I’ve seen 3 or 4 different stories now. Point blank he was kicked out for a reason that ain’t the color of his skin, his religious or sexual preferences, or his nation of origin. Therefore it’s perfectly legal.
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You may turn out to be so Disappointed in BoingBoing that the trophy is officially retired, with your name engraved on it.
I’ve been reading going going for about 10 years. I understand that I’m in the minority here. But moving from Kansas to Oregon certainly gave me a crash course on how to be the minority and still be happy with life.
Indeed. Back in the 1990’s, my mother-in-law and some work friends went to a local Italian restaurant for lunch, and after ordering, noticed that there was a framed picture of Rush Limbaugh displayed prominently on one of the walls. They complained to the server (something like, “I can’t believe you have a picture of that jerk on the wall”), a few minutes later the owner came out and told them to get out: “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”
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I’m fairly certain that “respecting” as used above meant “with reference or regard to” not “showing respect to.”
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Either way, though, the end product is the same. A law founded on religious principles cannot make the claim to be anything but a law respecting religion.
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This might be a part of the problem. Maybe we all just need to get out a little bit more.
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I’m not sure you have negated my point. Nazis and the KKK are still around and are seeing a resurgence. Surely you’re not saying that racism is dead because the National Guard protected black children during integration. All of those ideologies are still around. They just went underground as I pointed out. You can’t kill an idea with physical force or trying to quiet it.
You’re making a good point, but I think you’ve misstated the index case. The issue with these baker and florist shops wasn’t about refusing service to a class of people (they always insisted that they had no problem serving people of any gender/attraction) but being asked to supply service to an activity or cause (same-sex-marriage) that they had moral objections to.
So the right analogy is refusing to make cakes for a Trump fund-raiser; not refusing to make cakes for rednecks on principle.
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That comes down to a peculiarly American tendency to believe that not only is everyone entitled to an opinion, but that they are also entitled to everyone acting as if they’re right. Um, no. Just like cell division alone does not a person make (you need a brain, too).
No offense, but telling me that I need a brain is rude and needlessly hostile. I am typing in complete sentences with well-thought-out posts, showing at least a modicum of intelligence and education. Your hubris is unnecessary for a productive conversation.
And, quite frankly, that’s the mindset I strive to work against. If you think you are so smart that anyone who disagrees with you is dumb, well… it shows us all your real intelligence level.
EVERYONE is entitled to an opinion. Even the people you disagree with. Yes, that is a fundamentally American ideal. And yes, it is what makes our country pretty frickin’ awesome compared to others.
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I think it’s worth pointing out here that the bar never pleaded as to whether what Mr Piatek claims took place or not.
They moved to have the claim dismissed on the basis that it did not disclose a valid claim in law.
In other words, they argued that even if the court accepted his claims, they did not provide a basis for a legal remedy.
The court accepted that.
The various filings are available here:
http://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/iscroll/SQLData.jsp?IndexNo=152578-2017
although you wouldn’t know it from the reporting.
How many times can the NY Post report on the case, linking back to its own previous articles each time without ever linking to any of the publicly available court documents?
Turns out the answer is - more than I can be bothered to count.
The Defendant’s memorandum of law in support of their motion to dismiss is a doozy.
But it’s not a slippery slope that you are coasting down. It’s a slope that you are already at the bottom of and have been for years.
The legislation has been in place for years and the rulings that political views are not protected go back years.
They’ve mostly involved people claiming that, for example, their opposition to the Vietnam War counted as a ‘creed’ or their work as tenant rights activists. Or trying to argue that a business refusing to deliver food to an abortion clinic was acting unlawfully due to the clinic operators’ ‘pro-choice’ beliefs.
Guess what: none of those have been protected.
Could this be why?
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Wonderful, but who suggested that they should? My position has been very clear on this point. As long as your belief harms/supports harming no others then there is no issue.
there are quite a few topics where fruitful debate can be had. However, what is being discussed here are counterfactual and/or toxic viewpoints. With counterfactual positions no debate can be had as this would be an argument of fact. There exists objective factual truths in this world such as “the earth is not flat”, “magic man did not make the world in 7 days”, or “humanity shares ancestors with modern apes”.
A moderate is not someone who gives equal weight to all sides. That’s not moderate that’s moronic. To suggest that both sides of the “did the holocaust actually happen” debate have equally valid points of view is miles from moderate. In fact I will say without equivocation that there are morally superior points of view and other points of views which can be dismissed out of hand. I’ll give no credence or quarter to anyone who thinks one race is superior to another, one sex should dominate another, or one religion should rule society. Those are not valid points of view and do not deserve a platform or indeed any consideration.
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If you are saying that you have a right not to serve customers whose beliefs you find morally objectionable, I completely agree.
Whoa! Back that truck up. I did not say that. Religion falls under the category of belief and refusing to serve someone because they are Satanists or Christians is not OK even if you find religious people or beliefs morally objectionable.
To clarify, you responded to my views on positions that can be dismissed out of hand for consideration as a valid viewpoint and not my views on who we can discriminate against in a public business.
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So first of all, black people and lesbians are already at the bottom of that slope. Sure, you hear about the occasional case where someone with resources chooses to use them in a court battle, but mostly when you make this kind of slippery slope argument, the “what if” dystopia we are heading towards is the one that marginalized groups already live in. In many (most?) states you can already refuse service on the basis of sexuality, no problem.
But that aside, courts actually hear arguments. Sure, you can try saying you don’t make cakes for lesbian weddings because they are democrats, but if we’re assuming you are in a state where that is illegal and the law is going to actually be applied, it would be up to the cake maker to actually make the case that they kicked them out because they don’t serve democrats. The lesbian couple could make the case it was because they were gay. A judge will rule on a balance of probabilities.
If the judge asks, “What made you think they were democrats” and the baker says, “Because they are gay” then the baker has discriminated against them on the basis of their sexuality. They would have to be able to point to some other indicator or the case would be open and shut. I don’t know where the idea that courts are easily fooled by transparent lies comes from.
The case of the BLM t-shirt is at least analogous to this one. But there’s no slippery slope to people being able to defend a decision to not serve black people. If a bar owner kicks someone out because they find their t-shirt offensive, I may or may not disagree with that bar owner, but it’s not the equivalent of kicking out a Sikh for wearing a turban. Most of us have more than one shirt.
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Dude was rude to the floor staff.
Fuck that guy.
Oh, and christ what an asshole.
Oh and uh, late stage… never mind.
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Similar to the debate over the confederate battle flag, what this symbol means to the flag waver, what the waver claims it means, and what it means to observers can be markedly different things.
The “thin blue line” flag to me is a reminder that we have multiple classes of citizenship in the USA. The fact that many people who display that symbol on their cars do so with the hope that it will get them out of a traffic ticket suggests to me that they also believe that we live in a caste system.
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Its a racist symbol. I’m ok with people who were racist symbols getting kicked out of bars.
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This is America, you’re free to harm your own business if you choose to. (except you can’t discriminate against a protected class, which is why cake shops have to serve gay couples. I guess bigots have to go home and cry about how unfair the world is to whites/Christians/men)
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