Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson is suing Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts, after she refused to provide flowers for a gay wedding. I have been writing about the tension between free exercise rights and anti-discrimination laws — a subject that I discussed at the conference this week at the Utah Valley University’s Center for Constitutional Studies. This is now an issue that is arising with greater regularity, including conflicts over wedding cakes and other items.
Ferguson is acting under provisions of the state’s Consumer Protection Act that bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and is seeking an injunction requiring the florist to comply with the law. He is also demanding a fine of $2,000 for each violation.
The case involves the refusal to serve customer Robert Ingersoll. Stutzman insists that her religion barred such work. She described the scene: “He [Ingersoll] said he decided to get married and before he got through I grabbed his hand and said, ‘I am sorry. I can’t do your wedding because of my relationship with Jesus Christ.’ We hugged each other and he left, and I assumed it was the end of the story.”
However, the Attorney General says that the standard is clear: “If a business provides a product or service to opposite-sex couples for their weddings, then it must provide same-sex couples the same product or service.” Advocates of such enforcement note that we long ago stopped businesses from refusing to serve people due to their race and that this is merely an alternative form of discrimination.
Recently, a same-sex couple sued over an Oregon bakery’s refusal to make a cake for a same-sex couple.
The question is whether anti-discrimination laws are cutting into free exercise and first amendment rights for religious individuals, particularly those who believe that they are engaged in a form of expression or art in the preparation of flowers or cakes. These types of expressive acts may be distinguishable from other public accommodation cases like hotels or restaurants. Even though the same religious objections can be made by an evangelical Christian hotel owner, the flower and cake makers can claim that they are engaged in a more expressive form of product. It is, in my view, a difficult question because I do not see how anti-discrimination laws could not be used to negate a wide array of expressive activities.
I have long been a critic of the Bob Jones line of cases on tax exemption. I have long held the view that we took the wrong path in dealing with not-for-profit organizations, particularly in such cases as Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574 (1983). We need to re-examine how anti-discrimination laws are encroaching upon religious organizations to give free exercise more breathing space in our society — a position I discussed in a book with other authors.
I find these more recent cases more difficult than the tax exemption cases. I find the analogy to race discrimination in public accommodation to be compelling. I have also been a long supporter of gay rights and same-sex marriage. However, I have serious reservations over the impact on free exercise in an area of core religious beliefs. What do you think?
Source: Seattle Times
davidm2575,
“Historically it was the religious who championed the cause of logic and reason.”
Yeah, that Socrates was an impious oracle thumper, wasn’t he?
Malisha:
Do you have an argument to support that claim? I made an argument to support my claim in a previous comment.
NAL: “If I continue to hold my opinions, after my reasoning is shown to be unsound, then that would be bigotry.”
Not necessarily.
davidm2575:
No it’s not.
I’ve provided the reasons. I am prepared to argue those reasons. You may claim that my reasoning is unsound, but that does not make it bigotry. If I continue to hold my opinions, after my reasoning is shown to be unsound, then that would be bigotry. I have linked to the unsoundness of religious reasoning. The religious continue to hold their opinions “in spite of reason.”
Nal wrote: “If I continue to hold my opinions, after my reasoning is shown to be unsound, then that would be bigotry.”
Does this hold true if I show only one fault in the reasoning?
Assuming you would be honest enough to question the logic if you are shown just one incident of faulty reasoning, I will address the first two “list of pertinent facts” very briefly.
The first “pertinent fact” starts out: “Anyone can imagine a supernatural being, including the god described by Christianity or any other religion.”
I agree with the premise that this is possible, but the reasoning is faulty because the mere fact that anyone CAN imagine a supernatural being does not mean that this has happened, nor does it explain everyone’s belief in god unless you prove that every single person who has believed in god has imagined him. So the so-called fact is not a fact at all, just a hypothesis that has yet to be tested.
The second premise starts out:
“Religious philosophy provides no epistemological alternative to the imagination as a means of “knowing” its god.”
Not true again. In the very teaching of Jesus he says that anyone can prove whether Jesus speaks the truth of what he says about God if a person would but obey his teachings. In other words, he offers a subjective proof, that if someone keeps his teachings through word and deed, something spiritual will happen, and God will come to that person and manifest himself to that person. While this cannot prove god to someone else outside the experience, it does provide an epistemological alternative to imagination. Anyone can take up the challenge and try it simply by keeping his teachings. If it works as Jesus said, that person will have proven to himself that Jesus taught the truth, and if it does not happen, that person will have proved to himself that Jesus was a liar and a fake. The subjective proof will happen or not, but we have the report from literally millions of so-called “born again” Christians that such a proof does work.
Such leads us to a second alternative to imagination, which is the testimony of reliable witnesses. Just as in a courtroom investigating the veracity of a crime, witnesses can be used and if they are trustworthy, they would be evidence beyond the concept of simple imagination.
The problem in the bulk of reasoning in the list is the assumption that knowledge comes only through physical observation of the material world. It does not allow for subjective proof or for proof in the form of the reliable testimony of trustworthy witnesses. If these two assumptions are accepted as false or shown to be false, the entire structure of reasoning that god is imaginary crumbles to the ground.
So I have demonstrated for you faulty reasoning in the idea that god is imaginary. Will you now keep your word and forsake your opinion that god is imaginary? Will you at least question your opinion and the assumptions that underlie your opinion? Or do you still hold fast to your opinion despite being shown the problem of logic inherent therein?
davidm2575:
It’s not meant to “excuse” bigotry, it’s meant to make it impossible.
A bigot is a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices. Where obstinately means “perversely adhering to an opinion, purpose, or course in spite of reason, arguments, or persuasion.”
When you accuse someone of “bigotry against anything religious,” be prepared to argue that position. It is the religious who, “in spite of reason,” are bigoted against the non-religious.
Nal, you will hear no argument from me that many religious people hold to opinions in spite of reason. However, it is not only religious people who do this, and to characterize all religious people this way is in itself bigotry.
Historically it was the religious who championed the cause of logic and reason. The Christians, for example, called their Jesus the Logos, which is the Greek word from which our English word logic comes from. On the end of words like biology, sociology, etc., the ending comes from “logos,” being the word that means “the study of” with the implication being study using logic and reason.
When John wrote his gospel, he said, “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God… and the Logos was made flesh.” I almost hate to even quote such a thing in this forum because I know that there is no tolerance in the least for anything religious, but I don’t know how else to drive home the point that the concept of being religious does not equate to being unreasonable, irrational, and ignorant. Basically, the Christians considered their God to be logic and reason, and this is why they devoted so much time to creating institutions of higher learning, establishing universities and such. In modern times, most of the religious have forsaken general education because of the creation of public education, but it was not always that way and there are many religious people who are great scholars. Despite all the modern propaganda to the contrary, if people apply themselves to study, they can see through all the nonsense. I have applied myself in life to study more from texts that are not religious in nature, but I am not afraid as some are to open the Bible or other religious texts and consider the arguments that are made therein. I read the Bible like other texts and just let the message of it stand or fall on its own. Unfortunately, that makes me the target of bigotry from both sides. Neither the religious nor the atheist like what I have to say. The religious don’t like me because I am not religious and part of their club. The atheists don’t like me because I think logic leads us to accept the idea of a Creator. I tend to challenge both groups in their faulty assumptions of logic which they hold very dearly, so I am ostracized by both.
People need to recognize that bias affects us all. I attempt to be honest about my presuppositions and bias when I can. We all have them because they develop from our experience in life. We routinely make generalizations using inductive logic, and that is where bias comes from. I try to minimize my bias by making all my opinions tentative and subject to falsification. However, when others think they have no bias and are not subject to bigotry of any kind, their pride in how great they are in this department of objectivity and lack of bias creates difficulty in communication. As you see that in this forum, people constantly try to frame me as arguing from religion when I have done no such thing. The stereotype supersedes the ability of people to simply read my logical arguments and respond in a logical way.
In any case, I see little purpose in trying to prove bigotry. It is almost a meaningless exercise because most people become cognizant of their bigotry from an indirect approach, when they start to see problems with their analysis and presuppositions. Rarely does a head on attack cause a bigot to see what he has been doing. I only pointed it out in this case because the accusation was being hurled at me with the implied assumption that the person saying it had no bigotry. I could see from Mr. Scribe’s posts that he was the kind of person who thought himself immune to the tendency to be prejudice. He immediately stereotyped me as a religious bigot ignorant of science and knowledge, and he flaunted his doctorate degree in a way to intimidate me and lord over me by the authority of his educational credentials rather than by his coherent arguments. Remember too he did this before he knew anything about me at all. He had no idea that I was a scientist and worked with scientists who never hurled their degrees around. I gave many presentations at science conventions around the country and never once did any of us call each other Doctor or flaunt our credentials in the shameful way that this person has. What greater evidence do you need for bigotry? It is no different than someone thinking that a man who is black is not fit for a job or fit for understanding anything just because he is black. I admitted to him from the beginning that the bigotry he needed to be concerned about was not my bigotry against homosexuals but against people like him. I generally do not find such individuals to be honest and therefore discussion is usually fruitless. Nevertheless, I still try to keep an open mind and remind myself that he may be the exception to the generalization. In any case, sometimes such individuals offer information that I had not seen before, or they simply provoke me to more reading and study on certain issues, and it is that study that I enjoy most rather than the debate. Debate is just the tool that leads me to examine my own assumptions of logic and to more study.
Nal, forgive me for my lengthy reply just a minute ago. I realize that my long harangue will likely cause you to just roll your eyes and not carefully read my opinion. Let me attempt a shorter response here to address bigotry in general.
Reason does not make bigotry impossible. Bigotry is a result of accepting a stereotype, generalization or statement of some sort as proven and then making that the basis of subsequent reasoning. All reasoning includes premises. The disagreements arise because of the questioning of underlying premises, whether it is articulated as such or not. The bigot does not lack reasoning skills; rather, he simply holds to assumptions which he is not willing to question.
Charles Darwin argued that the black race was inferior, drawing upon his knowledge of biology and the physiology of the black race being more like apes. His analysis as well as others led to a stereotype that the black race was inferior, and the acceptance of that assumption led to abuses. Adolf Hitler did the same thing with the Jewish race, and he also applied similar reasoning in regards to his disdain for Communists. Once people accepted the logical analysis and premises, they became bigots for that cause to look down on Blacks, Jews, or Communists.
All it takes is for me to announce that I do not support same sex marriage, but rather that I favor a legal construct that identifies the union as a domestic partnership, and immediately the stereotypes people have is that I am a religious nut who is ignorant of science and knowledge, and that I have no ability whatsoever to use reason and logic, and on top of that I am hateful, suffer from homophobia, and very unloving toward my fellow man. I see this type of bigotry no different than if I told some religious individuals that I do not believe the Bible is the infallible Word of God, and he immediately stereotypes me as an immoral atheist bound for the judgment of hell fire.
David:
a disciplined mind is a good thing but also being true to your nature. A dog cannot be a cat and if you try to make him a cat he will be miserable.
A disciplined mind must be applied according to the nature of the individual or it leads to disharmony. You seem to like biology, how would you like me to discipline you into digging ditches? You would be miserable most likely.
Bron,
davidm2575:
<blockquote<For example, suppose you have met people who attend a church and you observe that they are poor and uneducated; they cannot converse with you on your intellectual level, so you stereotype in your mind that people who go to church and believe in God are uneducated and poor.
You seem to have stereotyped nonbelievers. I provided a link to the reasons why your god is imaginary. You seem unwilling to address those reasons and instead make up your own scenario and the address it. An example of the strawman fallacy.
Nal, I am not at all unwilling to address the points made in your link, and it is unfair for you to characterize me that way. Clearly there is a lot of information in your link that is tangential to this article about the florist. I do not consider my arguments about same sex marriage to be based in religion.
Does my assumption that there was a Creator affect my perspective and exercise of logic? Certainly it does, but so does the atheist’s perspective, that there was no Creator involved in our origins or existence. I am just trying to be honest about it all. If you think the Creator premise is seriously that important for our discussion, at least pick your strongest argument from the link that most compels you to think that the Creator idea is imaginary. I have read all that kind of stuff for years and investigated it on my own. I find some of it somewhat compelling, but much of it to be silly and ignorant of a great many observations in history and science. Please believe me; being in the biological sciences, I was being very independent to deviate from the atheistic views of my colleagues. It made things difficult for me politically in the biology department, but the assumption of a Creator is where logic and reason led me. I don’t really care whether you accept that premise or not. As I said before, I belong to no religion, despite my inescapable conclusion that there was a Creator. Sometimes I wish that logic did not convince me of a Creator. I am not here to persuade you to believe in a Creator. I really do not care if you do or not. Albert Einstein had the same problem. Logic and his studies of the physical universe led him to be convinced of a Creator, but he was not a religious man.
David:
are you saying homosexuality is a modern phenomenon? I would probably disagree with that as well.
OS, Nal, Mike A.,
I trust you all know the difference between someone that is racist, bigot and a person that has a difference of opinions… There are some folks that confuse these as one in the same…. It’s amazing the stupidity that some of these wingers have, right or left….conservative or liberal…. Thanks for your valuable contributions…
OS:
Are you the guy in the Dos Equis commercials? 🙂
David:
“There are some animals that reproduce asexually, which begs the question of why man enters the world with a sex identity in the first place.”
We are animals and our reason for existing is reproduction, perpetuation of the species as you well know. There was no law or system in place 100’s of thousands of years ago when our ancestors walked on the plains of Africa. It most likely was preference for one person over another. You do know geese mate for life? As far as I know there are no marriage contracts in goosedom.
We do have our own wills and our own preferences as human beings. You seem to be saying we are tied to our biology. That we must do what nature compels us to do without regard for mind and will.
Biology is destiny in other words. I emphatically disagree, biology is not destiny. Man has free will and can overcome biology in many cases. We are more than automatons controlled by hormones and advertising.
Bron, try to think about the fact that there is natural law in place, whether or not men have defined them or not. When a man and woman bond together and create children, they form a relationship called marriage, whether there was a wedding or not. This is the basis for common law marriage statutes. Go back in the thread and read again the legal references I offered which argued that marriage is NOT a contract between two parties. Even when it begins as a contract, it ceases to be a contract once entered into. It is a relation that is formed. Our laws about marriage need to properly define and identify this relationship and the duties, privileges and obligations of the parties involved in that relationship for society to live in harmony. When our laws improperly define the relationship, which is what happens when it defines marriage as not just between opposite sex couples but also as between same sex couples, then societal disharmony results because the law is not accurately defining the underlying natural laws which have always existed from the beginning of man’s existence.
David, marriage has NOT been around as long as mankind. The word “marriage” first appears about 1,250-1,300 BE.
Bron,
I knew everyone involved in the Beckwith case from the reporter who broke the case up to Circuit Judge Breland Hilburn. Jerry Mitchell of the Clarion-Ledger has been a friend of mine since he was a rookie reporter. Best investigative reporter I ever met. Jerry received a MacArthur Genius Grant a while back. Beckwith did not care for me for some reason. The guy made Fred Phelps look sane.
OS:
you actually knew those guys? Wow. I saw the Whoopi Goldberg movie about Megar Evers. What a POS he must have been. Beckwith not Evers.
Davidm,
Heh! You calling me a bigot reminds me of the time another fellow called me a bigot. After some discussion with J. B. Stoner at a conference on racism in Atlanta, he informed me that I was bigoted against my own race. I had the temerity to point out to him that my associate, a well known scientist who happened to be black, had an IQ a hell of a lot higher than his. I thought Stoner was going to have a stroke. He told me that was not possible, because to claim a black man might be smarter than a white man (especially him), went against “natural law.”
Go ahead and call me a bigot if that’s the best you’ve got. That puts you in the same company as J. B. Stoner, Richard Barrett and Byron De La Beckwith. who also opined that I was a bigot.
You, sir, do not seem to understand the difference between statutory laws and the case law that derive therefrom, and religious admonitions.
As for religions, last time I counted, there were 21 separate religions, each with a different weltanschauung. Within those identifiable separate religions, most have splinter groups which disagree with others who profess to be of the same faith.
When you use own religious views as an excuse to deprive others of civil and human rights, you do your religion no favors.
Bron,
Want to know more about the damage? The TreeClimbers group was started by users SwedishJewfish and Roxine. I know SJ, and she is good people. The tree climbers meme comes from how she tried to hide from her abuser when she was a little girl. She climbed up in a tree.
Not every child lived to tell the tale. My late daughter in law worked for the Dept of Children’s Services in her state. He specialty assignment was cases of dead babies. She never lacked for work assignments. One has to wonder if that contributed to her dying of a stroke at a relatively young age.
Here is the list of diaries published to TreeClimbers, the most recent first. Not sure how many stories there are, but probably well in excess of two hundred.
http://www.dailykos.com/user/TreeClimbers/history
OS:
thanks, wow, I only read a few paragraphs, those people are whack jobs.
Pete/OS:
I aint a trained psychologist but I think someone might have totalitarian dreams.
We have one running for governor here in Virginia, he scares me worse than Terry McAuliff and that is saying something from my stand point.
This isnt isolated, I first saw it when I read Gov Bob’s law school thesis on how to correct society using government to promote people like Gov Bob’s vision of family, procreation, etc.
I think promoting stable families is laudable but I dont think they are talking voluntary participation.
.
Bron,
Not an easy read, but here’s a partial answer.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/magazine/how-much-can-restitution-help-victims-of-child-pornography.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all&_r=0