Arizona Afterthoughts

The previous thread on religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws has gotten way too long, so I’m opening a new post. I don’t always agree with Andrew Sullivan, but he’s got this one absolutely right:

I favor maximal liberty in these cases. The idea that you should respond to a hurtful refusal to bake a wedding cake by suing the bakers is a real stretch to me.

Yes, they may simply be homophobic, rather than attached to a coherent religious worldview. But so what? There are plenty of non-homophobic bakers in Arizona. If we decide that our only response to discrimination is a lawsuit, we gays are ratcheting up a culture war we would do better to leave alone. We run the risk of becoming just as intolerant as the anti-gay bigots, if we seek to coerce people into tolerance. If we value our freedom as gay people in living our lives the way we wish, we should defend that same freedom to sincere religious believers and also, yes, to bigots and haters. You do not conquer intolerance with intolerance. As a gay Christian, I’m particularly horrified by the attempt to force anyone to do anything they really feel violates their conscience, sense of self, or even just comfort.

More. And Julian Sanchez blogs, thoughtfully:

Unlike most of my friends, I do not find it self evident that the “liberty interest” invoked by religious bigots is some kind of absurd sham worthy of mention only in derisive scare quotes. And I find it a bit disturbing that many of them seem to assume that if any anti-discrimination laws protecting any class of Americans have ever been justified, the weight of that interest has effectively been reduced to zero, and may be ignored for all future purposes. Having decided it was OK to forbid motels from turning away African Americans in 1964, in other words, many seem to take it as already settled that there’s no possible objection to compelling a photographer to work a gay wedding…

The point is that treating private discrimination as either a categorical wrong committed by troglodytes with no liberty interests meriting consideration or an utterly inviolable right of conscience, divorced from either historical context or practical consequence, seems like a stupid way to approach the issue. If there are still enough hardcore bigots to justify restricting their expressive association in the economic domain—or in subsets of that domain—then I hope their numbers soon dwindle to the point where those restrictions become unnecessary. But at some point, I would hope we can at least agree in principle, they become a sufficiently irrelevant minority that we are not entitled to inflict legal penalties strictly as a means of signaling our superior enlightenment and symbolic disapproval.

And another fine commentary, of the likes which you won’t see in the LGBT lockstep media. Ross Douthat writes in the New York Times:

But there’s another possibility, in which the oft-invoked analogy between opposition to gay marriage and support for segregation in the 1960s South is pushed to its logical public-policy conclusion. In this scenario, the unwilling photographer or caterer would be treated like the proprietor of a segregated lunch counter, and face fines or lose his business — which is the intent of recent legal actions against a wedding photographer in New Mexico, a florist in Washington State, and a baker in Colorado. …

In the past, this constant-pressure scenario has seemed the less-likely one, since Americans are better at agreeing to disagree than the culture war would suggest. But it feels a little bit more likely after last week’s “debate” in Arizona, over a bill that was designed to clarify whether existing religious freedom protections can be invoked by defendants like the florist or the photographer.

If you don’t recognize my description of the bill, then you probably followed the press coverage, which was mendacious and hysterical — evincing no familiarity with the legal issues, and endlessly parroting the line that the bill would institute “Jim Crow” for gays.

For a great many on the LGBT left, individual freedom of conscience is now a despised notion, and no one dare question the view that forcing religiously conservative business owners (who are self-employed, in the above examples) to provide services that celebrate gay weddings is anything but a wonderful progressive thing. I can’t think of anything that better highlights the authoritarianism that lurks not far beneath the surface of the leftwing “progressive,” bigger and more controlling government is always better, worldview.

Furthermore. As Sheldon Richman writes: “If we are truly to embrace freedom of association, logically we must also embrace freedom of nonassociation. The test of one’s commitment to freedom of association, like freedom of speech, is whether one sticks by it even when the content repulses.”

46 Comments for “Arizona Afterthoughts”

  1. posted by Mike in Houston on

    “Maximal liberty” is just what Arizona had prior to this bill and what it has after the veto:

    Arizonans are still able to discriminate against gays and lesbians in terms of employment, public accommodation and business services without the gay or lesbian person having any recourse other than public denouncement.

    Unlike New Mexico and other states with non-discrimination laws that are inclusive of sexual orientation, Arizona has no such protections beyond those laid out under Federal law (which doesn’t cover sexual orientation or gender identity)… so keep calm and carry on with your hetero-only bakeries and photography services!

    • posted by Doug on

      As I pointed out in the previous thread, Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff have anti-discrimination ordinances that protect gay and lesbian people. Those 3 cities have over 60% of Arizona’s population. The vetoed law would have superseded those ordinances. It was a blatant attempt by the state legislature to overturn those city ordinances.

      All of these same arguments were made against mix race marriage and to keep discriminating against african americans. They were wrong then and anti-gay discrimination is wrong now.

      If you are going to offer goods and services to the general public then you cannot discriminate.

  2. posted by Tom Jefferson III on

    A couple of things to keep in mind;

    (1) Arizona state law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity in its civil rights code (Minnesota does and we are already seeing a push for something similar here)

    (2) Several cities in Arizona do have inclusive civil rights laws and this state bill was an effort to essentially repeal them (once again…social conservatives favor states rights/local control…when its their sort of control…)

    (3) I think that some sort of belief-based exemption should exist, not but in the manner that these laws are proposing.

  3. posted by Houndentenor on

    I don’t like lawsuits. I don’t like that people now seek justice through civil actions. Yes, sometimes they are necessary. We still have miscegenation laws, segregated schools and sodomy laws in a couple dozen states if it weren’t for the courts. But suing a baker for not wanting to bake a wedding cake seems petty. I’d just go to another bakery who wants my filthy gay money. In fact, I’d never go to the bigot baker again and make sure all my friends knew about their bigotry. But I wouldn’t sue them.

    As I have said before, I fear that such actions make “victims” out of social conservatives and fundamentalist Christians as well as Catholics love to play the victim. Yes, sue to be allowed to marry. There’s no valid legal argument against same sex marriage (which is why we keep winning). We should keep our eyes on the prize.

    As for the Arizona law, what a lot of nothing. Some legislators proposed a bill to make something legal that already was (there is no law against discriminating against gay people in AZ or federally) in order to pander to anti-gay bigots. It was so mean spirited that it would up being opposed by openly anti-gay bigots like Rep. Flake and Gov. Brewer. That’s a new low for the far right if they can’t even get open bigots to go along with their new line of attack.

    • posted by Doug on

      HELLO. About 60% of Arizona’s population is covered by city ordinances forbidding discrimination against gay and lesbian people. The vetoed statute was a blatant attempt to overturn those city ordinances. Why does everyone keep saying there is not law against discriminating against gay people in Arizona?

      I would not want to do business with a bigot either, but where does it stop? Ok for florist and bakery’s to discriminate today and next it will be hotels, restaurants, hospitals etc. What about gay folk in small towns? Where do they go.

      DISCRIMINATION is wrong, period. When Christians start discriminating against all sinners equally, then we can talk.

      • posted by Jimmy on

        Right on!

      • posted by Houndentenor on

        My bad. I saw your correction after my post. I would edit that part out now that I know if that were an option.

        I agree with you about discrimination. You are, however, making a “slippery slope” argument. If what you describe were to happen, then I would be against it. It was a bad law. It was written too broadly to try to make it not sound like it was targeted just at gay people, but it would have allowed all kinds of nonsense. Public accommodations have to be open to everyone. We are not in disagreement. I just wouldn’t have sued the small business, mainly because I know what butthurt crybabies these religious nutjobs are and how quick they are to run to the press and cry on camera. There is comparable footabe, btw, of racists claiming that it is an imposition on them to have to eat in the same restaurant as African-Americans. They don’t use the term African-Americans, for the record.

        Here’s how this is a victory, however. Some GOP leaders (not all, by any means, but some and some surprising ones) stood up to the religious right. That never happens. Perhaps they won’t just roll over for the most hateful elements of their party going forward. (I’m not all that optimistic about that, but it could happen.) And, unlike the nightmare of passages of DOMA, DADT and all those ballot initiatives, public support was against this. This is a huge moment for our community. When even an unrepentant anti-gay bigot like Brewer has to back down from an anti-gay bill, the winds have obviously shifted.

        • posted by Doug on

          I’m not as charitable as you in giving credit to those Republicans who stood up and said the law was bad, which it truly was, and should be vetoed. I believe their primary motivation was the extremely bad publicity they were getting and the fear that it would be economically devastating to the state. Money and shame were the primary motivators not doing the right thing.

          • posted by Lori Heine on

            Doug is right about the municipal protections offered by the three biggest cities in Arizona (I live in Phoenix). He’s correct that it is not true that NO laws exist in Arizona to protect us.

            I’m very relieved that the governor vetoed this latest crap, so those city laws will not be overruled.

            The people I talk with every day — on both Left and Right — are far more reasonable than the nutjobs. This blog’s commentary thread alone gives evidence of that. Gay Patriot’s commenters scream about “crazy liberals,” but I rarely meet such dangerous creatures. Likewise, most of the conservatives I know in Arizona are scratching their heads, wondering how such loony people keep getting elected to the legislature.

            Only goes to show that it’s good to get around and talk to people, instead of listening to demonization.

          • posted by Houndentenor on

            We don’t ever truly know why anyone does anything. As far as I’m concerned, it’s enough that they do the right thing. How many Democrats don’t really like gays that much but don’t want to wind up on the wrong end of history? I have no idea, nor do I care. I’m not going to throw Jan Brewer a parade. She’s still an anti-gay bigot. But she did the right thing in this one case and it’s a victory. I think we are going to see more of this over the next few years. No one wants to be remembered as the George Wallace of gay rights. They also don’t want a repeat of what happened with the MLK holiday when Pheonix lost the Superbowl (even though the city recognized the holiday, just not the state.) They can see that they are losing this one. I don’t care whether or not bigots like Flake and Brewer like gay people. I do care what the law is as that’s what affects people.

          • posted by Jorge on

            HELLO. About 60% of Arizona’s population is covered by city ordinances forbidding discrimination against gay and lesbian people. The vetoed statute was a blatant attempt to overturn those city ordinances. Why does everyone keep saying there is not law against discriminating against gay people in Arizona?

            Well, were it not for that, I think Sullivan’s analysis of the particular mix of good and evil would be unimpeachable. And even you concede that “everyone” is saying there is no law barring anti-gay discrimination in Arizona. So we should give Mr. Sullivan credit where it is due. But I suppose we shall also have to move on.

            I would not want to do business with a bigot either, but where does it stop? Ok for florist and bakery’s to discriminate today and next it will be hotels, restaurants, hospitals etc. What about gay folk in small towns? Where do they go.

            Oh, the slippery slope argument, huh? That has become much more credible lately with all these lower court decisions on marriage citing those Scalia dissents on Lawrence v. Texas and the marriage case.

            How about it stops where we want it to stop, for reasons that are principled and true? People only worry about these slippery slope hypotheticals when they don’t have faith in values in the first place. They see only how near two things are to each other at their peripheries, not how strong the core is.

            As for gay folks in small towns, we need for the government to say it is important for them to stay there. That has nothing to do with wedding cakes.

            (Really, now?)

            No, really, it doesn’t. If people are so rugged that they want to live on the frontier, let them act like it.

            DISCRIMINATION is wrong, period. When Christians start discriminating against all sinners equally, then we can talk.

            Make up your mind. Is discrimination wrong, period, or shall we stop discriminating against Christians when it suits you?

          • posted by Tom Scharbach on

            No one wants to be remembered as the George Wallace of gay rights.

            I wouldn’t think so, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, either.

  4. posted by Doug on

    The same for you discriminating against gay people. And from what I know about Jesus I would bet every cent I had that he would not discriminate against anyone either. If you want to believe in a God that discriminates against his children. . . go for it.

  5. posted by Lori Heine on

    Jorge, to imply that gays are somehow “discriminating against Christians” in Arizona is absolutely bizarre. After listening to the rhetoric of social conservatives, I have to wonder what planet they’re living on.

    Let me tell you what WOULD have probably led to discrimination against Christians: the passage of that bill. Employers would begin thinking twice about hiring conservative Christians, because they’d have to wonder whether they’d play pick-and-choose with when they’d do their jobs and when they wouldn’t. To be sure they could even get a job (or keep one), Christians might actually need to be “in the closet” about their faith.

    I think the religious right is the closest thing to an Antichrist that has ever existed. I think that bigots are horrible sinners. I find it highly distasteful to have to serve them — and I am a Christian, myself. I’m not crying to the legislature to pass any laws exempting me from having to serve them.

    Time for social conservatives to put on their big kid pants and quit whining.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      Yanno, I was raised by fundamentalist Christians. (Not racist or sexist as many are, but biblical literalists of the Southern Baptist variety.) I have never understood why they can’t see that the separation of church and state is there to protect them. They think they can merge religion and government without government getting into their business. They rail against big government and then want that same evil horrible government to enforce their moral code (which they themselves hypocritically ignore whenever they think they won’t get caught).

      Nothing could be worse for them in the long run than for them to get their way. Lori’s example is one of many. Unfortunately we are dealing with people who can only see the world through their own persecution complex. “The War on Christmas” and other assorted rubbish is a common topic of conversation. I have to repress my own derisive laughter around the holidays every year so as not to offend my parents’ friends, but it’s ludicrous. All of us have to do things we don’t much like in our work. I participated in things I found morally reprehensible when I was a contractor on Wall Street. Suck it up and do what the rest of us do, and if it’s that horrible, find another job. That’s what everyone else has to do. But I forgot they are special because Jesus.

  6. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Sullian: If we decide that our only response to discrimination is a lawsuit, we gays are ratcheting up a culture war we would do better to leave alone. We run the risk of becoming just as intolerant as the anti-gay bigots, if we seek to coerce people into tolerance.

    Noble sentiments, but there is no “we”, no collective “we gays”. There are laws, there is the government, and there are individuals. Nobody has the right to tell any individual whether or not to enforce the rights granted to them by the law. Not Andrew Sullivan. Not Stephen Miller. No me. Not you. If the price that gays and lesbians pay for exercise of individual rights by individuals is to risk becoming, or more likely risk becoming to be perceived as, “just as ignorant as the anti-gay bigots”, then that is the price gays and lesbians — as well as every other American — pay for living in a free society, a society of laws, of rights, of remedies.

    So long as there is a law, somebody is going to enforce it, and that’s a fact. We can play the church lady until we fall over from exhaustion, and that won’t change the fact.

    If we (and there is a “we” in the sense of the body politic, represented by our elected officials) do not want individuals to petition the government to enforce the law, or to bring a lawsuit to enforce the law as it applies to the individual, then we must change the law to remove the rights being enforced, or grant exemptions in some circumstances.

    Jorge: How about it stops where we want it to stop, for reasons that are principled and true? People only worry about these slippery slope hypotheticals when they don’t have faith in values in the first place. They see only how near two things are to each other at their peripheries, not how strong the core is.

    I will be enlightened to learn what “principled and true” reason demands that our government to grant an exemption for discrimination against gays and lesbians, but not other protected classes.

    Sullivan: I favor maximal liberty in these cases. … I’m particularly horrified by the attempt to force anyone to do anything they really feel violates their conscience, sense of self, or even just comfort.

    As a country, we ask citizens to do many things that violate personal conscience, sense of self, and comfort, using the force of law. We do so (in theory, at least) to promote the common good, and we claim, under our foundational documents, the right to do so on behalf of the citizenry at large. In my view, rightly so. I am not horrified. The question is where to draw lines.

    It is clear to me that we are not, as a society, going to eliminate public accommodation laws or stop enforcing them whenever an individual or business finds them inconvenient, at least any time soon.

    At the same time, I believe should allow some latitude for those who find it a violation of personal conscience, sense of self, and/or comfort, to provide goods and services for specific purposes. Social conservatives, typically, are wrapping their desire to discriminate against gays and lesbians in chimera about “religious freedom” and “personal liberty”, claiming principle and truth. I would expect nothing less from them, given the intellectual dishonesty with which they approach the world in general.

    I have no more desire to force a benighted soul like Melissa Jabobs to bake a cake for gays and lesbians than do most people; the question is how and to what extent we accommodate her and others like her through exemptions to public accommodations laws.

    Trying to discern a “principled and true” line of demarkation that works strikes me as impossible. Far better, in my view, to take a pragmatic approach, as we have done in other areas of public accommodation law.

    Not, mind you, that I think we will. The thought of a general exemption to public accommodation laws to permit discrimination, however sensibly drawn and/or limited, gives most people the shivers. Far better to climb up on the high horses of principle and truth and find ways to discriminate against gays and lesbians that don’t sound like discrimination.

  7. posted by Jorge on

    Jorge, to imply that gays are somehow “discriminating against Christians” in Arizona is absolutely bizarre.

    Let us say then that gays are instigating discrimination against Christians. Better? We can’t take all the credit.

    If the price that gays and lesbians pay for exercise of individual rights by individuals is to risk becoming, or more likely risk becoming to be perceived as, “just as ignorant as the anti-gay bigots”, then that is the price gays and lesbians — as well as every other American — pay for living in a free society, a society of laws, of rights, of remedies.

    Noble words.

    I just hope everybody realizes that once we reach whatever “promised land” is in anyone’s mind right now, life’s still going to go on.

    I will be enlightened to learn what “principled and true” reason demands that our government to grant an exemption for discrimination against gays and lesbians, but not other protected classes.

    I concede no such limits on the First Amendment.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Tom: I will be enlightened to learn what “principled and true” reason demands that our government to grant an exemption for discrimination against gays and lesbians, but not other protected classes.

      Jorge: I concede no such limits on the First Amendment.

      I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, but let me be more specific in my questions:

      What what “principled and true” reason demands that our government to grant an exemption for discrimination against same-sex marriage but not (a) interracial marriage ( discrimination on the basis of race), (b) interfaith marriage (discrimination on the basis of religion), or (c) non-procreative marriage of men and women over 55 (discrimination on the basis of age)?

      What what “principled and true” reason demands that our government to grant an exemption for discrimination because of a “religious belief” but not a “belief not formed by religion”?

      • posted by Jorge on

        You ask a question that is not relevant to what I posted. I speak of society, and you speak of government. When it comes to government, I think the should be exactly as you say–the First Amendment should apply to religious exemptions in all those situations. It’s the right thing to do. (I am well aware the Supreme Court probably would not agree with me–there’s your principled and true reason, by the way.) But when it comes to society, a Christian baker’s convention is not to convince people to bring back Jim Crow, or anti-sodomy laws, or anything else that we have already decided is abhorrent to our sensibilities. A just result happens because its own reasons. It makes no sense to suggest that people doing the right thing one time would lead to them doing the wrong thing the next time.

        • posted by Tom Scharbach on

          When it comes to government, I think the should be exactly as you say–the First Amendment should apply to religious exemptions in all those situations. It’s the right thing to do.

          Okay, good. At least we agree that if we make an exception to the public accommodation laws with respect to same-sex marriages, then we should make an equivalent exemption applicable to all marriages. That’s progress.

          • posted by Jorge on

            I did not know until David Link’s March 2 post of the existence of such a law anywhere. Yeowch!

          • posted by Jorge on

            Hmm, never mind. The Court decided it the other way (that’s not at all apparent in his post).

  8. posted by Kosh III on

    Lorie said: “most of the conservatives I know in Arizona are scratching their heads, wondering how such loony people keep getting elected to the legislature.”

    Because these same head scratching folks VOTE for them–again and again.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      From reading things here and elsewhere it seems to me that Arizona has the equivalent of New York state’s upstate/downstate problem. Phoenix, Tucson, etc are relatively liberal on social issues. That tends to happen in cities where the “others” that are often feared by so many are neighbors and co-workers and generally speaking once you meet people you realize that despite obvious cultural differences most people are more like you and people you already know that they are different. I would imagine that if Lori and her “citified” conservative friends went 100 miles out of town they’d find very different “conservative” attitudes. We have the same issue in Texas. Texas if officially (as in legally and in terms of the GOP platform, vehemently anti-gay although you’d never encounter any problem inside the 610 loop in Houston. (They even have a lesbian mayor.) Just cross the county line in any direction and it’s a very different story. (I even hear the N-word when visiting my parents.)

    • posted by Lori Heine on

      Actually, Kosh, no they don’t.

      The head-scratchers live in the city, and the troglodytes in the sticks. As Houndentenor has noted in his comment below, there is an “upstate/downstate” conflict in Arizona.

      What, exactly, would be your recommended remedy for this problem? Short of something unthinkable (thankfully, to most of us), like rounding up the bigots and killing them, I see none except to counter them at the polls and by activism.

      Which is what we are doing. And which worked very well in this instance.

      • posted by Lori Heine on

        I might also point out that trying to use the law to control the behavior of the entire state was exactly what caused the conflict here.

        The people in the cities thought the rural folks should just go ahead and refuse to serve anybody they chose. The yokels wanted to force everyone in the state to validate their bigotry. And of course everything had to be done by making a law that everybody had to follow.

        I will also point out how wonderfully the situation was remedied — without resorting to passing yet another law of any sort. The people spoke. For a change, the government listened.

        What a concept.

        • posted by Houndentenor on

          That’s sort of a solution but only for the people who got out of the sticks and moved to a big city. I did it. Most of the folks where I grew up don’t know I’m gay, if they even remember me (it’s been decades since I was back for more than 24 hours or bothered to visit any old friends from high school). We can make better lives for ourselves by getting the heck out of there, but where does that leave the gay people who for various reasons (jobs, family obligations, etc.) can’t do that. Are they just stuck in the 1950s for the rest of their lives? I know I’m a hypocrite because I didn’t stay and fight but I’m not a fan of the attitude that people who can’t leave the deep red zones just have to tough it out.

          • posted by Lori Heine on

            I feel sorry for people stuck in 1950’s-land, too. I realize that some either like to live in the country or have reasons they can’t leave. It’s too blithe an answer to say that we don’t live in a perfect world.

            But I will say that heavy-handed legislation — enacted by the same people fallible enough to have made the world so imperfect in the first place — often not only fails to help, but makes the problems worse.

            Laws pertaining to truly public accommodations — meaning those that all the citizens must pay taxes to support — need definitely apply everywhere. The bill in Kansas would originally have permitted “Christians” in the police and fire departments to refuse to serve gays. That is the state that blessed America with Fred Phelps, so I suppose we must consider the source. But I’m glad that bill laid an egg.

            One thing that’s important to remember is that not all rural merchants hate gays. Now that technology has made it possible, perhaps people in various far-flung areas can begin connecting to unite virtually — and work to change attitudes in the hinterlands.

  9. posted by Kosh III on

    “I’m particularly horrified by the attempt to force anyone to do anything they really feel violates their conscience, sense of self, or even just comfort.’

    You mean like my horror at MY tax dollars going to support Bush’s Oil wars? Welfare for the rich? Congressional junkets? Destroying the environment?
    OR
    the centuries of horror over gay people being coerced by government and society into living a lie just to be able to live? You reap what you sow–at least according to St Paul.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      Silly Kosh III. Only the values of religious conservatives matter. Your morals and ethics can be ignored, but theirs have to be pandered to by everyone in society. Anything less than that is persecution.

  10. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    As for gay folks in small towns … [i]f people are so rugged that they want to live on the frontier, let them act like it.

    Oh, we already do, Jorge. We live in the real world, unprotected by the gay-friendly accouterments urban life. And we “make do”, as we say on the frontier. In fact, we thrive, as unimaginable as that may seem to city dwellers.

    But with respect to the operation of public accommodation laws, rural areas are situated differently than urban areas, and that’s a fact.

    I checked our local phone book, which covers six communities within a 30-mile radius of where Michael and I live, and there are two bakeries that make special-order cakes, like wedding cakes. Its not that we are starving for cake, exactly (the local grocery stores have bakery departments, some of which are quite good), but that we have only two specialty bakeries. In Milwaukee or Chicago, there are probably dozens, if not hundreds. What is true of bakeries is true of florists, caterers and photographers, as well.

    So exemptions to public accommodation laws, whether “principled and true” or merely pragmatic, have a larger impact on rural areas than on urban areas. It is a fact that we need to take into consideration when thinking about exemptions to public accommodation laws, unless we intend to ignore 20-25% of our nation’s population. I wouldn’t be surprised if no consideration was given to the circumstances of rural areas, given the self-absorbed insularity of city dwellers, but nothing in the Constitution grants special status to city dwellers.

    • posted by Jim Michaud on

      You checked your local phone book? You’re showing your age Tom. I haven’t leafed through one of them in years.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        You checked your local phone book? You’re showing your age Tom.

        True enough. I am old enough to have been Moses’ babysitter.

        But it was more convenient than doing eight internet searches (one for each Baraboo, Lake Delton, Mauston, Portage, Reedsburg, Sauk City, Sauk Prairie, and Wisconsin Dells) to get information I could see in a glance in the phone book. Not to mention that I can’t use old internet searches to fire up the wood stove every fall.

        It’s just part of frontier life. Roughing it, I think its called.

  11. posted by Don on

    While I agree we should take the noblest approach possible, I am very disheartened by all these calls for it without a whisper of why anyone wouldn’t take a noble approach. Why is it we have hate crimes against gay people? Is it because there is such love and tolerance taught in Christian churches and on our nation’s airwaves by Christian leaders? What have the last 45 years been like since Stonewall? In the 1980s wasn’t it the basic position that we brought AIDS upon ourselves? Did military integration go smoothly? Have we only been greeted with polite “sure’s” when asking for legal protection from being fired from our jobs?

    Now that it seems inevitable that we will gain marriage equality, are we being greeted with “I’m sorry, I can’t agree with gay marriage, but I can accept your legal right to do so. So let’s find common ground and respect each other’s wishes.”

    Most thought Gandhi was nuts to allow the British to beat and kill his protestors. To allow their savagery to be seen by people not responding to their unbridled viciousness. It was right in the end, but it caused a lot of bloodshed and destroyed many lives of those who lived.

    It is not such a stretch to make the comparison given the beatings and killings of gays that have been brought through the whipped-up fear and hate created solely on religious teachings. Russia, anyone? Looks kinda familiar.

    So the mostly non-religious gays should take up the mantel of religious leaders of the past in responding to religious leaders of the present. Let’s be clear, that’s what we’re advocating here. And we are white-washing the hate and violence that has been stirred up against us for decades. Uganda, anyone?

    Just so we’re clear. We’re being asked to be Gandhi yet again. And we should respect their right to think like the British because it’s principled somehow?

    I’m in. But I’m not going to admit for one second that they are taking anything vaguely resembling a high road.

  12. posted by Doug on

    Where in the Bible does God or Jesus promote and/or sanction discrimination?

    • posted by Don on

      It doesn’t. But what it does do is exhort people to follow the dictates and to persuade others to follow them, too. Ergo, some believe they should use whatever means necessary to enforce compliance for the sake of their immortal souls.

      I often have to remind myself that the concepts discussed on pages such as these are beyond the grasp of many. Remember, algebra was just a step too far for some kids in school. They could never grasp it. Now those kids vote.

  13. posted by Don on

    This just got added by Andrew Sullivan. My point exactly:

    I understand and sympathize with a sense of bewilderment, especially among fundamentalists and the older generations, at the advance of gay dignity and equality. But, as Jan Brewer noted, there had not been a single incident of alleged gay aggression in Arizona. If any group could be forgiven for feeling that it was being pummeled with a fusillade of balls, it has been the gay and lesbian community, suddenly confronted across several states with bills that would have decimated any protections against discrimination. Has it ever occurred to Noonan that gay people might feel under siege as well? From Russia to Uganda and Nigeria, aided and abetted by American Christianists, gay people are experiencing a wave of hatred and hostility far surpassing the discomfort of a fundamentalist wedding planner. And yet Noonan can only see things from the perspective of those seeking to keep sinners at arm’s length.

  14. posted by Kosh III on

    “Where in the Bible does God or Jesus promote and/or sanction discrimination?”

    “I hate divorce, says the Lord” Malachi 2:16

    So God hates Ronald Reagan, Betty Ford, Mickey Rooney, Liz Taylor, Rev. Charles Stanley, Rush Limbaugh etc etc

    Can we please have a law against these vile sinners?

  15. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    As a related note, I think that we should be aware of a change in legal tactics that is emerging in a number of states — seeking a permanent injuction barring states from enforcing anti-marriage laws and/or amendments.

    The ACLU has filed for permanent injuctions in Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon and Wisconsin.

    Issuance of a permanent injunction pending trial requires a judicial finding that (1) the plantiffs have a “substantial likelihood” of winning the case on the merits and (2) failure to issue the injunction will cause irreparable harm to the plaintiffs.

    I don’t know how this will turn out, but given the number and unanimity of federal District Court opinions issued recently striking down anti-marriage laws and amendments, creating the “substantial likelihood”, it is an interesting change in tactics, and I would not bet against the ACLU’s judgment that the time has come.

  16. posted by Doug on

    I am officially retired but run a small business that offers certain financial services. Several weeks ago I received a request from a Baptist church and began evaluating how I could help them out. I’ve been doing this all the while in full anger mode at the Arizona controversy. Today, my partner asked me why I was even considering helping the church out when I know that the Baptist church is anti-gay. I keep my business dealings and private life separate and in all honesty it had not even crossed my mind to refuse their request because they are anti-gay. If I refuse their request, there is a better than even chance they will lose their church.

    I guess I am acting more like a real christian than these so called right wing evangelical christians if I help them out. Than being said I am not considering refusing their request and telling them exactly why I am refusing their request.

    • posted by Doug on

      The last sentence above should read “I am NOW considering refusing their request. . . “

      • posted by kosh iii on

        Maybe you should ask them if they really want help from an abominable sin-filled faggot and see what their reactions are.

  17. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Stupid is a stupid does. Because of a defective definition of “minister” as including judges and other public officials authorized to perform marriages under Arizona law, yet another bill, innocuous in and of itself, may become another flash point in the marriage equality fight. Let’s hope that the morons in Arizona’s legislature who drafted the bill will find the intelligence to correct the definition before enacting the law.

  18. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Sanchez: If there are still enough hardcore bigots to justify restricting their expressive association in the economic domain—or in subsets of that domain—then I hope their numbers soon dwindle to the point where those restrictions become unnecessary.

    We do not have to open up a constitutional quagmire surrounding “religious belief” to deal with providing a level of relief to the few businesses that will refuse to provide services to gays and lesbians in the context of same-sex marriage or otherwise.

    You and others keep pounding your heads against the brick wall of “religious belief”, when the issue can be dealt with exactly how we dealt with “motels … turning away African Americans in 1964” and with employment non-discrimination laws — define a level of business activity that falls below a threshold where the public accommodation laws are applicable.

    The “de minimis” approach used in public accommodation law as it applies to housing and in employment discrimination law is a lot more workable than involving government officials and courts in defining what is, and what is not, a “religious belief”, twisting ordinary common sense by ascribing “religious belief” (the “Prosperity Gospel”, maybe?) to corporations and other non-human entities, and opening up all the other legal and constitutional issues that are inv0lved with the current rash of “religious conscience” proposals.

    I understand why conservative Christians insist on framing the issue as one of “religious belief” as opposed to simple opposition to same-sex marriage. Framing the issue as “religious belief” brings government sanction to the idea — constitutionally and morally unsound — that “religious belief” is worthy of protection, while non-religious personal conscience is not. But sensible people will resist getting sucked into that agenda.

    • posted by Mark on

      The Arizona and Kansas debates seem to exhibit a radical expansion of the linkage between the 1st amendment and public accommodations. To take the preferred photographer/baker examples: lots of weddings (divorced/remarriage, interfaith, marriages following out-of-wedlock births) violate sincerely-held religious beliefs of various faiths. Yet between 1964 and a few years ago, we didn’t see state legislatures pass laws demanding exceptions to public accommodations laws for businesses whose owners might object on religious grounds to these types of weddings.

      Why not? Perhaps one theory is that until the rise of the organized anti-gay marriage movement in Prop 8, which focused heavily on the idea that letting gays marry would victimize others, no one (or virtually no one, and no one in the political mainstream) argued that the act of selling a cake to someone, or taking pictures of someone, constituted moral approval of the manner in which the customer would use the cake or the pictures.

      Adopting this (very radical) AZ-KS conception of public accommodations to the 1960s would have rendered many applications of public accommodations laws unconstitutional: if selling a cake (or a rose, or a diamond ring) to an interracial couple could be interpreted as expressing moral or religious support for that couple’s wedding, then of course (under this current definition of “religious exemptions”), public accommodations laws should not have applied.

      The popular mindset (at least among conservative Christians) has changed, and I don’t think we can go back to the 1965-2008 widely-accepted consensus that a business selling a customer a cake or a rose or a photograph didn’t imply the business endorsing the moral purpose of how the customer would use that product. But I don’t see in much of the AZ commentary an acknowledgement of just how dramatic this change has been, and in such a short time. It’s hard not to see the hypocrisy of small businesses who want a religious exemption not to sell to gays but never seem to have demonstrated any problem in selling goods or services to heterosexuals whose behavior violates the owners’ faiths.

  19. posted by Tom Jefferson IIII on

    Um I call BS on this; For a great many on the LGBT left, individual freedom of conscience is now a despised notion –

    This is a serious issue involved – with serious concerns on both sides — that warrants a serious (honest) conversation.

    Saying that the “left’; (which seems to include just about one who is not a conservative libertarian or Tea Partier) hates freedom of conscience because they object to it be used willy-nilly by anyone or anything that wants to avoid a law, is dishonest.

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