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Indiana's Pence to sign bill allowing businesses to reject gay customers

They don't have the right to discriminate. Period. What is so difficult to understand about that? When you open a business you don't get to write your own rules. No matter how much you stomp your feet and throw temper tantrums. You open a business....comply with the law. If you don't want to comply with the law...don't open a business. Simple. Sorry.

Lots of things are hard to understand about that, but among them is the fact that the right to discriminate is necessary for human rights to exist. It is also very apparent that requiring people to obtain a business license is a violation of property rights as you are forcing someone to agree to a contract to practice their rights.
 
And in Indiana they will now be complying with the law

The law will never stand. Thanks to the Governor and the legislature...the people of Indiana are going to spend millions of taxpayer dollars defending a law that will be stricken without question. Not to mentions that damage in billions that will be done to their state as a result.
 
Lots of things are hard to understand about that, but among them is the fact that the right to discriminate is necessary for human rights to exist. It is also very apparent that requiring people to obtain a business license is a violation of property rights as you are forcing someone to agree to a contract to practice their rights.

Once again...you simply couldn't be more wrong if you tried. What makes you think that a person is free to violate the laws simply because they obtain a business license? That has to be one of the most insane assertions I have seen in ages.
 
Once again...you simply couldn't be more wrong if you tried. What makes you think that a person is free to violate the laws simply because they obtain a business license? That has to be one of the most insane assertions I have seen in ages.

I said no such thing. What I said is that making people sign a contract to practice their rights is a right violation.
 
I said no such thing. What I said is that making people sign a contract to practice their rights is a right violation.

That is exactly what you are saying. It is not a violation to make people get a business license to open a business. It is also not a violation of their rights to make them follow the law. Just because you obtain a business license does not mean you are free to disregard the law and make your own rules. Sorry...it just isn't.
 
That is exactly what you are saying. It is not a violation to make people get a business license to open a business. It is also not a violation of their rights to make them follow the law. Just because you obtain a business license does not mean you are free to disregard the law and make your own rules. Sorry...it just isn't.

Can I use my property in the same fashion and not acquire a business license? Yes or no.
 
Can I use my property in the same fashion and not acquire a business license? Yes or no.

No. Sorry. You don't have a right to write your own rules. You have a right to your property...but if you want to go into business you have to comply with the laws of this great country.
 
No. Sorry. You don't have a right to write your own rules. You have a right to your property...but if you want to go into business you have to comply with the laws of this great country.

So how many rights do you think should require a government contract for someone to practice?
 
And again you bring up cases which are irrelevant because they deal with expressive organizations when the law being discussed is not limited to expressive organization (which have no need for such a law because their expressions are already protected)

SO maybe you should study the law a little more. Maybe then you'll stop chanting about cases that are irrelevant

I have read them and I do not agree that they are irrelevant. Neither is Barnette, or Wooley, or Pruneyard Shopping Center. The law review article I cited also mentions most or all of these. This comment by the Court in Dale goes right to the heart of the problem with overly broad state public accommodations laws:


State public accommodations laws were originally enacted to prevent discrimination in traditional places of public accommodation -- like inns and trains....In this case, the New Jersey Supreme Court went a step further and applied its public accommodations law to a private entity without even attempting to tie the term "place" to a physical location. As the definition of "public accommodation" has expanded from clearly commercial entities, such as restaurants, bars, and hotels, to membership organizations such as the Boy Scouts, the potential for conflict between state public accommodations laws and the First Amendment rights of organizations has increased.



In her concurring opinion in the Jaycees case, Justice O'Connor distinguished between commercial associations, which enjoy only minimal First Amendment protection, and expressive associations, which are much more strongly protected. But she did not provide any standard by which to determine which category a particular association falls into. That is the problem. When so many kinds of things are made public accommodations by state laws, there is no way to know if any particular one is mainly an expressive association, or a commercial one. That is what I was getting at in the hypotheticals about architects and photographers--some enterprises and organizations have some features of a commercial business, but also heavily involve the expression or celebration of ideas of some type.

More than one First Amendment freedom is implicated by these state public accommodations laws, and they overlap somewhat. There is this question of the freedom of association. There is also a question of the freedom of speech, which involves both expressive speech and the freedom from being compelled by law to express views you do not agree with. The smaller the group, club, "business," etc. that a state law defines as a public accommodation, and the more expressive and less commercial its activities, the more likely that law is to run afoul of the First Amendment.

Another constitutional right, the implied right to personal privacy, may also be implicated by these laws. The Court in the Jaycees case identified the fourteenth amendment's due process clause--where the Court in some cases (including Roe v. Wade) has seemed to locate this privacy right--as another source of associational freedom. This right was also mentioned briefly in the concurring opinion in Prune Yard Shopping Center as a possible basis for a shopkeeper to object to his property being used to promote messages he did not agree with.

It's not clear to me how a state RFRA (which involves still another First Amendment right, the right to free exercise of religion) would interact with public accommodations laws. The Court discussed its free exercise decisions involving shops--one a kosher butcher, as I recall--in the Hobby Lobby decision.
 
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So how many rights do you think should require a government contract for someone to practice?

Again...it is not an inherent right to open a business and write your own rules. What is so difficult to understand about that? I can buy a car but if I want to drive it...I have to have a license and comply with the law. Just because I buy a car doesn't give me the right to drive it anywhere I want and be free of the laws. Do you understand?
 
And there is nothing in the RFRA, state or federal, to prevent that.

Well, as long as this bill does not limit the protection under the law people have in Indiana or legalize religious public accommodations from discriminating against people (of color, different sexual preference, etc.) than this is not a bill that is going to "allow businesses to reject gay customers". And if that is not going to happen then this governor can sign his little fingers to the bone for all I care. Religious freedom is a constitutionally guaranteed right and as long as it is not "reformed" into the right to discriminate others then there is no problem.

I may be an atheist but I do not care other people being religious as long as they respect other people just like other people should respect people who are religious.
 
Again...it is not an inherent right to open a business and write your own rules. What is so difficult to understand about that? I can buy a car but if I want to drive it...I have to have a license and comply with the law. Just because I buy a car doesn't give me the right to drive it anywhere I want and be free of the laws. Do you understand?

Funny use of an example. You know, if I was to sell my car the government would want to know about that. That's pretty interesting, isn't it? That example also fails to take into account that you can actually drive your car on private property without a license, just not public property.
 
Public accommodation laws should be repealed. :shrug:

They should be allowed to because it is their property, their labor, their time, and their association that is required for the gay couple to have anything from them.

No, public accommodation laws should not be repealed. There is no right to discriminate in the constitution and for a good reason. Selling someone a product is not associating with them, it is called doing your job.
 
No, public accommodation laws should not be repealed. There is no right to discriminate in the constitution and for a good reason. Selling someone a product is not associating with them, it is called doing your job.

I will give you one chance to take that back. Do you want to stick to the argument that there is no right to discriminate?
 
You might want to study the law on this a little more. The Supreme Court made clear in the Hurley case that a state public accommodations law which compels a person in charge of a public accommodation to express or endorse views he does not agree with violates the freedom of speech and is therefore unconstitutional. That case involved a Massachusetts law that made the Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade a public accommodation. The parade's organizers had declined to let an Irish-American homosexual group take part in it, and the group had sued under the state public accommodations law.

A chapter of the Boy Scouts met the definition of a public accommodation under a New Jersey law, and the chapter had revoked the membership of a scoutmaster upon discovering he was a homosexual. He sued under the law claiming the Scouts had discriminated against him because of his sexual orientation, and here too, the Supreme Court held the law violated a First Amendment right--in this case the right of expressive association.

I already posted a link here to a law review article on the serious First Amendment issues that far-reaching state public accommodations laws raise. I realize statists don't like the First Amendment. But they should realize it's not going anywhere.

I am talking about the federal accommodation law:

Privately-owned businesses and facilities that offer certain goods or services to the public -- including food, lodging, gasoline, and entertainment -- are considered public accommodations for purposes of federal and state anti-discrimination laws.

To me the boy scouts of America are not a public accommodation and neither is the St. Patrick's Day Parade. We are talking about things that are somewhat essential and should be open to everybody like food stores, hotels, motels, gas stations, cinema's, etc.
 
This is just another exercise in dumbassery. This time it was the Indiana Teabaggers.

Here is what I'd do in Indiana. So I run a business in Indiana and a vocal and known Teabagger politico comes into my establishment. **** him. I happen to support civil rights for all people. I would refuse any state legislator who voted for the bill discriminating against gays and lesbians. I would refuse their business on the basis that the said legislative customer was gay. Let them take that to the press!
 
There seems to be a profound ignorance of what Indiana's new law actually is, regardless of one's views of the morality of discrimination law.

Fact: Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act is substantively the same as the first RFRA, the 1993 federal law signed into law by Bill Clinton, passed unanimously passed the House of Representatives, and sponsored by then-congressman Chuck Schumer. And it passed the Senate on a 97-3 vote.

FACT: Like the federal law, the law establishes the balancing test for courts to apply in State law religious liberty cases (a standard had been used by the Supreme Court for decades). It allows a person's free exercise of religion to be "substantially burdened" by a law only if the law furthers a "compelling governmental interest" in the "least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest." ... Just like it is now in the federal government and many States.

FACT: Yes, sometimes a person making a religious claim will win an exemption, sometimes they won't. Just as it is now for the federal government, and many states.

FACT: Since 1997 the federal courts found that the RFRA is inapplicable to State laws. Since then, 20 states have enacted their own RFRA statutes. Other states have state court rulings that provide RFRA-like protections. Here's a link to a map from 2014 that shows you which states have RFRA protections (note that Mississippi and Indiana have passed RFRA since this map was made) and RFRA like protection...a total of 31). 31 states have heightened religious freedom protections - The Washington Post.

FACT: Gay grievance mongers and "progressive" hysterics reacted as if Jim Crow and the KKK had returned to seize Indiana, and filled the airwaves and print press with wailing hyperbolic rage and tears. Lurid headlines followed with the liberal-left MSM such as:

"Indiana Law Denounced as Invitation to Discriminate Against Gays" (NYT)
"Pence signs bill allowing businesses to reject gay customers" (CNN)

Shameless nonsense from the half-wits of the "educated" class.
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This regime is tyrannical!!! It's requiring businesses open to the public to serve ALL the public. Oh, the HORROR!!

Forcing someone to act against their conscience is indeed tyranny
 
The law will never stand. Thanks to the Governor and the legislature...the people of Indiana are going to spend millions of taxpayer dollars defending a law that will be stricken without question. Not to mentions that damage in billions that will be done to their state as a result.

It depends, an activist district court judge may strike it down, but in reLity it will probably be upheld, it's limited enough in scope that it in many ways mirrors existing federal laws.

This law only provides an option, not a mandate. The segregation laws on the south were mandatory, you had to segregate your business. This is not
 
This is just another exercise in dumbassery. This time it was the Indiana Teabaggers.

Here is what I'd do in Indiana. So I run a business in Indiana and a vocal and known Teabagger politico comes into my establishment. **** him. I happen to support civil rights for all people. I would refuse any state legislator who voted for the bill discriminating against gays and lesbians. I would refuse their business on the basis that the said legislative customer was gay. Let them take that to the press!

Great! No problems there.

There is a coffee shop in oregon that refuses to serve cops. More power to then
 
In his own words

Is Andrew Sullivan a conservative? - POLITICO.com

He's a conservative; He's just not a wingnut.

And the gay rights movement started long before the issue of SSM because contentious

He can call himself a lavender elephant if he wishes, but it does not change my original notation of what policy positions he presently supports. Very little of what he currently supports is "conservative", the majority being liberal-libertarian. He wrote about and supported gay marriage LONG before it was fashionable, condemns Israel, criticizes Obama's failure to deal with torture, and strongly advocates Obamacare. Tell me how those are iconic "conservative" policy opinions?

Your opinion on the state Sullivan's politics is horribly dated. Read his Daily Dish, in the last seven to ten years he has moved on.
 
It depends, an activist district court judge may strike it down, but in reLity it will probably be upheld, it's limited enough in scope that it in many ways mirrors existing federal laws.

This law only provides an option, not a mandate. The segregation laws on the south were mandatory, you had to segregate your business. This is not

Read my post - no sane judge is going to strike a law that is a mirror of the federal, and 20ty other, State laws. This is much ado about nothing (other than gay - progressive bullying).
 
Forcing someone to act against their conscience is indeed tyranny

Yeah it is. If I want to incite violence against other people, forcing me to STFU would be tyranny. :roll:
 
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