Posted on 02/27/2014 12:52:33 PM PST by Talisker
I believe I have developed a simple, yet effective workaround to the new powers our government has handed homosexuals - specifically, the ability to force people to do labor against their religious beliefs (I never in a million years thought I would write such a sentence in America).
The solution is to identify the specific kind of issues over which homosexuals are likely to invoke their involuntary servitude powers, and separate those issues into a private Christian club.
An example: Christian bakeries would now put up a sign stating that they no longer make wedding cakes. Any wedding cakes, for anybody. They make all sorts of other cakes, including birthday cakes, but not wedding cakes - even for Christians.
Then, they would advertise a separate, private business: the Christian Wedding Cake Club. It would take a nominal fee to join ( say, five bucks), and also require the person to be a member in good standing of an affiliated Christian Church - one that has already been vetted and accepted into the club. Then, for those members only, the bakery would make and sell Christian wedding cakes.
There would be no hiding here - the purpose of the club would specifically be to make wedding cakes only for certain people affiliated with certain churces of a certain religious tradition. But those people would all have to join the club to get their cakes. And all of the members of the church would not have to join, and people who wanted a wedding cake would not have to join until they wanted their special wedding cake.
This is completely legal, and takes very little time to set up. All a Christian baker would have to do is call around to various pastors and confirm the “type” of Christianity they practice, let them know what the club is, and exchange confirmation letters. The actual club itself would be informal and non-profit.
That’s it. And it would also help with advertising, and there could be special discounts and sales at times for members of the club - whatever. And it can be done with any type of business, and any number of churches, and can even be run from the Web.
The principle here is that the bakery would be serving the needs of the club - and the club would need wedding cakes for its duly admitted Christian members. That way, nothing associated with wedding cakes would have anything to do with being “open to the public,” nor the general sales of the bakery.
In the Sherlock Holmes story “The Blue Carbuncle,” one of the characters puts up a coin every week at his local pub so that come Christmas, he can afford a goose. The pub runs a “goose club” for this purpose. You cannot come into the pub and buy a goose unless you are a member of the goose club. This is the same idea.
To get rid of this method, the government would have to get rid of private clubs altogether. I’m not saying they won’t try, since homosexuality now seems to be superior to the entirety of the Constitution. Nevertheless, until then, this is a clear, safe and easy way to refuse to comply with this new totalitarianism while staying completely legal.
And, of course, if a homosexual is a member in good standing in one of the affiliated Christian churches, they too can have a wedding cake made for them. So it’s all perfectly fair.
The Judges and the lawyer arguing the issue have it all wrong - its not a civil-rights issue. When one asks the state for permission and a license to do something its a privilege not a right. One does not ask permission of the state and get a license to exercise a right. A marriage license falls into the same genre as drivers licenses, businesses licenses etc. A marriage license can be issued and revoked like any other privilege.
Accordingly, since it never was a rights’ issue the 14th does not apply any more then it does with driver’s licenses.
The 1st Amendment religious freedom argument is obvously lost on you. You're not even up to speed on the actual issues!
What you advocate is either throwing away personal religious principles, or living a life of lying - and you're recommending these things with exasperated trivialization and contempt. On a conservative website? Really?
Approving of customers is done every day, in every way. You think you should be given a job just because you show up? Or does a business have a right to approve of you? You think just because someone is a potential customer, they are beyond any approval requirement from any privately-owned business?
So to you, commerce is God? Open a business, and that's it - you have to do whatever anyone wants? And you cannot decide on the limits of your own business, your own work, or live by your own religious principles?
You're not even American. I don't know what you are.
Hear, hear.
“Or if you really really don’t want to, lie.”
There’s good advice for folks standing on religious principles.
Sorry, I rarely do this, but you are an idiot.
Look, the idea is not to stop homosexuals from buying wedding cakes. The idea is to prevent homosexuals from being able to force people to make them wedding cakes against their religious beliefs. The difference is gigantic.
Making cakes is not against anyone’s religious beliefs. For example, I could make a cake out of seafood, with whipped cream and beef frosting. I could make such a cake. I just could not eat it myself because it wouldn’t be kosher.
Traditional religious people are stunned and sad that society has now accepted homosexuality as normal and also legitimized weddings for homosexual couples. It is a shock. People don’t like it and it isn’t something you can get used to, like painting a red building blue.
However, the Christian baker who makes cakes every day may have, just yesterday, sold a birthday cake to a man who cheats his business partner. This morning he may have sold a cupcake to a woman who poisoned her husband. He has sold every cake he’s made in the last 13 years to a sinner. Many of them unrepentant and sinning further. He’s sold to Jews, Muslims, atheists, and maybe a satanist* or two.
We can’t be choosing which sins stop us from business intercourse.
* so funny: above, I typed satanist on my ipad and apple corrected it to statist. Kinda the same thing! :)
No, we don't reach voters because RINOs like YOU misrepresent the message - on purpose, specifically in order to make it seem that we are pushing our beliefs on others, when exactly the opposite is true.
The bakers would "sell cakes" to homosexuals. They just drew the line at WEDDING cakes, because a WEDDING cake is a RELIGIOUS thing to them. That is the SINGLE issue here.
And, of course, there's nothing religious about seating people at restaurants, fixing cars, or renting apartments - you add all those in to confuse the issue and make this thing sound like the discrimination blacks received in the South. You did that on purpose, as a lie, in order to confuse the very people you claim to not want to confuse.
And your alternative is pure Leftism - surrender, or get out of business altogether.
Go back to DU.
What you advocate is either throwing away personal religious principles, or living a life of lying - and you’re recommending these things with exasperated trivialization and contempt. On a conservative website? Really?
Approving of customers is done every day, in every way.
Seriously? Jesus didn’t only work with the righteous.
It is not in keeping with religious principles to only work for perfect people.
Not at all. But I also understand practicality. If you’re a business open to the public some of your customers WILL be gay, period. Even at the lowest estimates of their population any kind of successful business is looking at at least a couple of gay customers every day. If you don’t want to deal with them don’t have a business open to the public. You’re free to have your religion all you want, but you need to deal with certain meathook realities too.
Not advocating throwing away any principle. There is no principle that says you have to agree with your customers’ lifestyle. I’m recommending not looking for hassles in this world. If you’re in the wedding cake business you’ve been dealing with gays constantly anyway, just which team did you think the male wedding planners played for? Now all of a sudden it’s a problem if the wedding planners get married, really? How were you handling atheists getting married? They’re violating your rules just as much as the gays.
Smart businesses don’t approve or disapprove of their customers. Businesses exist to make money, you want to get in the personal approval business start a church. Who said anything about getting a job just because you show up? That’s you adding stupid content to make a strawman. Customers != prospective employees.
I don’t have commerce as God, as have commerce as the point of business. You start a business to make money, period. If the goal is not making money start something else.
I’m a lot more American than you, for one thing I actually know that the first amendment has nothing to do with this situation.
The issue is in the creation of private clubs made for specific purposes. This is done all the time. Even in the corporate world, you can have a parent company with all sorts of associated companies that do specific things. And just because someone deals with one associated company, doesn’t mean they can deal with any other associated company.
Well, the same thing can be done with clubs. Yes, there are laws about what a club is and isn’t. Mainly the club has to stick to its proclaimed purpose, and not be used as a cover for something else. That’s why being up front abot this is so important. As for the money, again, if the money is for the stated purpose, everything is fine.
And this shouldn’t affect competition at all - the same people are buying the same things for the same purposes in the same marketplace. Some are doing it through clubs, some are not. The public is free to choose what they want to do.
This is nothing but a buyer’s club that serves certain churches. You don’t have to join a church or believe a certain religion to “get in.” It’s the reverse of that. If you’re alread IN these churches, then you can make use of the club.
Ad hominem attacks on me means you don’t have much of an argument.
I am not a RINO. Not a leftist. Not from DU. Not even a liar. Four attacks in a short post, bravissimo.
I thought the proposed law was that businesses couldn’t discriminate due to sexual orientation. So I threw the businesses in where you would see that the people might be gay. I wasn’t lying.
And, once more, baking cakes is NOT a religious thing.
And you are supposed to gently draw in new Christians by good deeds. Do like In and Out does, in your bakery: put the bible verse numbers you wish your customers to read onto your paper goods and cake boxes. Harmless advocacy.
Nicely said.
They’re not actually standing on religious principles. If they were standing on religious principles they’d remember they’re supposed to love the sinner and not get their panties in a bunch because the cake is going to be eaten during a ceremony they don’t approve of.
Any idiots here are the ones thinking refusing to bake a cake is religious principle. It’s grandstanding idiocy.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with only working for perfect people.
This has to do with protecting people’s RIGHT to live THEIR religion as THEY SEE FIT.
Are you going to argue that a Muslim should serve pork at their restaurant? Are you going to tell them thay they are not being relistic, or approoriate as Muslims?
Yet you feel perfectly able to tell Christians the limits and standards of Christianity.
You should write your own Bible - clear up this mess. The Word According to Yaelle. Then Christians will know what to do, and won’t have to ive their own lives in their own way. Hell, we could get rid of the entire religious freedom part of the 1st Amendment. After all, who needs it, when we have YOU to tell everyone what to do?
These things will have to be taken head on,
because any “workaround” that you propose will be stomped on by the homos and the State.
You have to remember that their goal is the criminalization of Christianity and respond appropriately.
The “flaw” is they prefer you take a bulldozer approach, and charge into the withering fire chin-first while they sit safely by. I’m sorry folks, but if you have to support a family and business with your commerce, then you do what you have to do. I like this suggestion you have, so hang in there. I predict a lot of private baking clubs to come. Private photography clubs as well.
Any idiots here are the ones thinking refusing to bake a cake is religious principle. It’s grandstanding idiocy.
Who are you to decide what THEIR religious principles should be?
You should hook up with Yalle - you both have this God thing nailed down. You need to go clean up the world and let everyone know what Christianity really is. That way nobody would need laws that protect THEIR religious freedom, because they'd have YOUR word to guide them. And relly, who needs anything else, right?
Oh, and please tell the Muslims where they are making mistakes, too. I'd really enjoy seeing that.
You have to remember that their goal is the criminalization of Christianity and respond appropriately.
Ah but you see, I AM taking it head-on.
These rulings against Christians are being made against their privately owned CORPORATIONS. What I am doing is working with how corporate law actually operates. No one else is doing that. When these bakers argue religious freedom, the judge is ruling that a corporation has no religious freedom. Did you know that? Because that's what's really going on.
That's why I came up with this solution - because it deals with what is really going on.
T: this has to do with protecting people’s RIGHT to live THEIR religion as THEY SEE FIT.
Are you going to argue that a Muslim should serve pork at their restaurant? Are you going to tell them thay they are not being relistic, or approoriate as Muslims?
Y: Jews who own traditional Jewish delis (obviously not kosher delis) serve pork - there are blt sandwiches, bacon, etc. Do you want to only sell to people who are like you, or do you want everyone to eat at your place?
T: Yet you feel perfectly able to tell Christians the limits and standards of Christianity.
Y: Nope, never did I feel or say that.
This is about commerce and selling to the general public. Wedding cakes are cakes. They are not religious. I don’t have to know much about Christianity to know that wedding cakes are not religious, and also to know that sinners buy them. Sinners of all kinds.
Some people can’t afford to take these things “head-on.” Not everybody can afford white-shoe lawyers, and the foundations can’t take all the cases. Give the little guy a break.
Yes, the heathens have to be taken head-on, but the small businessmen have to take a more pragmatic approach when they can. They just don’t have the financial resources. God love ‘em.
Stop yelling at us. We aren’t rewriting any Bible. Quote scripture, please, to support your thinking that baking a cake, or making any food, for imperfect people is against scripture.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.