If The U.S. Supreme Court ‘Goes Rogue’ ...

originally posted by: CB328
The Supreme court already went rogue with citizens united and that case where they said a city can take land for economic gain (I forget the official term).

I wonder why they're not passing a bill against corporations usurping human rights???

It's called eminent domain.

The reason for that is because those Corporations paid the right people to be treated special. Because Money talks and everything else walks now. Why do you think they now say Money=Free Speech??? Because to those willing to sell out everything else, even justice and integrity, for money that is the only thing they can hear is "ka-ching ka-ching".

I'm going to try something utterly pointless here...I'm going to pretend we are all adults. Here it goes! All gay people that want to get married should do so in a place and with others that support them. If there are people who don't support them...those people should stay away from the gay people getting married and the gay people getting married shouldn't be trying to force anyone to perform the ceremony, catering, etc. Find people who support your marriage and use them instead...leave the others alone. As for you people opposed to gay marriage...leave them alone and feel free to support your beliefs as they support theirs, free from prosecution or anyone trying to force you to break your beliefs, values and morals.

How is that? That should be good enough for everyone...right? But it won't be. It will be opposed by some gay people who will not be happy until they force everyone to like and accept their beliefs. Aint' gonna happen and that act of trying to force people to do what they don't want to do should be illegal.

a reply to: WeAreAWAKE

don't know...
could substitute:
interracial marriage
marriage of a divorce person
black marriages
bar mitzvah
first communion
kiddush
any special corporate event

I mean if some corporation fell out of favor with the area businesses would it be acceptable for you for all the businesses to refuse to cater the retirement party for one of their big wigs? or would you prefer to constrain this to only certain groups of people?
To be honest, I can't see any business not being able to come up with a hundred or so excuses as to why they couldn't do any particular thing asked of them...oh sorry, we are bogged down at the current time, business is really booming this time of year!! Try so and so's.

a reply to: dawnstar

Novel concept ... If you are the one taking all the risk to start up the business and provide a service, then why shouldn't you have full freedom of association and freedom to decide how you will conduct that service? If the state decides how those things are to be done in full measure, then what's the point of going into business for yourself at all?

a reply to: beezzer
Ever since this all started and people were talking about such, I have been doing a good deal of reading on the various supreme court cases, along with those that would apply and relevant information. I also read up on the laws when it came to the ministerial exception, and the laws and codes that follow on such. It is pretty straight forward as to what is and is not permissible.

Church;s are considered to be in the category of non accomodation. That means that it does not have to make public accommodation to everyone if it does not feel it should have to. It is one of the very few organizations in the USA that has such in place and has been tested and reaffirmed time and time again. Many of the cases that I did read through and looked at, where the religious lost, were cases where the events transpired outside of the church proper. That means that the person or lay person was not on church ground, and some law was being invalidated.
To determine such what the courts have been using is the Sherbert test. (Sherbert v. Verner 1963)
In Sherbert, the Court set out a three-prong test for courts to use in determining whether the government has violated an individual's constitutionally-protected right to the free exercise of religion.
The first prong investigates whether government has burdened the individual's free exercise of religion. If government confronts an individual with a choice that pressures the individual to forego a religious practice, whether by imposing a penalty or withholding a benefit, then the government has burdened the individual's free exercise of religion.
However, under this test not all burdens placed on religious exercise are unconstitutional. If the first prong is passed, the government may still constitutionally impose the burden on the individual's free exercise if the government can show
it possesses some compelling state interest that justifies the infringement (the compelling interest prong); and
no alternative form of regulation can avoid the infringement and still achieve the state's end (the narrow tailoring prong).

a reply to: ketsuko

ya too bad humanity has a habit of taking large groups of people, demonizing them, and then trying to restrict the comforts of life from them anyway they can in their attempt to make a sub-class out of them and thus forcing the gov't to step in.
otherwise, every business maybe could operate as they saw fit...
but well, what can I say, danged human nature anyways!!!

a reply to: sdcigarpig

So if the government does find compelling interest to impose an infringement, it can?

(just checking if I read that last part right)

originally posted by: dawnstar
a reply to: ketsuko

ya too bad humanity has a habit of taking large groups of people, demonizing them, and then trying to restrict the comforts of life from them anyway they can in their attempt to make a sub-class out of them and thus forcing the gov't to step in.
otherwise, every business maybe could operate as they saw fit...
but well, what can I say, danged human nature anyways!!!

So you are of the opinion that people cannot be trusted to have their own liberty?

there cannot be freedom without responsibility. look around you and tell me this society is acting responsible!

originally posted by: dawnstar
there cannot be freedom without responsibility. look around you and tell me this society is acting responsible!

Are you talking about individual responsibility?

Why must freedom come with the caveat of responsibility?

Could you expand on that?

originally posted by: dawnstar
there cannot be freedom without responsibility. look around you and tell me this society is acting responsible!

Oh, so what kind of responsibility exactly would you be referring to?

As it so happens I agree with your words, but I'm not sure you and I view responsibility in exactly the same way.

a reply to: ketsuko

Freedom is individual in nature.

But some see it as a privilege granted by the state.

a reply to: ketsuko

okay we all like freedom right, free to do whatever we like....unless of course doing what we want causes real harm to another. but well we now have a bunch of single moms, people who don't want to work, and the financial headaches on a national scale that it results in. the men and ladies we free to go out and reproduce, and it was far too easy to get out of working and instead collect the gov't handouts... we were free!! but well, too many didn't take on the responsibility that went along with that freedom. and if I were to take a guess, if things don't change, well, the freedoms will be lost, quit naturally really, as a result.
that is just one example but let's look deeper, for a long time women didn't hold much of a place in the workforce and it wasn't till the last oh I don't know 30 or 40 years that businesses got any pressure whatsoever from any one to hire women. The businesses were free to hire anyone they wished!! as a result, when the single moms came along, well the sensible thing to do was to give them the handouts, since well they weren't in any position to be able to support themselves.
businesses are now free to go elsewhere in their world and manufacture their products in countries that pay virtually slave wages and well think that we, the american people should be willing to pay out top dollar for them. but, well, it's gotten to the point where many of use can't buy much of anything.

I could go on but well maybe I've explained myself clearly...
the freedom comes with responsibilities... if we wish to keep it, well we have to be responsible and act to preserve it. if we don't well our neglect will cause it all to come tumbling down.
you say that all the businesses should be allowed to operate as they see fit, but I will tell you now that in some areas of the country, well they only positions that they would be hiring women in would be in the low paid "women's work" category because they would feel that those women shouldn't be in the workforce anyways. And that low pay would be much lower if there wasn't a minimum wage more than likely and well, that would put alot of strain on our economy I do believe!!

a reply to: beezzer
Very few times have the government ever imposed its interests over the church's. To my knowledge it has only happened 3 times, and only once was for social reasons, the other was in jurisdiction of criminal law. The first and only social time, was the late 1800's case on the Mormon church, where it stated that Polygamy was not supported by the law, and that the federal law could constrict within a degree what a church does. It was reasoned that some practices would not be in the best interest of the public and the public safety could be put at risk if such was permitted.

The next 2 cases, one was on the snake handling case, where it was deemed that it was in the states interest to prohibit such and upheld state laws on such. And the other case was back when many people were joining native american tribes and doing peyote, and many of the local and state governments put a limit on who all could use such. Even this was upheld by the US Supreme court in a case where 2 people were denied unemployement for having such in their system, as they violated state and federal drug laws. Beyond that, there has not been any compelling cases on any social issues.

There ave been 2 documented cases of biracial marriages that were refused, however, here is how they turned out. The first one happened in Lousiana, where the couple went to a justice of the peace seeking to be wed and the justice refused, on the grounds of religious belief. That case was won, as it violated civil rights. The second case that came to light is where a biracial went to a church in Texas, a law suit ensued, and the church won as the point is that no church can be compelled to hold any ceremony it does not want to. A very big difference. The justice of the peace, has to be public accommodation and thus has to follow all of the laws and especially the civil rights laws. A church is non accommodating and does not have to follow said laws.

a reply to: dawnstar

So you think that in order to preserve freedom, we have to take it away.

Where does that stop? At what point do you decide that it's worth preserving freedom and where it's worth taking it away? Who makes that decision?

And if I could hire a woman for less than a man, why would I not do that in order to make more money for myself?

a reply to: sdcigarpig

Thank you for the clarification and effort you put into this.

*Tips hat.*

a reply to: ketsuko

Hey ketsuko, I never got a reply to this post. It was a direct answer to your question. I don't know if you missed it because it was at the end of the last page or if you just didn't have a reply so I thought I'd check to make sure.

It's a bit long but not too bad.

You don't have to answer it of course, but I thought I'd make sure.

And if I could hire a woman for less than a man, why would I not do that in order to make more money for myself?

a reply to: ketsuko

gee I don't know why did all those businesses from years gone by decide not to serve blacks when they could have profited by serving them?? and why do all those bakers and florists not want to serve gays when they could profit by doing so!!

Much of the problems we are experiencing today can be traced back to the time when people were allowed to act on their prejudices.

originally posted by: mOjOm
a reply to: ketsuko

I understand that. But I'd like to understand exactly how it is offensive. It's a wedding like any other wedding except the sex of one of the people getting married. That's it. Calling it a Gay Wedding is even misleading and word play because in reality it's just a wedding. We don't call other weddings Straight weddings either, they're just weddings.

God first said marriage is between a man and a woman. Later on Christ followed up on this. A marriage is a sacred ceremony where a man and a woman are joined in God's eyes.

To hold a ceremony that attempts to do otherwise is a mockery of what God has decreed for a believing Christian. Of course, there are some who will decide to believe otherwise.

The reason why we don't call other weddings straight weddings is because it never occurred to anyone that a wedding would ever be between two men or two women. A wedding has always been for more than just two people to selfishly affirm their love.

Aside from that there is a big double standard here. According to the Christian Religion there are other forms of marriage which should also be considered offensive but nobody cares about those. They are just selectively choosing parts of their Religion to follow and not others. Now, while this may only be a minor issue to some, to me it is a the red flag of hypocrisy which automatically makes their claim BS IMO. That is however, my opinion and I admit that. Maybe it's because I'm not Religious which makes me bias toward how I see that.

Just because no one seems to care doesn't mean no one does. Divorce is also wrong except in certain narrow circumstances.

Lastly, it's my opinion that if you cater weddings or do flowers for weddings or something along those lines you should expect this kind of thing and if you can't handle it then don't do weddings. Just bake cakes or sell flowers without that part. Because people of all kinds get married and you may not morally agree with some of the weddings people have. I've been to weddings that are like themed that might offend some. There are weddings where the bride is pregnant. There are all sorts of weddings that for one reason or another someone might find offensive. But it's not about the people supplying the flowers or baking the cake is it??? No, it's about the bride and groom and their wedding day.

Up until the past four or five years, a person COULD just bake cakes and sell flowers and not have to worry about it.

And how many times did the person baking cakes or selling flowers turn away the pregnant bride? Did it happen? We don't know. You know why? Because up until the gay lobby started decided they had a right to force everyone to bow down and serve them, no one sued someone for saying "I don't think I can do that." So you can't really claim that "no one" cared about it.

The person who runs a business is there to do business not preach about their religion. Nobody cares about the personal beliefs when you're there to simply do business. If you're a good baker or a good florist that is why I'm there. Not because you're a christian. That has nothing to do with your job or your skill and that is why I'm there and that is why you do business. So why is it so hard to keep your moral judgements to yourselves when it comes to other peoples lives??? So they don't have the same morality as you, so what??? I may not like their moral values either but I don't judge them for it, nor is it my business to. I'm there to purchase the service they offer and unless that service includes them judging my morality or how I choose to live my life, why can't they keep it to themselves??? Everyone else does and get's by just fine. Why does the rest of the world have to constantly tip toe around always worried about what someone else finds morally objective when it can easily be avoided since morality is personal thing for each one of us??

Telling someone you don't think you can do a service isn't about "preaching religion."

But I would agree that your own personal bias might be coloring some of your opinions on the subject.

The next time someone asks you to do something against your own morals consider that you are not there to preach anything and you better just suck it up buttercup as that seems to be your position on things.

Another way to look at this:

I constantly see a lot of people who don't understand why it's such a big deal to force people to comply saying it's just a wedding, what's the big whoop, and it's not about you.

I have ask you - Do you feel it would be equally acceptable for you to go to a Muslim artist and force him to draw Mohammad for you?

I personally don't understand how one could look at a drawn image of a person and feel it is such a sacrilege, certainly not an insult to kill over, even if it is offensive to my religious belief, but for Muslims it clearly is. So I wouldn't ask a Muslim to draw that image for me, and I certainly wouldn't sue him for denying me service if he declined based on religious belief. Am I wrong in that? Should I force him?