The Masterpiece Cakeshop Case Is Not About Religious Freedom

[trotsky]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/opinion/gay-religious-freedom-cake.html

...there’s a long history of people using religious liberty as reason to justify their refusal to provide a public service offered by their business. In 1968, the owner of a barbecue restaurant — Piggie Park, in South Carolina — held that his religious beliefs gave him the right to withhold service from African-Americans. The owner, Maurice Bessinger, argued that the Civil Rights Act violated his freedom of religion, because “his religious beliefs compel him to oppose any integration of the races whatever.”

More recently, a pediatrician rejected Krista and Jamie Contreras’s child as a patient in Roseville, Mich., in 2014. The doctor, saying she had given the matter “much prayer,” decided that she couldn’t provide health care to their baby because they are lesbians.

On Tuesday, in a case supported by the Trump administration and a group called Alliance Defending Freedom, a broad right to discriminate on the basis of faith will be argued before the Supreme Court. If you’ve never heard of the Alliance Defending Freedom, the name alone is probably a tip off that freedom is the last thing it’s concerned with defending. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated it a hate group.

...Ironically, one group that might wind up discriminated against by the religious exemptions case is — wait for it — religious groups themselves. As one of the groups filing an amicus brief in the case points out, “petitioners’ arguments for a religious exemption permitting denials of service to same-sex couples could also be advanced to support denials of service to people of marginalized faiths.” The long bloody history of the world suggests that giving one faith permission to discriminate against another rarely ends well.

[MineralMan]

1. Indeed it is not.

It's just more "Lying for the Lord" nonsense.

[BillyBobBrilliant]

2. It is all about --

Let's use 'The Lord' as an excuse to be bigots (in defiance of the idea of 'Christian charity').

[Act_of_Reparation]

3. I doubt it.

There's no reason to suspect these homophobic attitudes emerged independently of religion. They are, in fact, most strongly associated with religion -- Christianity in particular.

[Mariana]

5. Where do you think they learn their bigotry?

It's taught from the pulpit Sunday after Sunday. When the law comes down on them, their congregations hold them up as martyrs and heroes of the faith. These people are bigots because of their faith, not in spite of it.

[guillaumeb]

4. Recommended, and agreed. eom