Is the problem here then created by the fact that sexual orientation isn't a Protected class (not as far as I can tell anyway, using the link that OrP kindly provided in a different thread)?

In which case how can it ever be that gays are discriminated against?

I'm very confused

Consider the comparison between this issue and the corresponding issue for interracial weddings. Supports of freedom for baker and florists to refuse gay weddings have in my opinion a fairly strong burden to differentiate the two (presuming they agree that bakers shouldn't be able to refuse service to interracial weddings; not all libertarians are going to agree to that obviously).

From what I can tell, the difference, such as it is, comes down to something like this: Our society does not just have a general claim to freedom. At specific places it specifically enumerates particular protections to particular classes, above and beyond a general spirit of freedom. In the US it isn't just free speech, but free religion and free press specifically. Canada makes this duality particularly clear in the equivalent of the equal protection claus:

Advocates in Canada obviously want "sexual orientation" added to the underlined part.

What I sometimes question is the importance of the enumerated freedoms. As in, is the bolded sufficient, and do we need the underlined at all? If the underlined has an effect - and practically it has in the legal canon - then it is prioritizing particular enumerated differences over others.

Returning to the question, the distinguishing argument between the interracial and gay marriage cases seems to be that religion is not just protected, but specially protected. As a society we have agreed that a religious reason is in some sense more valid than a general reason. In this case, they might argue that a religious opposition to gay marriage is something we should protect but that a not religious opposition to interracial marriage is something we don't need to. Even if the interracial marriage opponents is making some seemingly positive intending argument about trying to improve our society, we have decided that those classes of arguments just don't manage to trump the need to protect racial minorities.

So the gay marriage differs from the interracial marriage in two ways. Firstly, those not wanting to support gay marriages are doing it for explicitly religious reasons. Secondly, sexual orientation doesn't have the explicit protections that race has. So such a person needs to argue that both are necessary. Namely, they need to maintain that we should keep freedom of religion as being somehow greater than a generic non religious argument, that it deserves to retains its privileged sets of protections. And that gay people should not be added to the list of those with privileged protections the way races or genders do.

One part of me says to dispense with the entire issue of enumerated freedoms and enumerated protections. We support general freedom, and general nondiscrimination, and that society and the legal system has the sophistication to work out the balances from there. Perhaps this is naive. Certainly, I think that if we do enumerate protections, sexual orientation should be on that list as certainly as race is. I am seeing less reason to continue with enumerated freedoms. As in, while clearly I don't want discrimination against religious minorities, i don't see what is added to free speech and assembly by free religion. In particular, I don't see that religious reasons should be sufficient to trump a protected class where non religious reasons are not.

MightyBoosh: this is one of those topics where I may only know enough to be dangerous, but my understanding is that sexual orientation is not a protected class at the moment. I think the direction we're headed is towards making it one, however that works (not sure if it could be done by the courts or not)

If it were, I don't think the proposed law in kansas or in arizona would survive constitutional review. IANAL though, so keep that in mind

UM,
I don't think the enumerated freedoms were ever meant to be used as a trump card. I think the enumerated freedoms were initially set out as a sort of affirmative action.

I believe the enumerated freedoms are just examples and not meant to be exhaustive.

In other words it is just as bad to discriminate against people with glasses as it is to discriminate based on gender. Having gender as an enumerated freedom does not put it in a separate special class.

Even with specific enumerated freedom I think the charter still operates in this spirit.

Do you think that religious beliefs should no longer be considered a Protected class, like Race, Age, or Gender?

not to be too nitpicky, but afaik protection for religion is intended to prevent discrimination based entirely on the fact of someone's religious identity in a way that is analogous to race or nationality. It's not usually intended to mean you aren't allowed to think some particular religious belief or other is ridiculous. I'm not sure if that distinction is important, but when you consider the kinds of discrimination that were the original motivation for these laws, I think it could matter. Hatred towards some religious group is not a reflection of some rational and dispassionate rejection of a particular religious belief.

On the other hand, I don't really see why it is desirable that our friendly neighborhood baker be allowed to refuse service to people who believe in reincarnation any more than he should be allowed to refuse service to gay people. I also care less about the implications of him refusing service in the reincarnation case, so I don't think it matters particularly, but if protecting religion is useful towards eliminating the more hateful forms of religious discrimination, I don't really care if it also has the side affect of preventing less hateful and more quixotic forms. And of course in reality the "I won't serve believers in reincarnation" may really just be a rationalization for something uglier.

My above post is specifically about a piece of Canadian legislation. My point there is that IMO this legislation is in place to uphold a general freedom and general non-discrimination.

Creating special protected classes that trump other classes is in itself discrimination. The reason there are several enumerated classes listed in the Canadian Charter is (IMO) a sort of affirmative action based on previous wrongs.

Therefore I believe creating special classes is counter productive in trying to defeat discrimination.

Hedging:
However, I don't really know much about this type of law or what precedents exist. I am kind of just shooting from the hip here as to what makes sense to me. There may be good arguments to set aside protected classes.

Thank you for responding though I will admit it was an open question. I don't know how the law addresses my questions (if it does at all.) I wasn't just asking if there were those more familiar then me with how this law (and similar laws in other states) is written. You'd like to assume it has to spell this out or else it basically becomes carte blanche for anyone to discriminate against anyone for any reason and simple label it religion.

Its interesting to me because I suspect that the proponents of such a law don't want the govt. who has to enforce this law determining what is a valid religious belief.

Not a complete trump (even our most dear freedom of speech isn't absolute) but it does give relative importance to specific things and that gets codified both in legislative laws and the legal canon.

For instance, title II of the civil rights act (admittedly legislative) prohibits discrimination on the basis of an enumerated list that includes race but not sexual orientation. This law gives a clear ranking: no matter what your personal beliefs - no matter even your religious beliefs - freedom from discrimination trumps the free exercise of your beliefs according to this law in the context we are talking about: businesses serving the general public.

The enumerated list in CRA does gives a special protection not afforded to classes not on that list. Eye glass wearers are not on the list. And neither are gays.

The historical reasons are of course well known. The negative consequences of societal discrimination on the basis of race where so horrific that it deserved this special protection. My contention is that while thankfully not that bad, but that sexual orientation is nonetheless sufficiently discriminated against and disenfranchised society wide, that it justifies adding them to this specific list. This is why I support legislation like workplace nondiscrimination and, given the political climate, think Obama should do this for federal contractors via executive order.

If you're bored one day here's a ton of articles over "religious freedom" and the end of the moral majority politics

http://www.bookforum.com/blog/12939

That’s an important distinction. Discrimination is a deprivation that isn’t applicable to all business transactions, like work-for-hire or contractual services. For example, The Good Shepard’s Sign Co. reserves the right not to supply signage for an atheist bus campaign. Likewise, Right-Wing Catering isn’t legally obligated to supply services for the Democratic National Convention, just as Rainbow Productions reserves the right not to produce a video for a same-sex marriage campaign.

The conflict between libertarian and Christian ethics

http://elizabethstoker.com/2014/02/2...paul-is-right/

This is clearly ridiculous, if you make up a hypothetical company called rainbow productions it must legally be required to support gay marriage

It's the context of the conversation at this point.

Why the sudden shift to talk solely about hiring practices? This was only briefly touched upon and not the central point of contention being put forward.

Having read the link, and re-read it, and read the thing that it was a response to, and given your portrayal of it... I'm not entirely sure you know what you've read and I don't know how it fits into any of the preceding conversation.

Edit:

I'll elaborate some: The link is talking about the problem with treating the spheres as independent and merely seeking "compatibility," not saying that there's an inherent conflict between two perspectives.

Edit 2:

Also, criticizing Rand Paul's politics is easy.

Woah that's a big one two punch. First federal judge in texas overturns their constitutional ban on gay marriage, stayed pending appeal. Then brewer vetoes the Arizona bill discussed ITT. Huge wins imo

If you believe that anti-discrimination laws are unnecessary for who businesses serve, then it follows that such laws would also be unnecessary for who they hire. If a business could choose to have a religious objection against serving gays, or blacks, or women, or muslims, then they can have the same objection to employing them.

If this is not the case, then please explain why who you choose to hire is different than who you choose to serve.

I don't see why one follows from the other. These are completely different processes and subject to different types of standards. In particular, the accessibility requirements set forth before are not really comparable on the hiring side of things. I can determine in a reasonable way whether there's another baker in the area. It's much more difficult to make such a claim about employment opportunities.

It's also true that the state of hiring is significantly different place (in terms of cultural progression) than the state of public accommodations.

To some extent, yes. I've noted this earlier.

When religious liberty was used to defend racism. Aaron pay attention this would have been you.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...cist-anti-gay/

Awesome. Although some of her reasons were a bit odd:

She says that is has:

So she's basing part of her argument on things that she can't imagine? Is that a really bad argument or is it just me?

Nope. I'm not basing my position on "religious liberty" at all. I've been quite explicit about it.

Also,

Edit: Incidentally, it seems to me that you think I'm defending the bill. If you read the thread, you'll see that I've not once advocated that the bill (as written) was a good idea.

Funny how most everyone I've heard or seen discuss this bill has no clue what it actually says. The liberal media portrays the bill as being anti-gay, and the low-information
lemmings swallow it up.

The fact is, under current state law in Arizona, business owners can discriminate against gays or anyone else as they see fit. What this bill does is *restrict* that ability to discriminate.

So, this law is actually doing the opposite of what all the idiots out there who are screaming against it, thinks it does.

And then we have people in this thread cheering the veto, when they don't even
understand what the bill actually says. Comedy Gold.


__________________________________________________ ________________
Given that, here are some of the main changes the Arizona bill would make:

Those covered by RFRA would include "any individual, association, partnership, corporation, church, religious assembly or institution or other business organization."
A religious freedom violation can be asserted "regardless of whether the government is a party to the proceeding."
The person asserting a religious freedom violation must show three things: "1. That the person's action or refusal to act is motivated by a religious belief. 2. That the person's religious belief is sincerely held. 3. That the state action substantially burdens the exercise of the person's religious beliefs."

http://www.christianpost.com/news/is...t-gays-115093/

And this completely misses the point that this bill was drawing attention to the conflicts that can arise when rights such as 'religious freedoms' restrict or clash with other types of awarded rights.

IMO religion should not be a Protected class. I don't see any other types of 'belief' on the list, why is religion there? I don't consider religion to be a 'characteristic' of a person in the same way that age is, or race, or gender. Religion is a choice.

I haven't seen one person who supports the bill say they personally would discriminate against homosexuals. Hell there could be people who genuinely like and tolerate homosexuals but genuinely think people should be able to turn gays away. This is, unfortunately, not much better than being a bigot themselves as written here.

When one says they're just objectively adjudicating rights based on land, and when that land has historically and currently been largely in the dominion of groups of people who have and currently want to discriminate, you're taking their side.

As to the point that racism or anti LGBT would be in peaceful harmony if bigots gained the tight to enforce their prejudices against minorities

Btw the point of telling that I was called a n*gger lover wasn't to personalize the issue but to point out that racism is still rampant to unacceptable levels even during our lifetime and letting bigots discriminate will not help the situation at all.

http://m.theweek.com/article.php?id=257057

You are free to keep quoting page after page after page of analysis that is completely disjoint from anything that I'm putting forward as an argument. All it does is increase the amount of evidence that shows you're attempting to demagogue the position.

I will also say that as you continue to do this, you remind me more and more of the other thread where you were blatantly mischaracterizing not just my position, but dereds' position as well. It took somewhere around 200 posts for you to finally realize that (and it was because you failed to observe something on the first page which was quoted several times throughout the conversation).

I don't know how many posts it would take for you to realize your errors here, and I'm not going to bother trying to find out.

Out of curiosity, how many years ago were you in elementary school? I would suggest that the basic social construction of the n-word has changed since you were a kid. So pointing back to your anachronous anecdote as evidence for present tense issues isn't helping you advance any argument at all.

Feel free to mindlessly demogogue away.