Double Standards All Round

Gay fashion guru Carson Kressley, formerly of TV’s “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” was asked by Washington, D.C.’s Metro Weekly about designers who have publicly refused to dress the First Lady Melania Trump in protest against her husband. Kressley’s response:

“Designers are artists and many of them have very strong political views. That’s the beauty of our country. If you don’t want to work with somebody, you don’t have to. I think it’s well within their rights to say no. I don’t think it’s disrespectful. It’s just a personal choice.”

Hmmm. If only LGBT progressives would recognize that same right for photographers, bakers and other creative types.

The New York Post reports that Guy wearing Trump hat sues bar for refusing to serve him. I don’t think the bar did the right thing as a matter of fairness and civility, but I also think suing for service is a bad idea.

The Post further reports that:

A manager said he spoke to the bar owner, and was told, “Anyone who supports Trump or believes what you believe is not welcome here. And you need to leave right now because we won’t serve you!,” according to the suit.

I’d argue this is murkier than cases where business owners are operating out of religious belief and not political pique, but I still think the Trump supporter shouldn’t go running to the state to punish the bar owner.

Yet how many on the left who think the bar did the right thing, or at least had the right to do so, also believe that government should force caterers and wedding planners to provide their services to same-sex weddings?

29 Comments for “Double Standards All Round”

  1. posted by Mark Peterson on

    As far as I know, “Melania Trump” or “guy wearing Trump hat” are not listed as a protected class under any state’s public accommodations law. So I’m not sure I see the comparison to businesses that want to refuse service to all gay and lesbian customers (or to all black customers, or all Jewish customers).

    • posted by JohnInCA on

      Actually, political idealogy/activities is covered under California non-discrimination law. So in California, the guy would have a case. Not sure about New York.

      That said, Mr. Miller continues to make clear that he doesn’t understand how non-discrimination law works and what it applies to.

    • posted by Throbert McGee on

      As far as I know, “Melania Trump” or “guy wearing Trump hat” are not listed as a protected class under any state’s public accommodations law. So I’m not sure I see the comparison to businesses that want to refuse service to all gay and lesbian customers (or to all black customers, or all Jewish customers).

      So, in your view, in any jurisdiction where gays and lesbians are not a “protected class,” it’s perfectly all right for businesses to refuse service to them? There’s no deeper ethical issue for you; it’s just about whether a particular minority has obtained “protected class” status or not?

      • posted by Mark Peterson on

        My preference would be that public accommodations laws in all 50 states apply to LGBT residents, just as they apply to African-Americans. But the issue in all of the cases that Stephen cites involves states where public accommodations laws already protect gays and lesbians, which he seems to oppose. I’m not aware of Stephen ever complaining about the denial of service to a gay or lesbian customer in a state or city where gays and lesbians aren’t covered, but maybe I missed it.

      • posted by TJ on

        I mentioned this before, it was in relation to Hollywood Republicans or third party presidential candidates complaing about party discrimination;

        Its very rare for equal opportunity policies to explicitly cover political party membership.

        Its very rare for the courts to view government-sanctioned party discrimination as being comparable to religious discrimination.

  2. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Why is it that the only religious objections to marriage that Republicans are willing to protect are religious objections to same-sex marriages?

  3. posted by Jorge on

    I’d argue this is murkier than cases where business owners are operating out of religious belief and not political pique, but I still think the Trump supporter shouldn’t go running to the state to punish the bar owner.

    Can and should are two very different things. Political pique is just as much protected under the constitution as religious belief. It’s just that only religion is part of the laundry list that’s superprotected by legislation.

    I think the tone makes a difference. There is no need to serve a heathen, political or religious. Your business, your rules. But one should avoid any appearance of inciting other people or of interfering with their politics, of trying to interfere with other people’s rules.

    On second thought, Ron Paul is just a very smart dense person. Perhaps Mr. Red Hat should have just sat at the counter until the police removed him. That would have made a better story–and a better lawsuit. But that would have been a little more dangerous, and who wants to get their hands dirty doing frontline politics when they can play the bureaucracy instead?

    Why is it that the only religious objections to marriage that Republicans are willing to protect are religious objections to same-sex marriages?

    As I have said before, I see no evidence that there is any other religious objection to marriage that exists to be infringed upon.

    Hmmm. If only LGBT progressives would recognize that same right for photographers, bakers and other creative types.

    They will.

    But first we have to Make America Great again. There is no need for too much agreement on how best to do so.

    • posted by JohnInCA on

      “As I have said before, I see no evidence that there is any other religious objection to marriage that exists to be infringed upon.”
      What, you mean besides marriage after divorce, miscegenation, and inter-faith marriages?

      How does the saying go… those who fail history are doomed to repeat it?

      • posted by Jorge on

        First you say people are objecting to miscegenation, marriage after divorce, and inter-faith marriages. Then you say it’s past and future. Let me know when you’ve woken up enough to tell the difference between Now and Not-Now.

        • posted by JohnInCA on

          So your standard isn’t “religious objections”, it’s “religious objections, currently popular to talk about”?

          That’s quite a few words you left out of your original statement.

          Also, I think it’s cute how you continue to deny that racists claiming religious motivation exist. It’s tragic, but cute.

  4. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Why is it that the only religious objections to marriage that Republicans are willing to protect are religious objections to same-sex marriages?

    As I have said before, I see no evidence that there is any other religious objection to marriage that exists to be infringed upon.

    Of course you don’t, Jorge. The only religious belief that conservative Christians hold concerning marriage is that it must not be same-sex marriage.

    • posted by Jorge on

      No, dear, that’s the only social belief Christians hold regarding marriage.

      Been there, done that, time for The Greatest American President to move on.

      I agree, but don’t cut in line. It’s time for the people on the right to take up the mantle. You will have to wait.

      • posted by Houndentenor on

        Of course it is. Have we heard of a single case of someone refusing service regarding a marriage of a couple that has been previously married? Any clerks refusing to process divorce papers? No, it’s just the gay weddings that they have a problem with. Of course some of the ones against gay marriage have multiple divorces. They pick and choose from the Bible which is why it’s so laughable that they act like they are being so moral when invoking religious to justify their bigotry.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Tom: Of course you don’t, Jorge. The only religious belief that conservative Christians hold concerning marriage is that it must not be same-sex marriage.

      Jorge: No, dear, that’s the only social belief Christians hold regarding marriage.

      Whether or not opposition to same-sex marriage is the “only social belief Christians hold regarding marriage“**, it is without question the most important social belief Christians hold regarding marriage, the only one deemed sufficiently important to require special protection under law.

      **As an off-topic aside, I am inclined to agree with you on that score, given that the staunchest “family values” Christians are as often as not on their third or fourth marriage, reluctantly paying child support for their spawn from earlier marriages, and Christian Americans now have a higher divorce/remarriage rate than non-religious Americans. It is a stunning reversal of . In my lifetime, Christian marriage has evolved from sacrament to sacrilege, and American Christianity is increasingly defined by opposition to all things gay and lesbian.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        Should read: It is a stunning reversal of Christian social values.

      • posted by Jorge on

        So it is. Ann Coulter has argued that heterosexuality is the “Jesus nut” of marriage, without which, it falls apart. It is not a judge’s job to rule on whether or not heterosexuality or some other subject is, was, or will be the core requirement of marriage when they are interpreting the constitutionality of anti-discrimination laws and law enforcement. I wish to be very clear that I do not recognize civil marriage to be the definition of marriage.

        But I have no problems eradicating the pearl-clutching bakers and photographers out of public existence. My sole condition is that it be done through kindness and exposure rather than coercion and law. Or something like that.

        • posted by Houndentenor on

          It’s interesting that never married but often cohabitating Ann Coulter is defining marriage for you now. What a bizarre spectacle when social conservatives admire a coked-up whore like that.

          • posted by Jorge on

            Ann Coulter does not define marriage for me. I am pointing out that unassailable ivory towers of logic fall to direct attacks.

        • posted by Tom Scharbach on

          I wish to be very clear that I do not recognize civil marriage to be the definition of marriage.

          The definition of civil marriage is the definition of civil marriage. Nothing less, and nothing more.

          The definition of civil marriage does not (and should not) determine or affect the definition of religious marriage — one man and one woman, or one man and several women, or one man and one woman of the same race, or one man and one woman of the same religion, and so on.

          I can understand confusion between civil marriage and religious marriage among so-called “Bible Christians”. The group is marked by an underdeveloped, often contradictory and/or incoherent theology of religious marriage, a theology paying scant (if any) attention to biblical prohibition of divorce/remarriage, and has a propensity to treat civil marriage, which is a legal arrangement, as if civil marriage were religious marriage.

          I do not, however, understand confusion between civil marriage and religious marriage among Catholics — a group with a well-developed theology of “Christian marriage”, detailed enough to include the Petrine and Pauline privileges, which grant the Church power to annul marriages between Catholics and non-Christians. I expect more from a denomination that makes an independent determination of who is and who is not married for religious purposes, and reserves unto itself to ignore civil law when determining who and under what conditions it will marry couples.

          And I expect more of you, Jorge, a Catholic with a high-powered liberal arts education at an elite school and self-proclaimed critical thinking skills. To even suggest that civil marriage defines religious marriage betrays your resume.

          • posted by Jorge on

            Tom, this is very basic. Marriage is not the sum of two institutions or adjectives, “this is religious marriage and this is civil marriage, period.” Marriage is the sum of all institutions, adjectives, and understandings. Combine religious and civil marriage, and you don’t even crack 60% of what marriage is.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        So it is. Ann Coulter has argued that heterosexuality is the “Jesus nut” of marriage, without which, it falls apart.

        Uh huh.

  5. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    But first we have to Make America Great again.

    Been there, done that, time for The Greatest American President to move on.

  6. posted by Kosh III on

    “I wish to be very clear that I do not recognize civil marriage to be the definition of marriage.”

    So what? the only true marriage is one as defined by a clown in a gown who may be a closet case or a pedophile hiding behind the hokus-pocus of a belief-system from the 15th century?

    Keep up! We’re discussing civil matters: keep your religious opinion in your closet along with your prayers. (Matt. 6:6)

    • posted by Jorge on

      Huh?

      No.

    • posted by TJ on

      i wasn’t sure when Jorge was quoting from Ann, much less has an opinion about what Ann says or (until recently) Rick Santorum.

  7. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Marriage is not the sum of two institutions or adjectives, “this is religious marriage and this is civil marriage, period.” Marriage is the sum of all institutions, adjectives, and understandings. Combine religious and civil marriage, and you don’t even crack 60% of what marriage is.

    You seem to be coming back to reality, finally.

    Although religious institutions frequently try to define marriage (e.g. “one man, one woman, for life”), the definitions almost always miss the mark, and are always incomplete, even in religious institutions (like the Catholic Church) that has given centuries of thought to the definition.

    Civil law does not define marriage, or attempt to do so. Instead, civil law establishes a legal schema in which a civil contract which creates the legal status of spouses, and defines civil law rights and responsibilities, benefits and burden, attendant to that legal status.

    And that is where you have been missing the mark. Courts don’t define marriage. Civil laws don’t define marriage. And so on. Civil marriage creates a legal status, and that’s all it does.

  8. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    I wish to be very clear that I do not recognize civil marriage to be the definition of marriage.

    Just out of curiosity, do you recognize anything to be “the definition of marriage”? It would seem that you believe that marriage is beyond definition:

    Marriage is not the sum of two institutions or adjectives, “this is religious marriage and this is civil marriage, period.” Marriage is the sum of all institutions, adjectives, and understandings. Combine religious and civil marriage, and you don’t even crack 60% of what marriage is.

  9. posted by JohnInCA on

    Meh. Part of the reason the culture as a whole had moved so fast on same-sex marriage is that whatever the “real” definition of marriage is, gay couples regularly meet it, and folks can see that.

    Which is why “civil unions” were never going to work as a compromise. When you test two different things as functionally equivalent (as civil unions were advertised to do) and start treating gay folk as married-in-all-but-name, most folks will question why we deny the name.

    So refuse to accept whatever definition you want Jorge. The number of people filled by such arguments is pretty small.

  10. posted by Mike in Houston on

    Been a while since Stephen One Note does bore one with his continued jeremiads and not alot of other independent voices outside the comments… nonetheless, Trump just erased LGBT people from the Census & eliminated LGBT protections for government contractors… but I guess he’s still (as Stephen posits) the most pro-gay GOP president ever.

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