Mississippi Governor Signs 'Right to Discriminate' Bill Into Law
Posted by Maphesdus 10 years ago to Legislation
*sigh*
Looks like we're going to have an extended battle all the way to the Supreme Court. Oh well, I guess that's what it takes to preserve human rights in some states.
Looks like we're going to have an extended battle all the way to the Supreme Court. Oh well, I guess that's what it takes to preserve human rights in some states.
Am I persecuting you if I never start my business? Do I exist to serve you?
I know you won't understand this, it's called being free to decide your own destiny. You want every businessman to be enslaved to work for people who's lifestyle they disagree with. THAT sir, is persecution.
Cheers
I am not an advocate for any form of race, sex or religious discrimination, but a "private business" is just that. If it is a private business then it is private property and therefore an owner should have the right to refuse service to anyone they wish and ask anyone no longer welcome to leave or be prosecuted for trespassing. I remember when I was young, seeing signs saying as much in many establishments. This may be the worst business decision one could make, but it should be theirs to make. One should be able to choose who they do business with or else they may be forced to do business with anyone the government decides including the government. If you are an arms manufacturer should you be forced to produce the weapons of your own oppression/demise, if your government becomes tyrannical? Does the government have the right to force your labor? Ref. Reardon steel...
Respectfully,
O.A.
Though that may just be mincing words.
I would say however, that if the business signed a contract with a customer, and then later refused to hold up their side of the contract because they discovered they were dealing with a PLE, then it would be a violation of rights. Your case would be stronger if the business had a sign up offering service to anyone who walked in the door, but with out that sign, or a sign stating explicitly that they refuse service to PLE's, than the business has no obligation to interact with anyone.
In some cases it will be unpleasant and considered inappropriate by most people (except the baggy pants thing), but then they can also choose what to do about it. The Government should not enforce politeness, correctness or morality.
A public school, the military and government office is different.
Also think adding "In God we trust" to the state seal, makes them vulnerable to a unconstitutionality due to separation of church and state.
I predict they have foolishly set us all up for a federal government response in retaliation that will reduce our freedoms, rather than increase them as they could have, by singling out Christians and LGBT, when they could have easily just written it anyone. For example, LGBTs should also be allowed to discriminate against the Christians that persecute them, shouldn't they?
(cant' help it again) - Now where are you going to get your homes decorated?
These situations are distinguished by the polarity of the overwhelming media pressure each side. Which is also a problem, since media can almost legislate with their power.
This media freedom is Constitutional, but the outcome is decidedly one sided. One could easily make the argument that the bias of the press is more powerful and seditious than anything derived from the 2nd Amendment.
The point is that the LGBT community has been discriminating very effectively for a few years now.
"implicit in the right to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment" is "a corresponding right to associate with others in pursuit of a wide variety of political, social, economic, educational, religious, and cultural ends." In Roberts the Court held that associations may not exclude people for reasons unrelated to the group's expression, such as gender (a protected class).
However, in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston (1995), the Court ruled that a group may exclude people from membership if their presence would affect the group's ability to advocate a particular point of view. Likewise, in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000), the Court ruled that a New Jersey law, which forced the Boy Scouts of America to admit an openly gay member, to be an unconstitutional abridgment of the Boy Scouts' right to free association.
Take the incident where a gay couple went into a baker and asked them to bake their wedding cake. The baker refused. Most people would have gone to another baker. These people used the FORCE of the government to make the baker perform an action that they did not want to perform. That is immoral.
But here's what I actually believe. I think if I discriminate against a female because she is female, I'm guilty of being a bigot. If I discriminate against a colored person because of their color, I'm guilty of being a bigot. If I discriminate against a person because of their religious convictions, I'm guilty of being a bigot. (perhaps the other side should get a grip on this point) If I discriminate against another person because they are poor or rich, I'm guilty of being a bigot. If I discriminate against a person because of their race, I'm guilty of being a bigot. But no place do I find in our founding documents the demand that I do business with a person IF any of the above VIOLATE my values, my religion, my politics, no place do I find that the rejection of business from people who believe that there are more than TWO sexes or that the union of two or more of the same sex or combination of sexes other than X+Y is acceptable and that I must accept their business.
No place do I find that I must accept a persons desires or lusts as being more important than my own. Or that I must accept a personal desire as being equal to a birthright.
There are two sexes, anything else is a personal choice or a desire. Get over it.
The collectivists know that they're facing the Mother Of All Political Trouncings this November, if not in November of 2016 as well. They also know that the weakest spot in the non-leftwing movement is the "social conservative" faction that wants to write religious mores into binding law. I think that's a big part of why the whole gay marriage issue, which has been around for years, has been noticeably ramped to full-throttle and shoved to front-and-center since January 1. It is vital for a Demo-Soc Party, on the ropes, bleeding and about to fall face-forward onto the mat, to paint its opposition as fringe religious bigots agitating for theocracy.
Whether or not the fine folks of Mississippi fit that description or are instead sober human rights activists striving to reestablish the right to property as hierarchically superior to a customer's wants, may be debatable (I do try to give the benefit of the doubt, I really do :-)
But wisdom in choosing one's battles - the appropriate time, place and manner - cannot be overstated here. Yes, whether their prejudices are evil or valid, the right of business owners to set the rules for their own establishments should be restored. But there is a right time, a right place, and a right way to go about fighting for a political goal - and this is an intersection of the absolute worst of all three axes.
Expect the Demo-Soc left to elevate this story to headline status and prop it up there for months. From a strategic standpoint they'd be fools to pass the opportunity up - it's an ideal chance to paint Republicans of every stripe as a pack of frothing bigots who want a bureaucrat installed permanently in every American bedroom.
The best passive counterstrategy is Total Radio Silence on all "social issues," in this election year and in the runup to 2016. They're issues that need to be argued, certainly, but we have significantly bigger fish to fry at the moment, which ought to be ample for yanking the microphone back from the smear artists of the left. Things like the transformation of America, via technology, into Orwell-on-steroids; the transformation of individual human beings into government-owned livestock via "Obamacare"; the awakening and emboldening of every two-bit thug the world over, via the collapse of American foreign policy; the impending financial meltdown into a Great Depression that will downgrade that of the 1930's to Small Dip in comparison.
I think it's obvious the rank-and-file American is tired of the whole Nero-fiddle-fire lunacy and is looking for whoever's got some coherent answers to the issues that matter. All we need to do to regain the moral high ground is return focus - repeatedly if necessary - to these vital, do-or-die issues, and most importantly **present concrete, consistent, and uncompromising proposals** to deal with them.
For the time being I suggest we adopt one of the more annoying strategies of leftists - changing the subject. We should strive for, again, Total Radio Silence on all things "social" - thereby refusing to take the collectivists' bait - and pull the focus right back to:
- the de facto war government is waging on the Constitution and on the people of America in general;
- the vandalized economy and what must be done to repair it;
- the treason Obama's been committing on the international stage (if someone can point to a single foreign policy decision he's made since January 2009 that did *not* benefit Islamic terrorists in some way, I'd love to hear it);
- the raw evil that is being committed under the auspices of the International Tyrants' Day Care Center, Manhattan Campus (a.k.a. the "UN,") particularly but not exclusively the Agenda 21 plan, now in full gear, for global fascism, and the UN-abetted attack on the Second Amendment.
If we allow ourselves to get dragged into the muck of sexual orientation, birth control and abortion, prayer in schools / Legislative houses / courthouses - not only will none of the looming catastrophes be vanquished, the people responsible for engineering those catastrophes - the Democrat-Socialists and their RINO Establishment wing - will remain in the driver's seat, all the way over that cliff.
D'OH! 'Wrote a book here. But then the comment field is the size of a wide-ish postage stamp and I never Twit, so...
Many Supreme Court decisions appear to be incorrect, some obviously so [Dread Scott for instance!] let’s see what happens to you if you act in contravention to one of the laws they incorrectly decided. I am thinking that while you may have the moral high ground, that high ground may well be located in a jail cell!
Don’t we always hear them talking about free speech….not if it is the wrong sort of “Speech”!!!
I've been away a while.
Is this Maphesdus with a phantom account?
Here's the real skinny on the SPLC from David Horowitz's Anti-Communist website.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/print...
Enjoy.
As for Eich's ouster, Mozilla is a 501(c)3 organization, which is tax exempt as a _quid pro quo_ of being prohibited by law from issue advocacy outside their narrow charter
Did you read the whole article. The donation was a private one in 2010....4 years before he got the job. No law involved here.
If you'll look over my posts, you'll see that I in fact have said that it's the boards decision. But in fact, Eich resigned, so they didn't even make a decision. Please arm yourself with the facts if you want to have a rational argument.
That said, I'm certainly not hurt.
The facts are:
1) Eich provided a donation to a group that he supported (a relatively modest one in the grand scheme of things - it's not like he was single-handedly forcing the issue).
2) At the time, the majority of Californians had the same point of view, as evidenced that they passed the measure. That's not to say that the majority is right, just that Eich was no extremist.
3) The LGBT community has exerted pressure on Mozilla and other companies to force out people that do not hold their view, and to boycott companies that either espouse the same or have prominent leaders that do. That is their right to do so, I have no problem with that. I do see it as hypocritical that they demand tolerance of their view but do not tolerate those that have an opposite view. Even when those who espouse that opposite view take no actual action to actualize that view, unlike their opposite number.
4) In any case, Eich resigned, so I don't know what the overall fuss is about, other than the intolerance of the LGBT community to opposing views.
However, on the other side of the issue, there are still remnants of the "blue laws" that restrict a business from certain practices to serve their customers - no liquor sales on certain days, or certain hours, cannot sell raw milk, etc.
I think all the federal government is asking is that if your store is selling Nazi flags and KKK robes, that you must be willing sell them to everyone, including blacks and Jews. Simple enough, eh?
What does a business owe a customer that has paid for something? What they paid for.
Does a business owe employees to hire without bigotry? Yes.
Does a business owe customers to serve all of them no matter what their behavior? No.
It's that simple. The right to behave in certain ways does not trump the rights of others.
This is not the forum to be suggesting that people MUST do business with those they choose not to do business with (reread Atlas Shrugged if you think so).
I'm all for gay rights.
I'm not religious.
Utterly against gays demanding service from whomever they choose trumping religious rights.
No one OWES ANYONE service. Anyone can refuse service to anyone. May lose a job in the process, but that's freedom.
When we start legislating who must be served, the government will have the right to demand such, even if it means selling to your competitor, or worse.
That's just wrong. Again, no one owes anyone to take them on as a customer.
Why do people feel compelled to put the disclaimers about not being against gays? It shouldn't matter, so long as I don't use force against you.
You FORCE them to do business with people they disagree with, you are violating THEIR basic human rights.
If you are demanding it, you saying you are owed.
They don't owe you to serve you. There is no persecution you can name because I won't do business with you, whatever the reason, because I don't owe you to do business with you.
And the "discrimination" card? That's cheap. The antonym of "discrimination" is "tolerance".
Many an atrocity has been committed because people were tolerant of behavior that was contemptible.
EVERYONE discriminates, chooses who they marry out of a crowd, chooses who they associate with, who they chat with, who they do anything with.
To use "discrimination" like a bad word is insane.
It's alternative is to tolerate anything.
That's a total lack of ethics.
That's not for me nor for most people who still have ethics.
You have NO right to demand they do business with whom YOU choose. They get to choose that. We get to choose who we buy from.
This goal of making people sell to EVERYONE equally regardless of their behavior is very unethical and infringes on their right to freely associate as they choose.
Don't like it? Tough. Like I said, glad you don't think they owe you. They don't and never will.
Want to send in a gay store owner who won't sell to straights? My answer is the exact same. HIS right stands to sell to whomever he chooses.
And no, a business transaction is not an association. Business owners do not get to choose who they do business with. At least not completely. They can choose their clients and their partners, but they cannot choose their customers.
Challenge: Post ONE that shows that "discrimination" means "to engage in persecution".
Post your source, please.
2) We discriminate all the time. I have no interest in having a black male carry my baby, in a Chinese female play Hamlet, or in a former criminal baby sitting my daughter. We have every right to choose these things and often good reason for doing so. Ignoring our differences completely is silly.
3) Yes, it is an association:
2 a connection or cooperative link between people or organizations: he developed a close association with the university | the program was promoted in association with the Department of Music. (Apple Dictionary, but feel free to look elsewhere).
4) CHALLENGE: Find me ONE LAW that forces people to serve customers they choose not to in the United States.
You claim: "They can choose their clients and their partners, but they cannot choose their customers."
That has no basis in any law I have ever seen. Please post accordingly, or I must assume you made that up completely, which will make my point just fine.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 covers PUBLIC, not private institutions. Only in cases dealing with the Commerce Clause could the law be applied to private businesses.
Otherwise: "In the landmark Civil Rights Cases the United States Supreme Court had ruled that Congress did not have the power to prohibit discrimination in the private sector, thus stripping the Civil Rights Act of 1875 of much of its ability to protect civil rights. The Supreme Court has subsequently struck down parts of civil rights laws on the grounds that the Fourteenth Amendment does not give Congress the power to prohibit private sector discrimination."
Even then, it means: "We the reserve the right to deny service to anyone,” as long as the business does not discriminate based on the race, sex, nationality, or religion of the patron and again, covered by the Commerce Clause between states.
It says NOTHING about objectionable behavior.
An ethical and responsible answer might include agreement that you cannot find the evidence you claim at the very least, an agreement that the concept (not 'me") is correct and your original idea incorrect, if you cannot meet the challenges poised.
It may be common for people to go silent in text discussions when they cannot answer a challenge of that sort, but the end result is that there is only one conclusion to be raised: You do not have the evidence for what you claim, yet. (Note the yet, as things change and I've been in that situation before).
So I state here, apparently unchallenged, that a private business NOT covered by the Commerce Clause of interstate business (thank you, Maphesdus, for bringing up that factor), does NOT have to give service to anyone, nor do they need a reason.
Now at the same time, I would, in my personal business and that of any employee I have consider it unethical to refuse service. If a person of faith had difficulty serving a gay customer, I would switch them out but WITHOUT apology to the guest. I do not owe them not to hire theists nor to magically detect their sexual orientation and supply them with those who do not feel contempt toward their lifestyle. Freedom is full of unpleasant things.
We need to learn to deal with that instead of trying to force, by law, everyone to behave the way we want.
It goes beyond that to a pretense that accomplishing any of that, particularly the application of force to others, is a reward for suffering that birth defect.
Personally, I truly feel sorrow for those that suffer from such an affliction, that refuse to accept their situation and move on to living the best life they can achieve without causing others pain and some type of payment as recompense for their condition.
What a waste of a human life and the reasoning ability that is a part of that life.
.
We know that quiet force is being brought to bear on churches to force them to perform homosexual marriages, that's what this whole marriage thing has been about. Although I am not any church or denominational leader, I can assure you that the forces are gathering to stop any such attempt. You will not corrupt all churches such profane acts.
Today things are different - I would walk out and never return. No loss to me though, as I have little in common with people who have selected a God that demands intolerance from its followers.
Hey, if a neo-nazi group wanted to celebrate Hitler's birthday, would you sue a jewish cake decorator for refusing to make the swastika cake or a jewish photographer for refusing to photograph the festivities and making nice little commemorative albums?
Heck, I'm not jewish and I'd tell those creeps to hit the road!
All the law says is that it explicitly respects an individual's religious rights when in a business context. If a baker doesn't want to make a cake for a gay wedding because he doesn't believe in that lifestyle, he is protected from legal action. That's all it is. There are similar "protection of conscience" laws being proposed in a lot of different states, and the argument against them always comes back to this supposed "bigotry". What they never mention is that they are attempting to completely overturn the First Amendment and assume a non-existent right to someone else's service, goods, or time on top of that. It is the mindset of entitlement and selfishness. If they were as tolerant as they claim others aren't, they'd simply find another establishment with which to do business.
2) Only if you don't believe that the constitution says what it actually says.
I don't follow you on point 2.
Anyone should have the legal right to discriminate against anyone for any reason, as long as he is not violating another's rights to life, liberty, POH.
But this restricted law is absent rational motivation, complicates enforcement of said right, and shows hatred for a particular group.
This is an example of politically-driven law that has been killing the Republican party.