"trader_4" wrote in message
...
On Friday, July 17, 2015 at 2:31:21 AM UTC-4, Robert Green wrote:

stuff snipped

If you go private, discriminate your "Christian" heart out. But when
you
open your business to the public, you agree to abide by the law, plain
and
simple. Don't like the law? Go private or work to get it changed.
Break it
before it's changed and pay the fines. Problem solved. But apparently
you
want to have your cake and to be able to eat it, too.

Sorry. This is a simple "do the crime, do the time" case despite what
people are trying to twist it into. Most of that financial penalty was
increased by the bakers' willful disregard of court orders. How is this
not
simply using the cloak of religion to justify bigotry?

Because they aren't bigots, by all indications they just have deeply
held religious beliefs.

What method/meter/means do you (or any one) have that is able to measure the
depth of religious conviction. I recall a lot of draft-age men suddenly
found religion when they were about to be drafted for the Vietnam War. The
problem with so-called "deeply" or "closely" held religious views is that
they don't lend themselves to qualitative measurement. In fact, a
psychiatrist could make a very good case that the more religious a person
is, the more deluded and out of touch with the real world they are. If your
neighbor saw you climb a mountain and you were about to stab your son
because God said to, would you think he was deeply religious or deeply
disturbed?

If a Christian comes to a gay baker and wants
to have a cake made that says "Celebrating Traditional Man/woman Marriage"
and the gay baker refuses, should they be fined $130K and gag ordered
for being bigots?

Yes, that's what the law dictates. Break it and pay the consequences.
Surely the Bible tells us this. What if this Christian has deeply held
religious beliefs springing from Leviticus and wants to stone someone to
death for wearing linen and cotton at the same time? For beard trimming?
(guess who still follows that one - the Muslims!) The simple truth is that
there is a lot of stuff in the bible that's irrelevant at best in modern
times and damn dangerous at others. Especially when kookazoids get to being
terribly literal about what's in there like the Branch Davidians and other
Christian fringe groups.

How is this not grandstanding in the fine old tradition of Al Sharpton?

Bizarre you'd even try to draw that comparison.

Maybe bizarre to you but there were plenty of people on both sides (baker
and gay couple) that were not intrinsic to the original issue and became
"hangers on" and instigators in the grand old tradition of Sharpton. He
often tries to get people to ignore the crimes his "homies" have committed
to try to refocus them on some larger issue. Sounds pretty much the same as
the bakers and the numerous groups that are supporting them. Ignore the
discrimination but love the religious fervor. No thanks.

Considering how Roberts had voted in the past, I don't see the SC
mustering
the votes to allow shop and innkeepers to refuse service on the basis of
their religious beliefs when the choice those merchants who feel the
need to
discriminate have is to go private?

Well, then you're the only person in the universe who can understand
Roberts, because he just makes it up as he goes.

I am sure his mother understands him as I am sure your mother does/did you .
.. . However my viewpoint is not so much based on Roberts but on dissents
from the other Justices that warned the Hobby Lobby case could not/would not
be expanded to cover discrimination in more general situations.

These bakers made bad business decisions - and then they made even worse
ones.

It wasn't a business decision. It was a religious one.

No, unless those bakers followed Leviticus to a "T" I contend their
religious feelings were of the "pick and choose" type. Thus they were not
eligible for the "sincerely held" exemption some people claim exists. But
they were certainly eligible for prosecution under the "plain as the nose on
your face" Oregon business laws. They had a responsibility of a business
open to the public to follow those laws. The original decision to open a
shop to the public when they knew they could not follow the law was their
bad business decision.

There are plenty of states they could have opened up shop in that wouldn't
have hassled them over refusing service to gays. They chose to pick one
that did. Even gays were smart enough to move to SF in the early days
because so many other jurisdictions were openly hostile to them. The bakers
got stupid and paid the price. Then they got even more stupid and paid an
even greater price because they refused to stop maligning the complainants
and they kept openly boasting how they would continue to disobey the state
law. History is littered with failed martyrs. Another one rides the bus.

--
Bobby G.