Moderators: carlson1, Charles L. Cotton
I am so hungry now!The Annoyed Man wrote:The Wedding Cake for my Son's Wedding - Zombie Hunter Couple:Cedar Park Dad wrote:Two questions come to mind:
Bride cake / groom cake?
The little people on top.
Other than that yea you have me. Maybe if they put the names of the people involved on it (I don't remember either)?
Maybe we're having a difficulty because in the real world its not an issue that really comes up other than when people are pushing an agenda.
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My Son's Groom's Cake - Master Chief (HALO), Guarding his Bacon:
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(By the way, that was real bacon, on maple icing. That cake was nothing short of awesome. My wife and I designed it, and I ordered the collectible Master Chief figurine from Amazon.com.)
We are absolutely supposed to judge moral values. We are not to judge a person's soul. Only God knows a person's heart, but when we see sin we are to correct it in charity and love. Using your example, we should never defend ourself with deadly force, because when we do we are then judging a person's actions.healthinsp wrote:The bible tells me that it is neither my place nor responsibility to judge other people's moral values. What was immoral 50-100 years ago is common place today. I own my own small business, and I try to treat everyone with the same excellent customer service.
Psalm 1:1healthinsp wrote:The bible tells me that it is neither my place nor responsibility to judge other people's moral values. What was immoral 50-100 years ago is common place today. I own my own small business, and I try to treat everyone with the same excellent customer service.
rotor wrote:I am retired now but when I owned my own business I was required to provide a translator regardless of the language spoken (at my expense).RPBrown wrote:I own my own business and really do not have a problem servicing to other factions of life. In the grand scheme of things, its a job. Nothing more, and nothing less. It doesn't mean I have to agree with their lifestyle, religion, or anything else that is different from me.
The only thing I ask is that there is someone at the location that speaks English. I should not be required to supply a translator to ride with a technician on a call. I am thinking about adding a recording to my phone system that says press 1 for English or press 2 to be transferred to Rosetta Stone.
There is a group of people that ALWAYS tries to negotiate a lower price AFTER the work is quoted and done. It makes me wish I didn't have to deal with them only because of this.
RoyGBiv wrote:Making a cake for a homosexual wedding is not anywhere close to indicating my approval of gay marriage. It's a business transaction. I am in business to serve the public. I won't knowingly support illegal activity (I won't sell a gun to a known felon or mentally unstable person for example) but my selling a cake to a homosexual couple in no way impugns my faith. I can continue to speak out (as a private person) against __________________(insert cause of choice here), if I so choose. I suspect that might cause _______________ (affected people) to stop asking me to make them cakes, but if they do ask, I will make them a cake that reflects positively on my ability as a cake maker.
For the record.... If the State grants marriage licenses to anyone, the State must grant licenses to everyone.
Well stated. Just stop and reverse the situation...assume a gay couple have a bakery: Should they be justified in refusing to serve heterosexual couples on the basis of it offending THEIR sensibilities? Baking the cake has nothing to do with what you personally believe unless you are looking to make an issue out of it. It's simply a business transaction. Should a staunch Christian salesman feel free to refuse to sell a gay couple a car? If he did so and worked for me, he would be unemployed in a heartbeat. Gay people pay the same taxes (actually higher if they are not granted the marriage deduction) as any other US citizen and should be entitled to the same rights as anyone else. Just as each of us is entitled to "freedom of religion" we are also entitled to "freedom from religion" when it is used to justify discrimination of any class.Do you judge everyone's value around you? If not why not?anygunanywhere wrote:We are absolutely supposed to judge moral values. We are not to judge a person's soul. Only God knows a person's heart, but when we see sin we are to correct it in charity and love. Using your example, we should never defend ourself with deadly force, because when we do we are then judging a person's actions.healthinsp wrote:The bible tells me that it is neither my place nor responsibility to judge other people's moral values. What was immoral 50-100 years ago is common place today. I own my own small business, and I try to treat everyone with the same excellent customer service.
Good points there.Should a gay couple that have a bakery be able to refuse service to a heterosexual couple for whatever reason? Yes. Absolutely, in a free country with property rights. As a previous commenter said, and you pretty much said yourself: the marketplace will work it out. I highly doubt, absent government intervention, there would be an epidemic of bigots refusing service to people, but should there be sufficient bigotry for it to be a problem, the bigots would provide wonderful entrepreneurial opportunities for those of us not blinded by bigotry.talltex wrote:RoyGBiv wrote:Making a cake for a homosexual wedding is not anywhere close to indicating my approval of gay marriage. It's a business transaction. I am in business to serve the public. I won't knowingly support illegal activity (I won't sell a gun to a known felon or mentally unstable person for example) but my selling a cake to a homosexual couple in no way impugns my faith. I can continue to speak out (as a private person) against __________________(insert cause of choice here), if I so choose. I suspect that might cause _______________ (affected people) to stop asking me to make them cakes, but if they do ask, I will make them a cake that reflects positively on my ability as a cake maker.
For the record.... If the State grants marriage licenses to anyone, the State must grant licenses to everyone.
You might want to look at the post ACW Amendments again. At least some forms of discrimination are indeed the government's job to protect against, and rightly so.
The government's job is to provide for a common defense and a legal system to protect, on the most basic level, property rights. It's not the government's job to ensure equality or force people not to discriminate.
Because so many of us call ourselves believers in some part of JudeoChristianity, it is very difficult to articulate where and how our religious obligations and Constitutional obligations parry and thrust. My comment follows, and I am NOT proselytizing,healthinsp wrote:The bible tells me that it is neither my place nor responsibility to judge other people's moral values. What was immoral 50-100 years ago is common place today. I own my own small business, and I try to treat everyone with the same excellent customer service.
Who's the "you" you are referring to?mojo84 wrote:When did sexual preference become a protected class?
If it's not a protected class, then aren't some of you trying to impose your moral beliefs on others?
TAM, I don't know if you consider yourself a pastor or a philosopher, but you do rather well in both arenas. I generally appreciate reading your take on the subject. Thanks.The Annoyed Man wrote:Because so many of us call ourselves believers in some part of JudeoChristianity, it is very difficult to articulate where and how our religious obligations and Constitutional obligations parry and thrust. My comment follows, and I am NOT proselytizing,healthinsp wrote:The bible tells me that it is neither my place nor responsibility to judge other people's moral values. What was immoral 50-100 years ago is common place today. I own my own small business, and I try to treat everyone with the same excellent customer service.
I love the Word of God too, and I agree with you that it is not my job to condemn, but there are definitely scriptures that call us to judge. The problem is that in modern society, people tend to conflate those two words, but they are NOT the same. I judge people all the time. I discern whether or not what they are doing is righteous, and I make judgements based on those discernments. For example.... I discern that Obama does many unrighteous things, and is proud of his unrighteousness, and I judge him and find him wanting in the character department. But I do not condemn him to hades because that is God's job, not mine. In that regard, I am like the tax collector in Jesus's parable of the pharisee and the tax collector at the temple - "Lord, have mercy on me". But scripture tells us to be that way. We are told that we should practice discernment, and to judge. What scripture forbids us to do is to condemn others. The pharisees who wanted to stone the adulteress were right in one way. They discerned that what she did was sinful, and they judged that she was unrighteous because of it and deserving of death because of it (as we are ALL deserving of death in our unrighteousness). What Jesus challenged them about was their right to condemn her by stoning her to death, based on their discernment and judgement, because of their own sinfulness - hence His statement, "let he who is free of sin cast the first stone", and they were convicted in themselves of their own sin, and it dampened their self-righteousness.
My Bible, both Old and New Testaments, very clearly defines homosexual behavior as sinful. My Constitution on the other hand does not define it at all. My biblical conclusion is that people have a constitutional right to be sinful before God, and that it is my job to discern that, judge them, AND PRAY FOR THEM. But I am most definitely NOT told to celebrate their sin......or to participate in some way in that celebration.
And it is that last phrase where the difficult lies. I have a website design business, and my business is strictly b2b. I will likely never be called on to design a website to celebrate a gay wedding, and if I ever am asked to do so, my answer will be, "I am sorry, I only do business websites, not personal ones." And that would be 100% factual. You cannot force me to build one, because it is entirely outside of my business model. It would be like being a person of color who goes to a dog groomer and insists on them giving him or her a haircut, and then sues the dog groomer on a racism charge because he or she wouldn't give a human a haircut. On the other hand, I have no problem building a website for a gay owned business..... as long as that business does not violate some other standards that I have: I will NOT build a website for a pornographic business. I will NOT build a website for an "escort" business. I will NOT build a website for an online gambling business. I will NOT build a website for ..... well..... you get the idea. (This reminds me that I used to have this particular information on my own website, and I think that it dropped off at some point, and I need to put it back on there.)
So, healthinsp, I am looking at your screen name, and I assume you have something to do with health, healthcare, health maintenance? I would never advocate withholding health-related care from someone based on their personal sexual idiosyncrasies. THAT would be immoral. We provide medical care to people on death row for the most horrible kinds of murders.....because it would be immoral not to. When you provide medical care to a person who needs it, you are NOT celebrating their sin.
But some businesses are inextricably wound up in matters of celebration. You cannot be a florist, a wedding planner, a baker, a musician, etc., without being put at risk of being called to violate your own moral/ethical/religious standards if you do not have the option of refusing certain business opportunities because they violate those standards. I am a member of my church's worship team, and several of my friends on that team have their own band on the side. Basically, they're a "garage band", but they're pretty good at it, and they are sometimes hired (for pay) to perform at wedding receptions, dances, as entertainment at conferences, and stuff like that. They are all very devout Christians, and I am sure that if they were asked to entertain at a gay wedding, they would refuse. And by the way, all 5 of these guys tend to share my political viewpoint. None of us see how the Constitution would forbid gay marriage in and of itself, but neither do any of us want anything to do with it, and we belong to a church that would absolutely reject ever performing a gay marriage.
So, if you are going to force people to violate their religious conscience because they are in one business category, but not in another, what you are going to find over time is that people of religious conscience will begin eliminating themselves from that business category which forces them to violate their conscience..........and that in itself IS unconstitutional. People have an absolute right to not be forced into violating their own conscience by government. Even when we have a national military draft, we recognize the right of conscientious objection. My ex brother in law was a conscientious objector from the draft during the Vietnam war based on his being a Quaker. His own father, a career Army officer testified before the local draft board (in El Paso....the home of Fort Bliss), that he believed his son to be sincere in his objection to military service based on his religious inclinations.
This country has ALWAYS placed a premium on conscience.......until the radicals among the less than 3% (according to the CDC) of the self-identified LGBT population began to tyrannize the rest of us. They even tyrannize the majority of that 3% of the population. The rights of conscience have ALWAYS been an American value - almost uniquely so - until very recently.
What changed?
The answer is that in our two party system, one of the parties became the party dominated by a tightly knit cadre of leftist ideologues and bullies, and the other party became a party of weak sisters who go along to get along. NEITHER party is particularly interested in liberty.
THAT is how the radical fringe of a small population, consisting of less than 3% of us, got control of the argument. The Word of God tells me to love others regardless of their color, or even regardless of their sin. But love, and celebration are not the same thing. When my son, whom I love more than any other mortal besides my wife, does something wrong (fortunately rarely), I don't stop loving him, but I DON'T celebrate his wrong. And I sure as hades won't bake him a cake to celebrate it. Being born dark skinned is not a choice or a sin. The science - just as with other frauds like "man-made global warming" - is still very much in doubt about whether or not homosexuality is genetic. There are hypotheses, but no hard science yet to account for why 3% of us are that way. But in the end, the choice of two gay people to marry is exactly that - a choice. NOBODY who objects on conscience should ever be forced by law to participate in someone else's CHOICE. Period. And gay marriage is not the only arena for this type of tyranny. No doctor should be forced against his or her religious conscience to perform an abortion for any other reason than immediate medical necessity to save the mother's life. No prison guard should be forced against his/her religious conscience to be the one who pushes the button to initiate a lethal injection if his/her religious conscience does not permit them to take part in an execution...........JUST as we do not force people into military service if their religious obligations forbid it.
These are uniquely American values. When we no longer hold them, we are no longer America. THAT is why this kind of tyranny should be most vigorously resisted.......EVEN IF you agree that gays have a right to state-sanctioned marriage.
VMI77, are you trying to tell me that my son's groom and wedding cake toppers weren't cool? I thought they were awesome!
This is my view. Too many people are clueless when it comes to Jim Crow laws - they were not simply laws that enabled people to discriminate against blacks, they were laws (by the government) that forced businesses to do so. I firmly believe that had the government stayed out of it, restaurants that routinely refused to server blacks would have eventually been overcome by competition that were more than willing to do so.steveincowtown wrote:...
On a personal note I have zero problem with any class of people but I firmly a business should be able to refuse service for any reason they like.
