Posted on 08/26/2014 12:01:43 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
Attention gay rights lobby:
I read of your latest conquest with great interest.
A Catholic couple in New York has been charged and fined for violating the “rights” of a gay couple by choosing not to host a gay wedding on their farm. This story has garnered little interest and virtually no media attention, which is understandable considering that everything in the world had to take a backseat while the entire nation sat enthralled for two weeks by a local police matter in a place called Ferguson. Of course, the media only considers homicide to be a “local crime story” when it involves an abortionist serial killer slaughtering hundreds of infants right in the middle of a major American city for three decades. But an officer-involved-shooting in Missouri? Now there’s something with vaster implications than 100 abortionist-involved-beheadings, right?
Right.
Well, in any case, the human rights violators here — two dangerous, unhinged lunatics named Mr. and Mrs. Gifford — made the decision to not use their own property as a staging ground for same sex nuptials. They offered, instead, to host the reception, explaining that their faith prevented them from participating in the wedding, but that they have no problem doing business with gay customers. They’ve hosted these receptions in the past, they said, and they recently opened their doors for a birthday party for the adopted daughter of a lesbian couple. They’ve employed gay staffers, as well.
They are not “anti-gay,” but they are anti-gay weddings.
The Giffords tried to explain this. They were gracious. They compromised.
But that wasn’t good enough.
It’s never good enough, is it?
Indeed, the Christian small business owners were in trouble from the start. It turns out that the sainted, tolerant lesbian lovers called the farm under false pretenses. This was a sting operation. They were recording their phone conversation with the Giffords. Instead of concentrating on their impending wedding, they decided to play a vindictive game of “gotcha” with an unsuspecting local business.
“Hey honey, I know we have a wedding to organize, but let’s take a time out and call around to various venues in the region to see if we can catch anyone expressing opinion we don’t condone!”
We all have hobbies, I guess.
So the lesbian couple, rather than simply taking their business elsewhere, took their “evidence” to the government. They cried that the “happiest time of their life” was “marred by discrimination.” They insisted that they’d suffered emotional pain and suffering.
The New York “Human Rights” Division agreed, and has now fined the Giffords for the crime of not letting lesbians get married in their house. They must also provide “sensitivity training” to their employees and put up a poster on their property that says “Discrimnation Really Hurts” with accompanying text outlining the state’s anti-free speech policies.
This, again, all because they didn’t want gay people getting married on their property.
Absurd. Sickening.
But not surprising.
Actually, this same exact thing happened recently in Minnesota, where the owners of a private lodge also turned down a gay couple’s business. That couple went whining to the jackboot fascists in their state’s “human rights” department, and were rewarded when the government forced the Christian business owners to pay for the offended homosexuals’ wedding.
They literally forced a private citizen to pay for a gay wedding.
And yet we’re still told that no gay person would ever try to impose their lifestyle on anyone else.
Meanwhile, you’ve gone after bakers, photographers, bridal shops, and florists. You’ve leveled human rights charges against t-shirt companies for not printing gay pride shirts, and you’ve chased CEOs out of their jobs for donating to “anti-gay” causes. You’ve tried to shut down entire restaurants just because its owner is a Christian, and you’ve worked to silence a certain bearded reality TV star for quoting the Bible in an interview. You’ve viciously attacked priests who follow Church law . You’ve gone so far as to attempt to censor programs on the Home and Garden Network, just because the hosts once articulated a view point you find upsetting. In one of your more ridiculous maneuvers, you called for Tony Dungy’s head all because he said he wouldn’t have drafted a mediocre third string defensive prospect who also happens to be gay.
You’ve prowled about the nation searching for even the slightest scent of an opinion that falls outside of your comfort zone, and then every time, without fail, you’ve attacked. Fines. Penalties. Death threats. Resignations. Terminations. Disgrace. Vengeance.
Sadly, few in this country have the gumption to criticize you for you vindictive, vile, inexcusable behavior, as everyone seems to fear getting branded with the Scarlet H.
In my case, though, I know the dreaded “homophobia” label is inevitable. I understand something which many of my conservative Christian compatriots do not: we will be smacked with charges of homophobia no matter what we say or how we say it, so we might as well be honest.
In fact, this is very much a part of the problem — this idea that you must be afraid of someone, or hate them, just because you’re reasonably critical of them.
Such a childish notion.
An adult who screams “hate” when his choices are scrutinized is acting just like a child who scampers off to cry in the corner when his mother tells him to finish his broccoli. Or perhaps even more like an angst-ridden teenager who listens to Avenged Sevenfold and screams that the world is conspiring against him, when really we just think he needs to grow up, get a job, and stop shopping at Hot Topic.
But you are not children, my friends, and you do not have a right to unhurt feelings. Your emotional state is not the world’s concern. It is yours and yours alone.
You also do not have a right to protection from views that might offend you. You choose to be offended. I cannot be responsible for that choice, nor can your neighbor, nor your coworker, nor your boss, nor your congressional representative. Nobody has ever died from being offended. Nobody has ever been hospitalized with symptoms related to chronic offendedness. Being offended is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it is an integral part of living in a free society.
Likewise, you do not have a right to be free from discrimination. We are all ‘discriminated against’ when another free citizen chooses not to associate with us to some degree, for whatever reason. To say that free citizens ought not have that choice is to say that we ought to have the power to force ourselves onto them. Accept this pretense and you accept a whole host of evils.
Now, I realize that modern society has invented, in many states, precisely these “rights.” But I’m saying that both the constitution and the philosophy at its foundation do not grant them.
I’m saying that when someone chooses not to host, fund, condone, or otherwise participate in a gay wedding, they are not taking anything away from you. They are not interfering in your life. They are not persecuting you. They are not stealing something from you. They are not infringing on your rights. They are simply choosing to remain uninvolved. I thought that’s what you wanted.
“Just let us love each other.” Isn’t that your battle cry?
Well the Giffords didn’t stop anyone from loving anyone. They didn’t come banging on your door demanding that you cease your activities at once. They didn’t track you down in a public place and scream obscenities at you. They didn’t do anything to you.
Yes, but their farm is a “public accommodation,” you say.
So what?
And also, not really.
It isn’t some nondescript facility that generically “accommodates” the public. It’s a private entity — one where, in this case, the Giffords also live — that sometimes enters into contracts with other private citizens for certain, specific services. The Giffords, being the party which owns the private property, get to decide the terms for these contracts. No business in the world operates on a principle that, if one customer is accommodated, all customers must be accommodated no matter what. Let me ask you: if you invite 100 people into your home for a party, does that mean you lose the right to refuse entry to the 101st person? Do you lose the legal ability to decide who enters, and for how long, and for what purpose? If you throw a party on Tuesday does that mean that you are now legally obligated to throw a party every other day, whenever I show up and demand one? If you decide to throw a toga party can I arrive and insist that we change it to a cowboys and Indians theme? If you are having a Tupperware party can I knock on your door and complain that my freedoms are under attack because I have no interest in Tupperware?
But that’s different, you say, because you are not a business. Sure, and this is what sane people used to call a “distinction without a difference.” If I live in a place and also sometimes use it to engage in commerce and enter into contracts, why, exactly, should that mean that I lose my God given, constitutional, rights and authorities over my own property?
And why, and how, do you have a right to enter my property and participate in activities on my property, just because I allowed a small selection of other human beings to do the same? How could these lesbians have a right to a wedding ceremony at that particular farm in Albany?
Here’s a better way to put it: if I open a lemonade stand, at what point in the process does the rest of society suddenly develop a right to the lemonade I’m producing? Did they have a right to the lemonade before I even made it? Was I destined in the stars to make lemonade in order to distribute it to my neighbors who, unbeknownst to me, have been entitled to my lemonade long before I ever conceived of selling it? If everyone has a right to my lemonade — meaning that I can’t refuse lemonade to anyone — does that mean that even the price I attach to it is also, in some respects, an infringement on your rights? After all, the price is a barrier to entry. So is the rather specific and finite location of my operation. If I have one lemonade stand am I now obligated to have a dozen lemonade stands, and does the lemonade have to be free? Can I shut down my lemonade stand? If you all have a right to it, wouldn’t I be infringing on that right when I close up shop for the evening? If I never opened this lemonade stand, you would probably go about your day without the lemonade, or else you’d procure your lemonade through some other means. Why can’t you do that even with my lemonade stand open, should I decide to decline to enter into a cash-for-lemonade contract with you?
And before you start throwing terms like “Jim Crow Laws” at me, please take a moment to research the matter. (Here’s a helpful Wikipedia article). You see, in the case of Jim Crow, the government mandated that business and accommodation segregate and discriminate based on race. The government didn’t say to lemonade stands “you may discriminate against blacks,” it said, “you must discriminate against blacks.” This is a very different scenario, and completely and totally unrelated to anything we’re discussing here today.
So we’re back to square one, and I’m still trying to figure out how anyone’s “human rights” could be violated just because another private citizen chose not to enter into a contract with them.
But I guess I know the answer to my question. Our understanding of “rights” has devolved into madness over time. We used to believe that you had a right to that which is fundamental to your human nature and that which is required to retain your human dignity. Therefore, you had a right to express your ideas, to practice your faith, to defend yourself and your home, to sovereignty over your home and your family, to freedom from government persecution, to justice, to a fair hearing in court, to the presumption of innocence, to self-determination, to due process, to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, to the pursuit of fulfillment and prosperity. These were our human rights. They were never perfectly realized in this country.
Now we have written over these deep and profound laws, and replaced them with a haphazard, contradictory, juvenile, idiotic, unfair, unjust, inconsistent assemblage of entitlements and privileges, all of which require the government to stomp on our actual rights for the sake of providing some entitlement to some member of some politically protected class.
It would seem, in the end, that all of our constitutional liberties have been erased or saddled with exceptions and prerequisites, leaving only one solid, undefiled, and wholly invented right: the right to unhurt feelings.
Of course, only certain people have this right, and only when their feelings are hurt by certain other people, but the penalty is swift and severe should those certain people infringe on the feelings of those other certain people.
Because that’s all that’s at stake here. When one florist in a thousand, or one wedding lodge in a hundred, or one photographer in a billion decides to conduct their business based on the tenets of their faith, or the tenets of their own personal principles, the only harm they’re causing to anyone is a damaged ego. No physical harm has been caused, no constitutional rights have been violated. Nothing has been stolen, nothing has been destroyed. The only risk — the only risk — in letting the Giffords decide who they do business with is that somewhere along the line, at some point, a couple of lesbians might get their feelings hurt. That’s it. There is not a single other tangible consequence.
What we are saying now, as a society, is that the Giffords do not have a right to hurt the feelings of homosexuals.
This is insanity. It’s disgraceful. It’s an insult. It’s an embarrassment. We are the laughing stock of the world because of inanity like this.
It also completely undermines the “gay rights” fight.
no one has a “right” to not be liked
The slippery slope of the 14th Amendment , the Civil Rights Act, liberal SCOTUS justices and the destruction of our culture my the media.
Can we find a gay liberal owned farm in NY State and demand they host a Deeply Religious Christian Wedding?
The pendullum goes both ways you know...
No shirt, no shoes, no homo sex.
The day will come that the insult shoppers will get a late night visit from Cousin Vinny who has other persuasive tools to get them to drop their BS lawsuits. Some of those tools won’t be nice. They’ll have funny names like “cement overshoes” and “sleepin’ wit’ da’ fishes”.
As mentioned in related threads, Section 1 of the 14th Amendment prohibits the states from making policies which unreasonably abridge the constitutionally enumerated rights of citizens.
And regardless that the states have never amended the Constitution to expressly protect so-called gay “rights,” as a consequence of widespread ignorance as to why the Founding States enumerated certain rights into the Constitution, we’re seeing misguided gay rights activists getting away with wrongly using constitutionally unprotected gay rights to trump constitutionally enumerated protections.
I know where they can shove their feelings.
They should be used to that location.
I really must post that on my Facebook page. That would be a good way to purge “friends”.
Close. Very close. But still not close enough. What those things are, are the first level of imposition of corporate status. And that's the elephant in the living room of America - EVERYTHING the Left does is through the imposition of corporate status. Until that's addressed, directly, nothing will change and everything will get worse.
Your rights haven't gone anywhere - they're just not being used. You have been presumed to have surrendered your rights, voluntarily, in order to to enjoy the limited indemnification of corporate status. And corporations have privileges, not rights.
So write, protest, philosophize, vote and get steamed up all you want - it doesn't matter. Nothing matters, do you understand? Because everything you are doing is presumed to be the actions of a corporation, or an incorporated individual (same diff). So it's just noise that has no effect on government policy, because you have no standing as a corporate policymaker. You're like an employee at GM. The corporate officers don't have to care what you think, and they don't, as long as they get the work out of you they want and pay you the least amount of money possible.
That's the explanation for what you see going on. That's why our country has become what it has become. The Left gets this. The Right doesn't. Therefore, America is what it now is. Period.
To borrow a parallel, that's astronomy, while typical politics is like astrology in comparison. Remember in Apollo 13, when the engineer in the back of the room of engineers (who were arguing with each other about what to do) yelled, "wait a minute, power is everything"! And he pointed out that the limitations of the batteries were absolutes, and reigned in all their ideas.
Same thing here. Presumption of corporate status is everything. Once that happens, ALL your rights are gone. The very foundation of the Constitution is REVERSED. The government becomes your CREATOR BY LAW. And you? You are allowed only the privileges that serve that government. And rights are nowhere to be found.
That's why these gleeful gays are such fools, why Stalin called such people "useful idiots." They ate treating down the only freedom that protects them literally out of spite, when history shows they are top targets for destruction under EVERY totalitarian regime.
Whether America survives or not depends on whether Americans face this fundamental truth or not. That's a fact as inescapable as predicting the survival of someone falling out of the sky, and reflecting on their use - or non-use - of their parachute. It's absolute.
May God bless America to wake up before its too late. Because at this point, I don't think anything less will work.
One of the best articles I’ve seen on this topic. Logical, and well stated. The part about the lemonade stand, by itself, should be cut and pasted and sent to every gay and lesbian filing these lawsuits.
Most of these cases, if not perhaps all, have been tried in State courts. I am unaware of anybody basing their suit on the federal Constitution. Though I could of course be wrong.
This means the lede reference to the Constitution is irrelevant. Part of our (rapidly disintegrating) federal system is that states can pass and enforce a lot of stupid laws. If they don’t directly contradict the national Constitution, or to a lesser extent disagree with national laws, they’re good to go.
The following groups feelings are also not protected, Whites, Blacks, Asian, Hispanic, Illegal Aliens of every persuasion, dogs, cats, goats, pigs...
Its just too damned bad about how anyone feels about their particular race, group or perversion, don’t tread on me.
We are supposed to be a constitutional free republic, so FEEL this... America Love It Or Leave IT!
This means the lede reference to the Constitution is irrelevant. Part of our (rapidly disintegrating) federal system is that states can pass and enforce a lot of stupid laws. If they don’t directly contradict the national Constitution, or to a lesser extent disagree with national laws, they’re good to go.
All current laws are corporate in nature - administrative statutes and regulations. As a result, State codes draw directly on federal status for their application and say so within their own statutes. Therefore establishing federal applicability is, in fact, establishing State applicability - and county and city applicability.
Sadly, your post is too true.
Your questions demonstrate perfectly why these issues should be dealt with by the free market.
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