Another one of our close Arab allies are back in the news to remind us that basic freedoms are not part of our common alliance. Oman has shut down The Week newspaper after it published an article viewed as too sympathetic to homosexuality in the Gulf state. The country has a gay population but it insists that these citizens live like criminals under Islamic prohibitions of homosexuality. The Week is the largest circulation English-langauge weekly in the country.
In response to the government crackdown, the newspaper was forced to publish a full, front page apology for the story. In one repressive act, Oman was able to deny free speech, freedom of the speech, religious freedom, freedom of association, and privacy.
The action came after a member of the Shura Council, Tawfiq al-Lawati, tweeted a complaint that the article was advocating homosexuality and could be read to suggest that the country is a safe haven for gays. al-Lawati wanted to be sure that gays got the opposite message: that they are neither safe nor welcomed in Oman.
Under the laws of the Islamic government, you can be put in jail for three years for simply being gay. That is considered progressive by the standards of some of our other allies.
Dang OS,
You got a better memo than I did….
David,
Whose morality? The reason we have constitutions and laws is to protect us all from other people’s ideas of what is and what is not moral. Fortunately, the law determines who is in the right and your Christian baker is in the wrong. Customers have the right to not shop at the bakery and to tell all of their friends to stay away from the bigoted bakers. The owners of lunch counters in the South also claimed the Bible was on their side when they refused to admit blacks.
rafflaw wrote: “The reason we have constitutions and laws is to protect us all from other people’s ideas of what is and what is not moral.”
No, we do not have laws in order to protect us from other people’s ideas. Think about how crazy that sounds. Where would free speech be?
Laws define for everyone what is moral and what is immoral. We need the same law for everybody, not one law for the gays, another law for the evil heterosexual white man, and yet another law for the blacks.
Sometimes the law gets it wrong. Like when the law forbade blacks from marrying whites, or like when blacks were made to sit in separate sections of the bus, or when blacks were refused service in restaurants. In this case, the law is getting it wrong by expecting people to approve of sexual immorality without even so much as a legitimate argument for its morality.
The root of the problem are anti-discrimination laws across the board. There is an ever increasing number of categories that we keep adding to the list of specially protected classes of people. We started with religion, then added race, then gender, and the list just keeps growing. The list is based upon political fads that are popular at the time. We do not need the law to give special protection to classes of people. All this does is create favoritism, like we see here. Now gays can sue people whose religion teaches sexual morality because nobody will see that the issue is not about sexual orientation but about sexual behavior. The law is all messed up, and this will lead to civil unrest. It is hard not to think about Sodom and the need for it to be destroyed when we read stories like this baker and other bakers, florists, photographers, etc. Our civilization is approaching its end if it continues on this path.
What AY said.
White heterosexual male bigots are having their rights trampled all over the place. Oh, the humanity!
Gene,
Bigoted Hetrosexual White Christian Males Gene…. It was in the memo I go….
raff,
The Constitution only applies to heterosexual Christian males.
Didn’t you get the memo?
“In other words, Christians who live and work in Oregon must follow man’s law instead of God’s law.”
Yep. Sure do.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”
This isn’t a theocracy. The Separation of Church and State is real and, no, you really can’t use the mechanisms of state to force your religion upon others be it in the form of bigotry, telling them what they can wear or what kind of music they can listen to, or what/who they have to worship. You are free to have your belief of choice. You are free to follow the dictates of your religion of choice within reason. You are not free to practice it however you see fit if that practice interferes with the rights of others.
Our laws and legal system are not based on or from the Bible, God or the lil’ Baby Jesus. Or Mohamed and the Quaran. Or Yahweh and the Old Testament. Or Buddha and the Sutras. Or Vishnu and Bhagvad Gita.
We have a secular government.
The First Amendment is working just fine in the bakery case. The LGBT community is exercising their rights and are boycotting the bakery.
david,
don’t LGBT individuals have the right to protest and boycott any business? I thought the constitution protected everyone? So the bakery has first amendment rights, but no one else does??
rafflaw wrote: “don’t LGBT individuals have the right to protest and boycott any business?”
Sure they do. My original point was that I am told time and time again by people on this blog that changing the laws to recognize gay marriage does not affect heterosexuals one bit. Now we keep seeing cases of prosecution for discrimination, and an emboldened activist group because the State now sanctions their bigotry for them. The gay activists feel the power of the law behind them and treat the poor baker as a lawbreaker simply because he does not want to encourage sexually immoral behavior in others.
Until somebody presents a clear convincing case for why their sexual behavior is moral, there will continue to be the same societal discord over gay marriage as there is with abortion.
David, you have that backwards. The state is trying to do the moral and ethical thing in this case. It is bigots that are immoral.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigotry
OS wrote: “David, you have that backwards. The state is trying to do the moral and ethical thing in this case. It is bigots that are immoral.”
Yes, the State is starting to sanction bigotry, which is immoral. There are clear logical and scientific reasons why the State should not encourage sexual immorality. Yet because of bigots against theism, the State has begun persecution of those who would encourage right behavior over wrong behavior.
OS – ask yourself who is being intolerant in this case. The Baker or the gay activists? The gay activists are being intolerant.
Nick,
Glad you caught that…. The melding continues…. But then again… If I’d said…. You deserve a break today…. These folks didn’t get it….
sounds like Redneck Town, USA
WordPress ate my article 🙁
“You and we do not get to choose perfect allies in our world.”
Perfection isn’t a requisite, but not being in the 12th Century should be.
Freedom of Religion under fire? Please read the follow story(ies):
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/03/todd-american-dispatch-christian-bakery-closes-after-lgbt-threats-protests/?cmpid=NL_fntop
CHRISTIAN BAKERY CLOSES AFTER LGBT THREATS, PROTESTS
by Todd Starnes
“A family-owned Christian bakery, under investigation for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple, has been forced to close its doors after a vicious boycott by militant homosexual activists.
Sweet Cakes By Melissa posted a message on its Facebook page alerting customers that their Gresham, Ore. retail store would be shut down after months of harassment from pro-gay marriage forces.
“Better is a poor man who walks in integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways,” read a posting from Proverbs on the bakery’s Facebook page.
“The LGBT attacks are the reason we are shutting down the shop. They have killed our business through mob tactics.”
– Aaron Klein, owner, Sweet Cakes By Melissa
“It’s a sad day for Christian business owners and it’s a sad day for the First Amendment,” owner Aaron Klein told me. “The LGBT attacks are the reason we are shutting down the shop. They have killed our business through mob tactics.”
Last January, Aaron and Melissa Klein made national headlines when they refused to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple.
Klein tells me he has nothing against homosexuals — but because of their religious faith, the family simply cannot take part in gay wedding events.
“I believe marriage is between a man and a woman,” he said. “I don’t want to help somebody celebrate a commitment to a lifetime of sin.”
The lesbian couple filed a discrimination with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and told their story to local newspapers and television statements.
Within days, militant homosexuals groups launched protests and boycotts. Klein told me he received messages threatening to kill his family. They hoped his children would die.
The LGBT protestors then turned on other wedding vendors around the community. They threatened to boycott any florists, wedding planners or other vendors that did business with Sweet Cakes By Melissa.
“That tipped the scales,” Klein said. “The LGBT activists inundated them with phone calls and threatened them. They would tell our vendors, ‘If you don’t stop doing business with Sweet Cakes By Melissa, we will shut you down.’”
To make matters worse, the Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries announced last month they had launched a formal discrimination investigation against the Christian family.
Commissioner Brad Avakian told The Oregonian that he was committed to a fair and thorough investigation to determine whether the bakery discriminated against the lesbians.
“Everybody is entitled to their own beliefs, but that doesn’t mean that folks have the right to discriminate,” he told the newspaper. “The goal is to rehabilitate. For those who do violate the law, we want them to learn from that experience and have a good, successful business in Oregon.”
In other words, Christians who live and work in Oregon must follow man’s law instead of God’s law. But in a show of benevolence, the state is willing to rehabilitate and reeducate Christian business owners like the Kleins.
Klein said the closing of their retail store was a small price to pay for standing up for their religious beliefs.
“As a man of faith, I am in good spirits,” he said. “I’m happy to be serving the Lord and standing up for what’s right.”
Klein said what’s happened to Sweet Cakes By Melissa should be a warning to other Christians across the nation.
“This is a fight that’s been coming for a while,” he said. “Be prepared to take a stand. Hopefully, the church will wake up and understand that we are under attack right now.”
Just last month, New Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that two Christian photographers who declined to photograph a same-sex union violated the state’s Human Rights Act. One justice said the photographers were “compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives.”
Denver baker Jack Phillips is facing possible jail time for refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding.
The Colorado Attorney General’s office filed a formal complaint against Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cake Shop. A hearing before the state’s civil rights commission is set for later this month.
In Indianapolis, a family-owned cookie shop faced a discrimination investigation after they refused to make rainbow cookies for National Coming Out Day.
A T-shirt company in Lexington, Ky. found itself at the center of a Human Rights Commission investigation after they refused to make T-shirts for a local gay rights organization.
Klein said it’s becoming clear that Christians do not have the “right to believe what we believe.”
In other words, gay rights trump religious rights.
Aaron and Melissa Klein tell me they will continue to bake wedding cakes from their home. He’s already taken a full-time job to pay the bills and feed their five children.
Mrs. Klein told television station KPTV her philosophy remains unchanged by recent events.
“The Bible tells us to flee from sin,” she said. “I don’t think making a cake for it helps. I guess in my mind I thought we lived in a lot nicer of a world where everybody tolerated everybody.”
The plight of the Klein family exposes the true nature of the left. Those who preach tolerance and diversity are the least tolerant and the least diverse of all.
RWL –
Regarding “CHRISTIAN BAKERY CLOSES AFTER LGBT THREATS, PROTESTS”
I thought gay marriage is not suppose to affect heterosexuals. Soon nobody will be able to buy or sell unless they accept and approve of State sanctioned sexual immorality.
Shutting down a newspaper in 2013, how quaint. Next they will unplug mimeograph machine, that’ll teach those gay people not to be so gay about it.
I hope that Prof Turley would not have been against the UN and the US supporting the Soviet Union in its fight against Nazi Germany then. You and we do not get to choose perfect allies in our world.
AY, “Have it your way” was Burger King’s slogan. Come on, dude don’t you know nuthin’!
An old conflict between the value of freedom of speech laws and the value of blasphemy laws. Seems to me that the government should have drafted their own article and ask the paper to publish it to balance what was communicated in the first article.
I guess this is the McDonalds approach to life….. You can have it your way… So long as it fits our way…..