“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.” Ralph Waldo Emerson. I can’t wait to read some of the future entertainment, provided this democratic experiment even survives. I have been hearing discussion of “winning the culture war” but, I hate to tell people this, but winning the culture war means that the democratic form of government has failed.
Is that the point for some in the culture wars? Primarily those who started it in the first place? Because it’s democracy (hand in hand with consumer culture) that gives rise to cultures that challenge the traditional in the first place (traditional largely meaning here white, male, christian, straight domination).
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Dress codes in bars have been around a long time. When I was working in a blues band, there were old, faded signs in almost every bar that stated “No Colors”. On the other end of the spectrum, the lounges that we played had variations on the “No Caps, No Sagging Pants, No Athletic Attire” signs.
And if a patron was rude to the staff, they got bounced.
This is only news because the gentleman insisted that Trumpism is a religion. The court says no.
Maybe Trumpism can be classified as a cult, not a religion, because of the seemingly brainwashed members who repeat slogans and catchphrases until they think they speak truth.
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Ok cool. So if I say my political beliefs ARE my religious beliefs, as this guy did, would that qualify?
No, because they clearly aren’t the same thing. “Trumpism” isn’t an official recognized religion, for one thing. Protecting people from being attacked or excluded from public life or equal protection under the law for, say, being Jewish or Muslim or Neo-pagan or atheist or a satanist, isn’t the same thing as this guy getting kicked out of a restaurant for treating the staff like shit and then trying to claim that his support of a political candidate prohibits the restaurant from kicking him out BECAUSE it’s his religion is not the same thing. If you can’t see the difference, then I’m not sure what else to say here.
And religious practices which violate the law are generally not protected - such as the case with FGM (likely because it’s not a necessary part of a particular religion in the same way that circumcision of boys is).
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Other countries SUCK !!1!
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Let’s not diminish the sacrifices made by those who reacted with force to towards legalized abuse. Their days of passivity ended and lead to riots which acted as the single most important catalyst for activism which ultimately resulted in laws being passed to first protect people from discrimination based on their sexual preferences and ultimately the movement to parity we see beginning even now. We as a nation recognized the righteousness of their actions even if it was only to make the site a national monument.
To me, it seems dialog only became possible when a few brave people stood up for themselves and backed up their words with force. It was after the riots that the nation began a real dialog which was made possible through the efforts of local and national gay rights organizations many of home can trace their origins back to Stonewall.
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I suspect a lack of self-awareness on their part. At the very least, they showed that they don’t care about racism, which is no better.
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If its a dogmatic approach that is being taken, then I could see where they would be mistaken if that demographic thinks that “winning” the culture war can be achieved, or else they haven’t thought hard enough about what that means. There is no Plan B other than a return to, as Hobbes put it, a life within the Natural State which is one of brutality, nastiness and brevity.
Yup.
https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/988121942740774912?s=21
The insistence of White America that the open advocacy of White supremacist terrorism must be tolerated is itself an expression of White supremacy.
The same tolerance is not extended to non-White America. Look at the bloodsoaked history of Black resistance leaders, look at the current reality of Muslim and Latinx America.
White people advocating for racial genocide: protected and enabled by the full force of the state. Black people suggesting that people of colour should defend themselves: surveillance, persecution, arrest, assassination.
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he tried to convince the judge that being a Drumpf supporter did fall into the religion category.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL
THAT just kills me.
of course it expalins all that KKK / NAZI nonsense
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Sadly, it wasn’t you that equated all 3 of the items on your list, it was Trump who made them one in the same.
I dunno Eddie. Seems to me the cops have some history of involvement and complacency with the white supremacist movement. Trump seems more a symptom than the cause.
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He claims they asked if he was wearing it as a joke. So they allegedly thought of that. 
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I was terribly pleased with myself last night when I convinced my mother-in-law that 20% should be the tip for good service and 15% for subpar service.
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Riffing off of your statement, I would say the issue here is whether it’s a statement or an inherent part of the person. In the bakery case, the couple can’t simply not be homosexual. A more appropriate version would be if the couple entered the shop wearing t-shirts with pro-LGBT hats, and the owner refused to serve them unless they came back without the hats.
As was pointed out elsewhere, the issue with the MAGA hat was solved by removing the hat and the guy did end up being served, as evidenced by the bill he ran up. The guy was not denied service, he was denied the chance to make an objectionable statement.
I look at it this way: a priest can walk into a bar, but the barkeeper can kick him out if he starts to hold a sermon. It’s not who he is that matters, it’s what he does.
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Wearing a MAGA hat is different than wearing a headscarf, even if we accepted political association as a protected class. If I was a Sikh and demanded my workplace alter their typical dress code to allow me to wear my turban and grow a beard, they may have to do so, and I think they ought to do so. If I instead demanded that I be allowed to wear a t-shirt that says “I’m a Sikh!” instead of formal attire, it would be perfectly reasonable for them to say no.
This isn’t about every person just saying what they want to wear/do and saying it is important to them. We differentiate between deeply held beliefs and people just bullshitting. I don’t have anything against the church of the FSM, but the idea that someone has to be accommodated in wearing a colander on their head is silly. You can argue it makes as much “logical” sense as someone being required to wear some other religious headgear, but you can’t argue that it is actually meaningfully and traditionally tied to your deeply held beliefs.
I think that in general we should probably protect people based on their political affiliations. The idea that you could be fired from your job if your boss found out which presidential candidate you voted for strikes me as grotesque. And I agree the blur between politics and religion is there. They are different, but some people are born into a political party nearly as much as anyone is born into a religion.
My major issue with this case is that we shouldn’t ride every legal ruling to the most absurd conclusion of the precedent. I know that for argument’s sake we can separate the guy’s behaviour from his hat and say, “He was kicked out because of his behaviour but the court case was over his political affiliations.” And because of that we can talk about what would have been right rather than what is right.
The issue is that in a real court they deal with real life. It’s entirely possible that the judge was looking at this stupid, nonsense lawsuit thinking, “Oh, come on, is this what I’m going to be dealing with, aren’t there real cases we should be getting to?” and so when the bar’s lawyer said, “Hey, even if what he says is true there’s no grounds here” and the judge thought, “You’re right, time to dismiss this bullshit.”
From a grand philosophy perspective it shouldn’t matter what the facts of the case are to a ruling like that, but in a real court room I think it does. If the judge actually thought the guy was treated in a very unfair way, or if the way in which they gleaned his political beliefs seemed to invade his privacy, they may have heard the case. I think the only precedent is that if you file a stupid-ass lawsuit the judge might be looking for an excuse to throw it out.
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Will & Grace was not a “reasoned argument”.
The thing about gay people is that they occur randomly in the population. Everyone respects someone who is gay, the vast majority of us love and identify our well-being with someone who is gay. Most of us will care about people who are gay before we know what “gay” is.
Hating people because of who they love never had anything to do with reason, and I don’t think reason will ever have much of anything to do with combating that.
And then maybe he sued them ironically? Maybe he attempted to claim that wearing a MAGA hat was necessary to his spiritual belief in the power of Trump to a judge but just ironically.
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Not just that, you need to know a lot more than just how to cook to run a restaurant.
As far as being a chef, I know a brilliant guitar player. Could easily have been a jazz great, he went to Berkeley in Boston. Dropped out because the music biz would likely have ruined his love of playing. He is a programmer now. It is a risk of doing what you love that some people don’t talk about.
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That kind of behaviour might be insensitive and provocative but I think that refusal would still be inappropriate (and I’m pretty sure the bakery people would agree). The specific issue in these cases was always and only about not forcing people to participate in something they didn’t agree with.
