What a stupid bill
A bill in TN to allow business owners to turn away homosexuals. Personally, I think a business should be able to serve or not serve whoever they want for any reason they want. The market will sort it out. But having laws that prohibit that and then specifically allowing such discrimination to apply to a specific group is pretty disgusting.
February 13th, 2014 at 11:53 am
It is ok for mythical things to be racist?
February 13th, 2014 at 12:50 pm
There’s a full text of the proposed bill here (PDF warning).
I can imagine a system where we might want to prohibit the /general/ case of discrimination, but find that some specific motivations should be allowed because the harms of prohibiting them are greater than the harms of the general case. I’m a lot less troubled by a law that requires WalMart to serve people getting gay-married, and a law that requires a church or small private business from refusing to serve people getting gay-married, for example. Courts requiring a pastor to officiate /any/ marriage that the pastor doesn’t want to recognize strike me as offensive to basic liberty in a far more significant way than general requirement-to-serve laws. Same for a self-employed wedding photographer.
If it were an entirely theoretical concept, then I’d be more disgusted by a law focused on preventing it as being clearly motivated by poor causes. There were no court cases requiring Churches to provide interracial marriages after Loving, after all. But the courts we have today aren’t the courts of the early 1970s. Cases like the Elain Photography one, or the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, don’t quite mean we’re there yet (Ocean Grove in particular had signed up for a program requiring they offer services to everyone). But they do point and wiggle their eyebrows.
February 13th, 2014 at 2:14 pm
I am already seeing governmental entities start to set up punishments for people who simply “express a bias” against someone because of that person’s sexual orientation. Example: Let’s say you build a house next door and rent it out to a couple of guys. Turns out, they are not only homosexual, they are also party-animals. You evict them for loud music and drunken orgies all night long in the front yard. They sue you: their Complaint reads “because your motive is bias against homosexuality.” This kind of control advances homosexuality and transexuality as preferred public policies. I suspect that the bill is meant to move the issue back to neutral; meant to curtail fines, penalties, and lawsuits against people merely because they believe homosexual sex to be immoral.
February 13th, 2014 at 3:10 pm
The bill doesn’t do what I think you think it does.
February 13th, 2014 at 4:47 pm
Swing and a miss unc. I take it you actually did not read the legalise….
February 13th, 2014 at 8:12 pm
“Courts requiring a pastor to officiate /any/ marriage”.
Let’s see them try that at Muslim weddings.
But separation of Church and State should stop that kind of law anyway.
February 13th, 2014 at 8:35 pm
The issue here is Gay rights groups trolling for lawsuits by looking for vendors that will not serve same sex marriage parties.
A recent example involved a gay couple asking for quotes for a same sex wedding cake, until they found a bakery that refused on religious grounds, whom they promptly sued.
Personally, I think, even without this law, christian believers will simply avoid lawsuits by making really bad cakes … like forgetting to add sugar to the filling or frosting.
But then this wasn’t about getting served. It was about generating lawsuits.
February 13th, 2014 at 8:54 pm
But separation of Church and State should stop that kind of law anyway.
Agreed. But should and /will/ are rather different things.
And there are marginal cases like, again, Elain Photography, where I’d rather fall on the side of folk doing as they may.
February 14th, 2014 at 1:08 pm
I would like to see an amendment to the bill which creates a cause of action for refusing to serve armed citizens – just kidding.
I agree with Unc, though, as far as letting businesses serve or not serve whomever they wish.
Unfortunately, we are not there right now and the legal business (formerly a profession) seeks to make life a consecutive series of events which constitute a cause of action, so they sue everyone for anything or for nothing.
Lawyers have made baseless lawsuits the new Lotto ticket for people who would rather be litigants than work for a living.
I would like to see our General Assembly pass legislation which requires the losing litigant to pay the legal fees of the prevailing party.
Restaurants with their little signs that say “We hope that our patrons who choose to carry weapons will understand that we do not permit the carrying of weapons in our establishment” certainly exlcude me.
But I would rather work for a living than sue them.
February 14th, 2014 at 10:46 pm
Seriously. You want to reintroduce “No Blacks Allowed.” “No Jews Allowed” “No Inter-racial couples Allowed” and add “No Muslims Allowed” as well as “No Gays Allowed?” Probably get a long list of folks people want to exclude. All based on hate. (Catholics, Irish, Polish, Italians, and many others have all been targets of hate in the past and could be again.)
Because that is exactly what you will get. Prejudice. Redlining. Hate. (I, as a home builder don’t want to do business with [FILL IN THE BLANK]. Covenants and Restrictions routinely keep out Hasidim – traditional Jews – by banning religious services in homes, as they have to be able to walk to services Friday and Saturday.)
How about teachers? Should they get to say that they won’t serve [fill in the blank]? We can reintroduce segregation based on everything. What about police? Fire departments? Oh that is government you say?
How many of you are minorities? raise your hands. How many of you have had trouble with rednecks in Tennessee based on the color of your skin? Yeah, that’s what I thought. (Yes, I have had that trouble, and I’m not black – my ancestors were just from extreme south-eastern Europe.)
Hate is a wonderful thing. I have seen friends sent to the hospital by roving bands of Christians. (And those TN rednecks I had to deal with? Do you think they were Buddhists?)
Been there. Done that. Have the court cases.
If you want to run a public accommodation in this country, you have to put your prejudices in check. Don’t like that? Go punch a time clock.
February 14th, 2014 at 10:49 pm
Yes, that’s exactly what I said.
February 15th, 2014 at 11:15 am
Good god Deb, quit acting like the racism in Tennessee is overwhelming.
Jesus H Christ, I get tired of the woe is me woe is me crowd saying; we have to make you accept us else you are a racist/sexist.
Try standing up on your own two fucking feet for a change!! Do you want people to be less racist toward you? Then quit acting like a goddamn VICTIM! If you believe you are going to be treated badly, you invariably will be treated badly, because it is what you expect and look for. (MLK was good example of standing up. Not like the wusses today.)
I am not going to force my personal beliefs on someone who hates my guts, whether it be justified or not.(That makes me like them, duh!)
Its just like with the people who do not let pistol carriers into their stores. I go to other stores and the offending stores lose revenue.(Pretty simple economics.) I don’t stand outside protesting their choices. Its their mistake to make…
What you have said is this:
1. You do not want racists to be able to be racists by not servicing you…
2. You want to force your views on the racists by forcing them to provide you with services.
(Yes, forcing people to do things against their will, always makes things better.)Cognitive dissonance much?
I am not south eastern european. I am a Roma who spent his youth in the South…(That is Gypsy.) Oh, and some of the things the haters say about us are true…
February 16th, 2014 at 2:27 pm
Deb
I want people to be legally able to discriminate.
What they do is their business, and I wouldn’t want to patronize a place that does what you suggest this will lead to.
The Congressional Black Caucus has been a chronic discrimination offender, consistently refusing admission to anyone who is not black.
Everyone discriminates in their daily lives, which is why you never see rednecks (not a pejorative term where I live) wear camo and hipsters wear black North Face parkas.
I have had gay friends my entire life. Ditto for Jews. Ditto for blacks.
Who the hell cares what who someone else chooses to serve?
The bill is about limiting civil tort liability.