Selling goods to gay people isn't breaking any laws in the bible, and on a legal note, it is not a business owner's place to dictate a customer's private life, nor is what a person decides to do with the produce sold by a business - except in the case of weapons, cigarettes, alcohol or other controlled or dangerous items - ultimately any of the seller's concern. A shop owner who thinks they wield any power to refuse law-abiding citizens because of the personal choices of their private lives is delusionally self important.
The shop owner's attitude is one of much ado about nothing, and since in the eyes of the law, marriage is a legal agreement, not a religious one, and since business is a legislated practice, not a religious one, and since neither gay marriage nor cross-dressing are illegal in the relevant places, the shop owners are on thin ice, legally.
There is also absolutely no evidence to suggest refusing service to gay people will in any way influence their decision to get married or not, nor is there any tangible biblical precedent for refusing someone service. There is also the biblical saying, 'a person cannot serve both money and God', and since money, like business, is a legislated concept wherein certain laws apply, a person cannot harmoniously be bound by the legal obligations of business and simultaneously work to enforce their religious beliefs on customers. It is a conflict of interest to be bound by secular business legislation and simultaneously apply values that lie in breach of many of the business obligations to which one is bound.
One of those obligations is non-discriminatory service and overall acceptance of the legal precedents of business ownership itself.
But there are scriptures that speak against enabling immorality. And, on a legal note, small business owners do have both protected religious liberties under the Constitution as well as a human right to a free moral conscience toward God's normative morality under natural law.
In fact, the Supreme Court has recently been striking down federal court rulings levied against Christians and some of the Supreme Court's recent rulings are sweeping.
Furthermore, marriage is much more than a mere legal agreement between whatever decides to engage in the practice: it's God's design for humanity.
Of course, the Christian shop owners would sell anyone any of their products for any normative moral purpose whatsoever. They just won't facilitate immorality.
So not only are you wrong and misrepresenting the situation, but you don't even know what you're talking about.
By allowing Christian shop owners to ban people based on their lifestyle is start of a dangerous slippery slope.
What if a Christian went into a garage run by Muslims and asked to paint a picture of Jesus and verses for Bible on a car and the Muslim refused because Christianity went against his faith and the Quaran ? Can not have it both ways.
By allowing Christian shop owners to ban people based on their lifestyle is start of a dangerous slippery slope.
What if a Christian went into a garage run by Muslims and asked to paint a picture of Jesus and verses for Bible on a car and the Muslim refused because Christianity went against his faith and the Quaran ? Can not have it both ways.
If this were to happen I would support the Muslim's rights just as vehemently as I would support a Christian's rights. Fundamentally you don't have to agree with someone's political or religious views in order to support their right to have them.
By allowing Christian shop owners to ban people based on their lifestyle is start of a dangerous slippery slope.
What if a Christian went into a garage run by Muslims and asked to paint a picture of Jesus and verses for Bible on a car and the Muslim refused because Christianity went against his faith and the Quaran ? Can not have it both ways.
Everyone's allowed their religious views, but one shouldn't consider their own views a right to discriminate against those with different views and it seems like you advocate equal rights as long as its not for the gays.
As a human being possessing God's revelation: I have a moral responsibility to discriminate against immoral behaviors. For example, if a pedophile comes into a place of business and wants to order a cake for his NAMBA chapter recruitment drive, I'm not going to sell it to him.
I'll happily sell him anything I have for sale for any normatively moral purpose whatsoever but I will not support the immoral activity of pedophilia.
My position is justified both by God's normative morality, the human right to a free moral conscience toward God's normative morality under natural law, and in the nation I live also the constitution which offers protections for religious liberty.
The Christian owned small business wedding company should be able to tell people who want to use their services in the commission of immoral activities that they refuse to without EVER being subject to any civil penalties whatsoever or any criminal justice system for THAT would be a miscarriage of justice. The Christians who own the small business have moral responsibilities, human rights, and religious liberties.
Since Esanta, who obviously doesn't know what he is talking about, likes to use the word ergo as if that helps him in some way; I'll throw in a few here for good measure. Ergo, ergo, ergo, and ergo.
The separation of church and state is the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state. It doesn't mean that the government has a right to criminalize Christian small business owners whose religious convictions prevent them from supporting normatively immoral activities engaged in by people who choose to participate in homosexual acts, pedophilia, zoophilia, etc... when doing so violates the baker's religious convictions.
They can simply go to a business that doesn't have such religious convictions, do it themselves, or even start a business catering to the immoral demographic they identify with.
It's unfortunate that people like Esanta have arisen that seek to use government to criminalize the moral, persecute the righteous, and enable the immoral and unrighteous. Government was NEVER designed for this purpose.
Paedophilia is illegal in all states. Homosexuality isn't. It's a faulty correlation, all of what you're saying.
Paedophilia is illegal in all states. Homosexuality isn't. It's a faulty correlation, all of what you're saying.
Non-sequester. It's normatively immoral in every geographical location. My correlation is not dependent on whether enough deceived people, such as yourself, have managed to legalize a specific immoral behavior.
Using your logic, if society legalizes pedophilia then everyone must be deprived of their human right to a free moral conscience toward God's normative morality and religious liberty by a totalitarian government and criminalized for refusing to support pedophilia when a pedophiliac orders them to do so.
Which, of course, is an immoral position for you to take... lol.
You assume I'm stupid enough to ever think paedophilia is moral, for a start, so you blatantly misrepresent what I'm saying. You need to seriously wake up and realize that 'subjective morality' is not equatable to 'we all think murder and child-rape is cool', it's more like, 'we're not pig-headed bigots that'd deny consensually gay people the ability to buy goods'.
It's immoral to you, and it's something you can revile because you think you're special. Truth is, you wipe your bottom like everyone else.
You're stupid enough to think that homosexuality is moral, for a start, so it's no surprise that you blatantly misrepresented what I said which is that anyone (whether or not they choose to engage in immoral behaviors or not) can purchase all of the religious business owner's good and services for any normatively moral purpose whatsoever.
They just can't morally justify using the government as an organ of totalitarian control to deprive them of their religious convictions toward God's normative morality nor should they be able to.
You need to seriously wake up and realize that God's normative morality is 100% objective and 100% real. It is not subjective. You cannot pick and choose which immoral acts you like and which you don't and then morally justify using the government in a totalitarian manner to persecute the righteous for refusing to facilitate the immoral behaviors you like when ordered to do so.
That's totalitarian oppression of the righteous by the wicked and those who choose to engage in it will ultimately be judged by God Himself for it.
As I stated to you before:
What is morally good (ethical) cannot be separated from what is real (metaphysical) and what is true (epistemological).
Don't blame me that you're wrong. That's your fault, not mine. But you can do something about it: you can repent from it. Lord knows you've had plenty of opportunity to.
You're that one guy who can't stop reading Kant, aren't you?