House of Eratosthenes

There are two easy ways to get a Republican to roll over and put his paws up in the air: The first is to write him a check, which is the political version of scratching his belly, and the second is to call him a bigot. In both cases, it helps if you have a great deal of money behind you.

Tim Cook, who in his role as chief executive of the world’s most valuable company personifies precisely the sort of oppression to which gay people in America are subjected, led the hunting party when Indiana’s governor Mike Pence signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, while Walmart, a company that cannot present its hindquarters enthusiastically enough to the progressives who hate it and everything for which it stands, dispatched its CEO, C. Douglas McMillon, to head off a similar effort in Arkansas, where Governor Asa Hutchison rolled over immediately.

There are three problems with rewarding those who use accusations of bigotry as a political cudgel. First, those who seek to protect religious liberties are not bigots, and going along with false accusations that they are makes one a party to a lie. Second, it is an excellent way to lose political contests, since there is almost nothing — up to and including requiring algebra classes — that the Left will not denounce as bigotry. Third, and related, it rewards and encourages those who cynically deploy accusations of bigotry for their own political ends.

An excellent illustration of this dynamic is on display in the recent pronouncements of columnist and gay-rights activist Dan Savage, who, in what seems to be an effort to resurrect every lame stereotype about the shrill, hysterical, theatrical gay man, declaimed that the efforts of those who do not wish to see butchers and bakers and wedding-bouquet makers forced by their government at gunpoint to violate their religious scruples is — you probably have guessed already — nothing less than the consecration of Jim Crow Junior. “Anti-black bigots, racist bigots, during Jim Crow and segregation made the exact same arguments that you’re hearing people make now,” Savage said. Given the dramatic difference in the social and political position of blacks in the time of Bull Connor and gays in the time of Ellen DeGeneres, this is strictly Hitler-was-a-vegetarian stuff, the elevation of trivial formal similarities over dramatic substantial differences. The choices for explaining this are a.) moral illiteracy; b.) intellectual dishonesty; c.) both a and b.

Adlai Stevenson famously offered this definition: “A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.” We do not live in that society.

The war on the private mind, sadly, has casualties in the private mind. “My movement is, or is not, in favor of people being treated the same regardless of class membership” is something that ought to be objective and measurable. It’s even testable. But these crusaders for special protections and special privileges, being adamantly opposed to this idea of treating everyone equally, have managed to uphold themselves as champions of something called “equality,” and have managed to smear their opposition as reactionary zealots who want more discriminating to happen.

As a society, we’re well on our way to recognizing “freedom” as something we have when people face threats of fines and jail terms because of their religious beliefs. With such fundamental definitions being flipped in such a way, pancake-like, is there hope? Time will tell.

Tim Cook’s outrage is pure political expediency. As noted elsewhere, four of the ten countries in the world that execute homosexuals for the crime of being homosexual are on Apple’s front page.
- Duffy | 04/02/2015 @ 06:40
Should be legal for a public accommodation to refuse service because someone is gay, black, female, or Jewish?
- Zachriel | 04/03/2015 @ 07:05
Should it be legal for a Muslim-owned public accommodation to refuse service because someone is gay, female (sans burkha), or Jewish?
- Severian | 04/03/2015 @ 07:18
We don’t have freedom to associate, if we don’t have freedom to not-associate.

Why do some people hate freedom so much?
- mkfreeberg | 04/03/2015 @ 07:28
mkfreeberg: We don’t have freedom to associate, if we don’t have freedom to not-associate.

Just wanted to clarify your position.
http://i.imgur.com/vNtjgDE.jpg
- Zachriel | 04/03/2015 @ 07:54
So let’s clarify yours, Zachriel: Should it be legal for a Muslim-owned public accommodation to refuse service because someone is gay, female (sans burkha), or Jewish?

A yes or no answer is required.
- Severian | 04/03/2015 @ 08:01
Severian: A yes or no answer is required.

Not sure adding that changes a question or eliminates any possible false dichotomies that might require explanation.

Severian: Should it be legal for a Muslim-owned public accommodation to refuse service because someone is gay, female (sans burkha), or Jewish?

No.
- Zachriel | 04/03/2015 @ 08:31
Not sure adding that changes a question or eliminates any possible false dichotomies that might require explanation.

Not sure I care.

No.

So: I’m a male-to-female transsexual. I walk into a Muslim-owned bakery, wearing a bikini, with big 80s hair flapping in the breeze. I tell the baker that, for my upcoming lesbian wedding, I require a cake frosted with a graphic picture of Mohammed getting fist-fucked by a gay farmyard hog. The baker refuses. You, Zachriel — all however many of you — are going to be right out there on the picket line with me?

A yes or no answer is required.
- Severian | 04/03/2015 @ 08:47
Just wanted to clarify your position.

But one thing remains unclear: How many other rights should we not have?

At what point will we be forbidden from doing so many things, and required to do so many other things, that our “liberty” will finally be satisfactorily fortified? (Or eliminated?) When will we have built up (torn down) these freedoms, that the collective of unknown Internet denizens will finally be satisfied with how far we’ve come?

Since we’re supposed to be defining liberty/freedom according to not being able to make our own decisions, can the above question ever really be answered? Especially since we still don’t know the identities of these mollusks sitting in judgment?
- mkfreeberg | 04/03/2015 @ 08:52
mkfreeberg: How many other rights should we not have?

You still have a right to join a club that excludes blacks and Jews; but opening a public accommodation means conforming to a number of rules, from paying taxes to providing a safe work environment. It also means not discriminating against protected classes, such as race and religion.

Freedom!
http://nysiaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/whites-only.png
- Zachriel | 04/03/2015 @ 09:05
Well, to be fair, I gave ’em a pretty detailed hypothetical there (maybe I should’ve added that the gay farmyard hog would be dressed in leather bondage gear, topped off by a “Palin for President 2016” sticker on the relevant mail-clad fist).

Surely that’s a right if anything is?
- Severian | 04/03/2015 @ 09:05
Zachriel:

So: I’m a male-to-female transsexual. I walk into a Muslim-owned bakery, wearing a bikini, with big 80s hair flapping in the breeze. I tell the baker that, for my upcoming lesbian wedding, I require a cake frosted with a graphic picture of Mohammed getting fist-fucked by a gay farmyard hog. The baker refuses. You, Zachriel — all however many of you — are going to be right out there on the picket line with me?

A yes or no answer is required.
- Severian | 04/03/2015 @ 09:06
Severian: … for my upcoming lesbian wedding, I require a cake frosted with …

If they refused you service because you were a lesbian, then that would be illegal discrimination under the standard. However, they could refuse your specific request based on a neutral standard of taste that would apply to any customer, not because of who the customer was.
- Zachriel | 04/03/2015 @ 09:23
That is not a yes or no answer. The question is: “I’m a male-to-female transsexual. I walk into a Muslim-owned bakery, wearing a bikini, with big 80s hair flapping in the breeze. I tell the baker that, for my upcoming lesbian wedding, I require a cake frosted with a graphic picture of Mohammed getting fist-fucked by a gay farmyard hog. The baker refuses. You, Zachriel — all however many of you — are going to be right out there on the picket line with me?”

Yes or no?

One word, three letters tops.
- Severian | 04/03/2015 @ 09:27
Severian: That is not a yes or no answer.

Not sure adding that changes a question or eliminates any possible false dichotomies that might require explanation.

Severian: are going to be right out there on the picket line with me?

As was clear from our previous answer, it would depend on why you were refused service. If you were refused service because you were a lesbian, then yes. If you were refused service under a neutral standard of good taste, then no.
- Zachriel | 04/03/2015 @ 09:33
Not sure adding that changes a question or eliminates any possible false dichotomies that might require explanation.

As I said, I don’t care. Cutting and pasting the same thing over and over does not make it relevant. Learn it, love it, live it.

If you were refused service under a neutral standard of good taste, then no.

And thus the “stupid troll” side of the question gets further confirmation. You’ll notice, ladies and gentlemen, that Zachriel is falling back on “I’ll know it when I see it.” (Potter Stewart said that in 1964, by the way, re: obscenity in pop culture. Observe the results).

Morgan, Nightfly, y’all can burrow down that rabbit hole as far as you wish (I’m sure Zachriel would be juuuuuuust fine with a Christian baker refusing to make a gay couple a cake because gay weddings are just too gauche). I’ll merely note that a full-on autistic, who can’t process nuance, would answer yes or no and leave it at that.

A halfway intelligent troll, meanwhile, would change the subject, knowing that the only response he could make would be to invoke some subjective bullshit like “a neutral standard of good taste,” and get him laughed out of the room.

A stupid troll, meanwhile, would see the two tons of humiliation bombing down the highway at him at 85 mph, and charge right at that sucker like an armadillo.

For my part, well… it’s Good Friday, and helping retards beclown themselves isn’t a very Christian thing to do. So good luck with your Thought Policing, kids. I’ll pray for ya.
- Severian | 04/03/2015 @ 10:24
Severian: falling back on “I’ll know it when I see it.”

Courts make these sorts of adjudications all the time.
- Zachriel | 04/03/2015 @ 11:09
Colorado Finds In Favor Of Bakery That Wouldn’t Decorate Anti-Gay Cake
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/colorady-bakery-did-not-discriminate-anti-gay
- Zachriel | 04/06/2015 @ 14:10
Mmyeah. That. Colorado’s basically saying that public accommodations can in fact discriminate against classes of customers just as long as the government likes the reason.
- Rich Fader | 04/14/2015 @ 14:11
I hear some tortured brain cells screaming: “But that baker didn’t refuse that anti-gay guy service, she just wouldn’t decorate the cake the way he wanted because it offended her to do so.” To which my answer is “To the best of my knowledge, none of the people who’ve prosecuted and reviled for not wanting to cater same-sex weddings on request, nor the ones who’ve been merely reviled for stating they wouldn’t want to if the hypothetical came true, have actually said they’d refuse all service to homosexuals. In fact, I think most if not all did or said otherwise. They simply didn’t want to cater same-sex weddings because it offended them to do so.” Colorado decided that one of these was an acceptable form of second-class service and the other was not. The nuance is lost on me.
- Rich Fader | 04/14/2015 @ 15:30
You will never get a liberal to see any irony or hypocrisy in the fact that Colorado has made it illegal to deny any service, no matter how petty or limited, to a liberal-supported group not mentioned in the Constitution like gays, but has made it legal to discriminate against religions protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Quite frankly, if I had a business where the gaystapo came in specifically to start a fight and push me out of business, I’d agree to their demands, as long as they were aware my policy was the profits would be donated to Focus on the Family and Exodus International, a gay recovery ministry.
- P_Ang | 04/14/2015 @ 18:33

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Thursday, April 2nd, 2015