I think you’re wrong on both points, but too sleepy to look it up in the tax code. I’ll run my mouth anyway.
Having money is not the same thing as profit. Yes, a church can have a gold swimming pool, but so can the United Way. It’s only profit if it’s paid out to owners, or benefits executives as if it was an excessive paycheck. Either kind of nonprofit is allowed to have a lavish office building and pay the top brass a half-million a year - but not 20 million. It’s subjective.
Also, any nonprofit of a certain size has to disclose a lot to the IRS and the public on a form 990. Also too, I don’t think being nonprofit exempts a church from cooperating with a criminal investigation. Sometimes they can get away with confidentiality, the same way a doctor or lawyer can, but even that isn’t absolute.
As much as I wish at were true, I think that argument would be a stretch - the state isn’t imposing discrimination, they are allowing individual businesses the choice to discriminate. If the contracting party isn’t discrimniating in fact, I doubt GenCon could claim there was a breach.
That said, it would be interesting to see if future contracts (by GenCon or others) could include a “morality clause” for state law, i.e. “Should state law be enacted which creates an inhospitable or hostile environment by permitting businesses in the state to discriminate against patrons or employees of GenCon on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, ethnicity, age, abilities, socioeconomic background, religion or lack thereof, or any protected class, GenCon shall have the right to cancel this contract.”
It began to be publicly untenable in the UK when the Daily Mail (think Fox News but without the production values) tried to boost its right wing credentials with shock horror revelations about gay people only to discover that its readership didn’t care any more.
A recent survey discovered that nowadays, far from being the “advanced” part of the country, it is London that is socially backward, with social attitudes being more progressive outside the south-east of the country. This may be due to the large immigrant populations in London, and the white population in parts of the south-east that don’t like change. But it seems that the very London-centric media is still very hung up on things that the rest of the country simply doesn’t care about, and for no good reason.
The question for me, as someone who used to visit places in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin fairly regularly, is why there suddenly seems to be this backlash against progress. Who is actually being hurt by non-discrimination? Who is benefiting from these unpleasant laws? And are there any investigative journalists left with a voice to find out and tell us?
It looks, from my point of view, that this resurgence in conservatism comes on the heels of a few moves toward a more progressive society. Gay people can get married, and that scares the shit out of the entrenched religious majority, because they see they don’t always get their way anymore. Now that they can see that justice can happen even against their wishes, they are kicking and screaming about “persecution” as if they had even minor standing to claim such an absurdity.
I think some of them know it, but they know that Christians are such an overwhelming majority in the United States that they don’t have to care. A business run by a [fill in the blank with anything other than Christian] that uses this bill to deny service to Christians is going to cause outrage and, at the very least, going to lose a lot of business very quickly.
As we’ve seen a business that denies service based on alleged Christian beliefs is going to get a lot of support. And while there have been a lot of claims to the contrary the bakery in the instance I’m citing wasn’t forced to shut down. The owners chose to shut down rather than comply with the law.
Emphasis mine. You’ve hit on an important point here. I’m opposed to the bill, but if it does pass I think businesses should be required to put up signs saying exactly whom they refuse to serve. It might not do much good–I suspect businesses that put up “No homosexuals, no dogs” signs may even see a bit of a boost–but at least people will know that the business is run by assholes.
Since GenCon has a contract until 2020, it may be a moot point unless they have some very good verbiage in the contract allowing them to break it over this stupidity.
Well, the way our government works, all it’s going to take to overturn this law would be for someone to be turned away from a place of business (preferably on the grounds of their religion, not sexuality) and contest it all the way to the Supreme Court (imagine Scalia’s fury if some hardcore Baptist refused to serve a Roman Catholic).
Admittedly that’s a big hurdle, but I don’t see this law lasting a decade (remember: a decade ago multiple states passed “defense of marriage” laws, only to have them overturned within a few years.)
You can’t put “business” and “required” in the same sentence! What are you, some kind of socialist?
You know, it occurs to me that business owners can’t really rely on gay people to come mincing in with limp wrist a-flapping. In fact, a good many gay people look like the rest of us. (Probably some kind of stealth thing.) How exactly do they propose to test their customers? They don’t have pink triangles yet in Indiana, I don’t think.
Not all of those laws have been overturned, and the many of the decisions that have are on hold until higher-court rulings. A blasé attitude of “It’s only a matter of time” is small comfort to people being discriminated against now, and kind of cluelessly dismissive.
“Justice delayed is justice denied.”
We’re winning the fight, but I wish people would stop talking as if it’s already won. Especially as equal marriage rights are only part of it.
There’s a frequently ignored repeated argument that most businesses–including those run by people who claim to have deeply held religious beliefs that dictate how they conduct themselves at all times–have done business with homosexuals at some time or other, probably without realizing it. In the case of a bridal shop that refused to sell wedding dresses to two women it’s very likely that if the women had come in separately and hadn’t said they were marrying someone of the same sex they could have bought dresses.
Yea, not to say one should have to “pass” to get service, but like you said, an awful lot pass anyway. The same point was made very clearly about the military.
I don’t think there is any conflation here, all of these are religions, all are predicated on the idea that magic is some how responsible of the way the world is. All seem to fail the test of critical thinking, evidence and rational thought. So I don’t think this is conflation simply inclusion.
I don’t believe that we can solve intolerance with more intolerance. I think that will just lead to further escalation.
It seems to me that humans (all humans, everywhere) are looking for ways to differentiate an US group from a THEM group. Religion is a good way to do that; so are politics, gender, skin color, sexual orientation, what kind of vehicle we drive, whether we own guns, etc. Once we choose a side, the next step is to dehumanize and abuse the folks not on our side.
We’ve been repeating this cycle since the dawn of humanity. I would like to opt out.
The one positive thing out of all of this is that our mayor here in Indianapolis has signed on against the act and has pledged support to the diversity of our town. Interestingly enough, he is a republican. One that added a few hundred miles of biking trails to the town and has worked to make downtown livable, brought business here, and has tried to make this an international city by supporting our immigrant population (his wife is one) and I know he has worked with the GLBTQ community on a lot of issues.
I hope that even if the state in general is full of small minded bigots, Gen Con realizes that those of us in the capital love them and love their freaky diversity when they show up en masse scaring the locals that just wanting to get away from the farm and enjoy a night in the big city!
The teapot is absolutely correct, political intolerance does not have to be meet with more tolerance. Rights have never been won by popular opinion, no one has to be convinced. The government (federal) has to step in once again and make sure the states are treating all their citizens equally, the bigots can take then their hate filled hearts to the grave.
