can be applied to adoption agencies. Not everyone is allowed to operate an adoption clinic and those that CHOOSE to are subject to the regulations therein. If they cannot meet those regulations, they are not qualified to perform that service.The second major point of contention is this notion of conflating a democracy with minority rights. Minority rights are not a property of democracy but rather the byproduct of what THIS democracy has chosen. It is part of why I am proud to be part of THIS democracy versus another one where minority rights are not protected. The point is though that it is not undemocratic to restrict rights.I wanted to respond to a few specifics. First of all, homosexuality has nothing to do with being black. Even if homosexuality was discovered to be a choice being black will never be. Furthermore, no it does not put the case to rest because who you choose to be your kin is very different from what you choose as your profession. That is the problem with trying to create equivalences is that they are rarely actually equivalent. The restrictions placed upon them are different and can be identified objectively. Please don't misunderstand me, I am not claiming that laws should be followed by fiat. I am saying that you cannot escape laws by claiming conditions don't apply to you. That is why, thank God, I will never be refused emergency medical service because I am a dirty A-rab. In life or death I would rather be treated by someone who is only doing it because they have to than not be treated at all. Sorry, that was a typo in a bold tag. I am not going to let you quote me out of context. I specifically said: In other words, you responded to a quote mine of that paragraph rather than the thesis of that paragraph which I hope I clarified in my preceding statements.There are a few things in my obtuse bolded section of my last reply that I would like answered as well. I'll repeat them. If you want to make an equivalence, you actually have to show how something is equivalent. I am calling you out on this.Next, please respond to this and support your position:So Apu is behind the counter of the quickie mart and is shot and we consider this bad because Apu is harmed by the action of the shooter.
But if Apu dies because he is refused medical treatment for his gun wound because the ER doc he was taken to hates darkies this is not harm?Inaction is action in this scenario. The difference is pure semantics.Along the same lines: If the big difference is simply whether or not I get off my ass then please explain this apparent contradiction in your position.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

---

Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

You summed it up very nicely thank you. I would in particular like to point out your last comment. This is in particular true for the case in question in the OP which is adoption. If a kid has to wait an extra year to be adopted because perfectly good parents are being screened out based on relgious preferences then is this harm in the same way acute care is harm. I would say yes because just like the case of the doctor you descrbed, these children are placed under the care of the adoption agency and that agency has a responsibility to provide a standard of service to each child. They also have a responsibility to the subset of society that are prospective parents of these kids so in some ways there influence is much more global than the analogous case of acute patient care. TD is only one trying to make the case that these regulations are undemocratic. He has a tough charge because not only are they pretty objectivly democratic, they aren't even contrary to the minority rights ideal that he keeps bringing up as if it was equivalent to democracy.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

---

Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)