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Welcome, ACLU

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Re: Welcome, ACLU

#971

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On the other hand... it's illegal. They shouldn't be business owners if our social contract hurts their feelings. Commerce is a regulated activity.

I am of the opinion that since these services are not limited in number that society can be more corrective by simply not patronizing providers who don't uphold its values.

In many places they are limited in number.

Further in those places, the populations that non-discrimination laws protect need protecting. If it weren't for the law their livelyhoods and lives would be in greater danger.

I'm from the middle of nowhere and so are my gay brothers, one of whom recently got married. I've experienced this. I've fought this. Don't try to feed me this invisble hand solving discrimination and hate crimes horseshit.

Libertarians...

Re: Welcome, ACLU

#972
post #903

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I think it would be more accurate to say right now that Trump is anti ACLU and everything it stands for. They're the static object in this equation imo. They're not anti-Trump the person. They're against anyone who intends to ignore/damage civil liberties and Trump the candidate was pretty explicit about his thoughts there and is following through.

> I think it would be more accurate now that Trump is anti ACLU and everything it stands for. That's less accurate. I don't think you understand what the ACLU "stands for", in context not in literal acronym. Not to say there isn't contention and opposition, but the hyperbole is not appreciated (e.g. http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/31/politics/lgbt-protections-trum... ).

The implication is that if Trump is against everything the ACLU "stands for", the protections are anti-ACLU? This is categorically inaccurate.

Re: Welcome, ACLU

#973
post #602

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Maybe a little glib, but this came up on Reddit from Twitter: > The left protest about Trump, but they're strangely silent about King Raedwald's invasion of Northumbria in AD 616[1] It's a bizarre way to argue in favor of being politically detached. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/5r6zw0/the_left...

I never supported Trump, but I can't find it in myself to join the opposition specifically because I don't understand them. When someone says "Why are you protesting Trump doing X, but not Obama doing X?" it's not a valid argument, and it's not a convincing argument, but that's not the point. If your answer is "well, when Obama did X he mitigated the negative effects by also doing Y, and did X in political climate wh…

> "Why are you protesting Trump doing X, but not Obama doing X?"

In general this question is: "You were wrong yesterday, why don't you keep on being wrong today?". The answer, of course is, "I'd rather stop being wrong as soon as possible. On this issue, I stopped being wrong today, and so today I'm trying to do better than yesterday."

Honestly, I care very little about people "protesting Trump". But I think it's great that people are protesting against misogyny, racism, militarism, fascism, anti-intellectualism etc.

Ok, so too few people were protesting extra-judicial drone strike assassinations under Obama. Lets not take that as a great reason to not protest them under Trump (or any further President). It certainly seems likely that Clinton would've had no scruples continuing to blow up Yemeni children in the name of "fighting terrorists". And hopefully that'd garner protests too.

Re: Welcome, ACLU

#974

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Refusal of service based race, sex, marital status or sexual orientation is not protected speech. It's discrimination. They gave up rights when they went into business.

On the other hand, there's a significant number of religious people in the US that believe they can't ethically support an LGBT wedding by offering services as a photographer, baker, etc. There's a very real tension between the rights of LGBT people to not be discriminated against and the rights of religious business owners to act according to their conscience. It's a snaggly issue, but hearing this kind of rhetoric…

>the rights of religious business owners to act according to their conscience

There is no such thing.

Re: Welcome, ACLU

#976
post #922

I used to be an ACLU supporter, but stopped after their main objectives switched to more of what I describe as matters of feelings , E.g., whether a man who identifies as a women can use a women's bathroom in Georgia, or whether the term man or women can ever be used at all. In my opinion most the ACLU LGBT agenda has been a useless war on words , yet it's taking on a greater and greater importance in the organizatio…

Eh, I'm gonna pick on it. "A man who identifies as a woman" is a disingenuous statement--it is leading with some sort of made up notion of what their gender should be ("a man who..."), which is a false framing in the first place. Transgender women are women. They are not men with a qualifier. Moving on: transgender bathroom rights matter. Access to public bathrooms is necessary for access to public spaces and is furt…

Thank you. Parent comment is transphobic language and it really appalls me that the moderators let this stuff stand all the time around here.

Re: Welcome, ACLU

#977

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Some day we're going to have flying cars. There, now when we actually get flying cars, no one is allowed to talk about it. You see the point there? Lots of crazy people run for president and say crazy things, that doesn't mean you panic about it right then, because the odds of them getting elected is so slim. And lots of people say crazy things to get elected, then never do those things because those things would be…

Sounds to me like you didn't accurately analyze the threat and now you are making excuses about how nobody could see it. People saw it. PS: I have followed US elections before, I am a DC native and followed them since I was a kid (now in my thirties) - I have observed differences between campaign promises and execution/governance, but this one was still pretty easy to predict based on what we knew before. The bigger…

I didn't say no one could see it, I said it's novel.

Re: Welcome, ACLU

#978
post #922

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I'm gonna pick on it. "A man who identifies as a woman" is a disingenuous statement--it is leading with some sort of made up notion of what their gender should be ("a man who..."), which is a false framing in the first place. Transgender women are women. They are not men with a qualifier. Moving on: transgender bathroom rights matter. Access to public bathrooms is necessary for access to public spaces and is furt…

Thank you. Parent comment is transphobic language and it really appalls me that the moderators let this stuff stand all the time around here.

Why was my comment transphobic? It seems the common riposte in today's political climate is to use some kind of derogative label if the other person doesn't fit your exact worldview.

Re: Welcome, ACLU

#979
post #625
post #364

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> Maybe I'm too cynical and look at these moves (AirBnB, Uber, Google, etc...) as marketing moves. Of course they're marketing moves. Corporations, especially the three you listed, do not do anything that doesn't generate profit or open the window to future profit.

Come on - this is egregiously cynical. You know this isn't really the case.

Of course it's the case. Corporations are by law amoral and only allowed to pursue profit for their shareholders. Not to mention all the people who run corporations are billionaires, and billionaires are basically all monsters (if they weren't, they wouldn't still be billionaires.)

Re: Welcome, ACLU

#980

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand... it's illegal. They shouldn't be business owners if our social contract hurts their feelings. Commerce is a regulated activity.

Should a Jewish baker be forced to bake a Swastika cake? Should a black florist be forced to make arrangements for a KKK wedding? Should a Muslim butcher be forced to prepare pork for his customers? I don't know about you but I wouldn't want to eat something that someone didn't really want to make for me. Can you trust food that was only made under threat of government action? I can't.

1) No, that's silly 2) No, the florist would not be in violation of anti-discrimination 3) No, if he didn't already sell pork he wouldn't be forced to

The last point, fair. No one said the cake had to be good :P It's just their professional reputation on the line.

The protected populations are rather limited "race, sex, marital status or sexual orientation", there may be additional protections in your jurisdiction + it has to be a product/service you already provide.

If you bake cakes, you can't refuse a cake to a gay couple; you could refuse on any number of other grounds though. If you don't sell pork, you can't be forced to. But breaking our laws because you like a book (legally speaking) is not allowed.

* FYI I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, if you're refusing service to anyone for anything other than business reasons you should double check with your counsel. You could be violating feduciary duty, etc.

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