Didn't do himself any favors on ABC this morning. Why can't politicians focus on economy and jobs instead of social issues?

Gay marriage is a done deal. Gay rights are a done deal.
Seems silly to alienate voters on something that won't change.
You see, no matter how repugnant many of us may feel it is, it's past the tipping point. Young folks overwhelmingly support it, and we won't be changing their minds. To continue to fight it just makes those candidates irrelevant, and worse, a joke to younger voters.

I'll trade you my Governor for your's

Because he was putting first things FIRST! Without Freedom (for whatever)...you don't have jobs or good social times!!

It's NOT hard to see who the Ding-Dongs are!

Any and all businesses have the right to refuse service to anyone. At least we used to have that right.
I back Pence....... it will not be as big an issue as the media makes it. Or you Ding Dong.

Same here!

GOP self destructing way before any elections...

Phil

The Right of Association was somewhere in a Document..

We did away with that in the 1860s.

I live in Indiana, and I'm on Pence's side. Dammed media has this thing all twisted around[like most liberals]. Businesses have the right to refuse service to anyone, just as YOU have the right to take your business elsewhere.


maddog

Where the bleep do you people get the idea a business is entitles to discriminate. Just try to refuse to hire someone on the basis of race, sex or religious affiliation. You will be sued into the ground and you will lose. Been that way for quite some time. The same principle applies to service. That is settled law.

A case can be made for carving out a few specific niches for religious purposes, although as an example the Catholic church may have a hard time defending a claim t has the right to refuse service to homosexuals based on it's historic employment practices. I doubt many organizations could stand up to much scrutiny.

I think it's clear who the JBTs are, and it ain't Pence supporters.

Chit my governor had the trump on stupid. The old signs stating , we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone , should mean just that

ExtremeHunter16
Why don't do some of your extreme hunting in Gary. And when your done with that.
GFY

Me, too. I feel bad that he was unprepared to answer a simple question - "Under this law, is it okay for businesses to discriminate against gay people?"

He said. "Ummmm,uhhh, welll,, you know.... Hoosiers don't discriminate".

What he should have said is:

"Our founding fathers wrote, and the states adopted, a Constitution that recognized that people of different faiths and beliefs would be free to live, work, and practice their religions without interference from the government.

Which is worse- someone denying to perform a specific service because that one specific service violates their religious beliefs, or a government which forces that person to violate their beliefs or lose their business and deprive them of their means of support? No one in the State of Indiana believes that any group should be discriminated against with a total denial of service just because they part of any class of people, whether due to race, creed, disability or sexual orientation.

In the spirit of religious tolerance and in recognition of religious liberty that was the foundation of our country, we in Indiana find it immoral and unconstitutional to force individuals to provide a specific service that violates their religious beliefs. However, the state will deal harshly with those that attempt to abuse this law to discriminate against any class of people by a complete denial of service just because they are of a specific class of people.

If we are to work together towards a more tolerant society, we must accept that tolerance is not a one-way street. We cannot force others to change their religious beliefs to conform with government or any special interest without losing the liberty hard-won by men and women 239 years ago - that we still hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". The words of our founders were clear and their intent is pure, so much so that we must now oppose the actions actions of those that would intentionally and maliciously trample on the religious liberties of the good citizens of Indiana.

No, they don't. You can't deny service to a whole class of people. People that would deny service to women, those of other races, creeds and classes has long been adjudicated. No Irish, No Jews, No Blacks, No Women, No Wops, No Japs, No Cornholers.

That being said, you can deny a specific service that would violate your religious belief. So, in other words, if a gay couple comes and asks you cater a birthday party, you should extend the same service to them as you would anyone. However, if that same couple asks you to cater their gay wedding and that event violates your religious belief, government cannot compel you to participate and you should be allowed to deny the specific service. The first example is wholesale discrimination, the second is the preservation of religious liberty. It is the specific service that causes the problem, not the class of the person. They aren't being discriminated against because they are gay. They are being denied a specific service because your religious beliefs will not allow you to participate in a sinful activity, whether that be a gay wedding, a plural wedding, DJ or bar tend at a swinger's party, or be forced to take pictures or video of any of the above.

I don't think that the idea of religious freedom is all that extreme. After all, it's in the Bill of Rights, eh?

I am not so sure there remains a way to make even that as a claim.

LCA and LCMS are branches of a single Lutheran church. One recognizes and ordains practicing homosexuals. One does not. Precisely the same situation in the Anglican (Episcopalian) church. I'd hate to guess how many Catholic marriages have been performed by practicing homosexuals with the church knowing, clearly no small number.

Presented a legal challenge and the above facts, it would be very difficult for a defendant to claim religious belief. Personal belief yes, but then you could claim personal believe prevented you from providing the service in question to liberals, conservatives, rednecks, blondes or whatever.

The courts would have to be living with Alice in wonderland to even consider getting even tangentially involved. I doubt you could craft a legal foundation based on the dogma of an outside entity and subject to the whims of current doctrine.

Really? Then how did Augusta National survive the continued attacks by the NAGS to allow women members? They only recently have agreed to do so, but by CHOICE - not gov't coercion...

How about radical Muslims? Can I, or any business, deny offering services to those??? Or would we be forced by the AIC to allow ISIS fighters to practice a gun ranges if they needed a facility??

not an expert but the right to refuse service to anyone is just that - a single person who for whatever reason makes you as the owner decide you won't serve them

however - you can't reserve the right to refuse service to a class of people and if you state that you have a policy of doing so, it won't end well for you.

now is that limited to classes of people that are protected - race, gender, religion, handicapped, etc? I don't know

if Rand Paul were to be a serious contender for president, this is a major issue he'll have to fight because he believes strongly in individual property laws (as did Goldwater which is why he voted against the civil rights act) - and he believes that if you own a property , its your right to determine who with and how you conduct your business - and the basic laws of capitalism would determine if you stay solvent.

But the federal government, using the commerce act (intended for railroads in the 1850's) says otherwise.

The law is the same that's already Federal Law!

Just being enacted by the State, much like 30 something other States have already done.

Mike

http://mail.theweeklystandard.com/b...om-restoration-act-explained_900641.html


Check out the Map on page 2

Have you considered the idea that he may not be trying to do himself "favors", but that he might be interested in standing on principles - and demonstrating such? Yes - the political push for homosexual "legitmacy" has enjoyed some successes, but principles of freedom for all seem to trump that mess.

Here's God's view of homosexuality:

1 Cor 6:9 ¶ Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders
10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Note that 'sexually immoral' includes ALL sex outside of marriage. Those involved in non-marital heterosex of various kinds can get married but there is no possible way for homosexuals to continue and stay within God's law. That's not saying that homosexuals can't be saved. They certainly can but they must repent and acknowledge that their acts are sinful.

The 1st amendment says that Congress shall pass no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. However, by requiring a business to participate in homosexual marriage in one way or another is doing exactly that. Free exercise says that a Christian can avoid such things but the government is forcing them to participate or be subject to penalties.

Obama voted to put that law on the books in 1998.

Quite common to refuse service and entry to civilians carrying firearms.

I'm not opening any thread that starts out with "my ding dong".......nope not gonna do it.

You guys do realize that this is already federal law, passed in 1993 by a broad bipartisan majority, that 30 other states have this law also on their books as a state law, and that nothing in the law allows for a company to discriminate in its services???

Who's the dimwits here anyway?

I wonder what Jesus would say about this?

I think he'd say, I wrote that!


Mike

Warning from Paul to Timothy about false teachings 1 Timothy 8:11

What is wrong with protecting the liberties of those who still believe in the "laws of nature and of nature's God" upon which this nation was founded, free and independent? And does it not utterly beg the question that sodomite marriage is a done deal? (Far from true in any event.) It has been said that the human family (humankind) comes to sight as a great and glorious river flowing through time. But that river is constituted and re-constituted in and by the sexual and generative distinction between male and female. Not only every human friendship but the very existence of every human being is dependent in the first instance upon the sexual friendship between a man and a woman. To say that in the public square this friendship and the sexual and generative distinction upon which it is based has no intrinsic moral authority is tantamount to saying that the existence of humanity itself has no intrinsic moral worth. This is naked moral relativism and nihilism, plain and simple. It is the farthest thing in the world from the idea of self-evident truths---upon the believe in an a priori objective moral order upon which this nation was founded. Actually, the nihilism and positivism of the sodomy rights movement is identical with the nihililsm and positivism which justified the worst excessed in human history, including Nazi and Stalinist genocide, to say nothing of chattel slavery. When did it become "wrong" to oppose philosophic movements and arguments that are the very negation of everything this nation, in its founding glory, supposedly stands for and which form the only rational basis on which an appeal against tryanny can be made?

Paraphrasing one of the great moral philosophers of our time, nature and reason tell us that a man is not an ox or a horse or a dog and with the very same voice, nature and reason also tell us that a man is not a woman and that the right ordering of sexual relationships is between members of the opposite sex, not the same sex. Homosexuality is wrong for the same reason chattel slavery is wrong. It is against nature. The Republican Party was founded upon opposition to what it called “the twin relics of barbarism” (chattel slavery and Abrahamic polygamy). How ironic it is that so many so called conservatives now reject the very philosophic ground upon which this nation was founded and upon which their party (the Republican Party) once appealed to oppose the establishment of both chattel slavery and polygamy as positive moral goods. It is tragic beyond words that some people see opposition to the reemeregence of moral relativism and nihilism in the public square as unworthy of opposition. But there is a very old saying (and its truth is beyond dispute): nature, expelled with a pitchfork, always returns.


Jordan

The problem with your anti-discrimination argument is that it has nothing in common with the Constitution as originally envisioned, or the 14th Amendment, as originally intended. I can assure you that when the 14th Amendment was passed not a single person in the United States understood it to outlaw discrimination against sodomites or to stand for the proposition that marriage (as intended by nature) was unconstitutional. Discrimination against someone on the basis of race is an entirely different creature from discrimination on the basis of sexual practice preference. Racial discrimination is wrong for precisely the reason that discrimination based on sexual practices is perfectly right, or certainly perfectly constitutionally acceptable. Indeed, the 14th amendment was intended to prohibit state laws which deprived blacks of their newly won freedoms. Those freedoms are grounded in the status of blacks as human beings under "the laws of nature and of nature's God." Sodomy as a positive moral good, on the other hand, is the very negation of those laws.

"Jesus regularly ate dinner with thieves and prostitutes, but you're telling me it's against your religion to bake a cake for a gay person?"

The church is one thing--a business is another. The church has every right under the constitution to limit membership to like-minded believers. Refusing to serve/sell to/hire gays is only fifty years removed from the "no coloreds" signs on southern businesses.

It wasn't right then, it isn't right now. After all, didn't some churches teach that black skin was the mark of Cain?

Yeesh.

If you actually READ ad (Key) UNDERSTOOD the law, you'd retract this post.

I like the giant step folks take when making their pervasive argument.

While I know there are people that would love to refuse all manner of service to gays (or blacks, or women, or whatever) in most cases that this is a current legal issue its because folks do not want to support the completion or consummation of a gay marriage, citing a religious issue, seeing marriage as a Holy Union and ordained by God. I don't see anyone with a "No gays allowed" sign, nor do the bakers refuse birthday cakes or whatever to gays.

But its easy to go ahead and portray them as total blanket bigots and bring in racism and sexism and every other ism just to paint the stigma even redder.


I for one don't believe in gay marriage; I'm not in a position to really refuse service (unless someone asked me to layout the house for them and their gay partner) but I don't restrict my interaction otherwise, especially since I don't give a flying [bleep] about someone being gay until they want some special treatment because they are gay. Then they receive the same special treatment I give everyone that is looking for affirmative action.


You'll have a long road to hoe trying to convince me that anyone with a business they built themselves doesn't have the right to refuse who they will work for.

Telling businesses that they have to work for all people regardless is only a stones throw from telling the people what businesses they can patronize.

In fact, putting some businesses out of business is doing just that.

Jesus didn't write that.

Agreed. Has anyone else actually read the law??? On either side of the argument???

Technically, no, He didn't write that with his own hand. But as God, he inspired Paul to write it. That this is what Jesus would have said and probably did say words to this effect, is verified by the the fact that the rest of the Apostles, who knew Jesus personally, vouched for the authenticity of Paul's teachings.

Maybe you should read what he said then you'd know. He forgave the woman caught in adultery and told her to SIN NO MORE. She repented and was saved. In the verses I quoted, it clearly says that homosexuals will NOT make it to heaven. In other places it says that they can be saved but they MUST repent.They MUST acknowledge that their acts are sinful and ask Jesus to forgive them.
Nowhere does Jesus say that he will accept their sin.

I didn't think we were talking about getting into heaven

I don't think Jesus was about avoiding those he found moral faults with - matter of fact, I think he was about reaching out to them.

Jesus ate with sinners but what was his response when he was chastised for it? He said 'I came not for the healthy but for the sick.' When he ate with sinners, more often then not, they came away from the dinner as different people. They saw their sin and repented. Jesus did NOT accept their sin but he was the expert in showing them that they needed to change.
Jesus went into those dinners with the intent of changing the people. What will happen if a Christian photographer goes to a gay wedding with the intent of showing the happy couple that they're in danger of hell if they don't go straight?

All of Christianity is about getting into heaven. Jesus came to save us, that is to get us into heaven. It was his entire purpose in dying for us.

Jesus certainly didn't avoid those with moral faults. He went to the heart of it and changed the people. He did reach out to the people but in no case did he accept the sin. When he got done, they KNEW they were sinning and they changed or perished. There was none of this 'accept me just as I am' nonsense. God's laws are God's laws. They will never change.

Looks like Indiana will tweak the law that was passed, money talks.

Pence vows to 'fix' religious freedom law, ensure 'no license to discriminate'

The current Foxnews headline is about Gov. Pence saying he intends to clarify the new law to prevent discrimination. DISCRIMINATION The only way he can do that without the liberals screaming is to get the law repealed. There is no kind of religious freedom that the liberals will accept if it goes against their agenda.

Business is all about making the green. I don't see how doing legal business with someone whose morality doesn't mirror their own is going to violate one's religious beliefs.

If a couple of guys order flower arrangements for a wedding then I'd make the damn arrangements. They're just freaking pretty flowers.Here's my card, pass it around to your buddies. I wouldn't care what they did with the flowers after they paid for them.

Same with cakes, birthday, gay wedding, whatever. I'd make the damn cake as best as I could and smile doing it. Here's my card, pass it around to your buddies.

These business people that asked for this law must not really want the green...That's ok, send them to my hypothetical shops. I'd take that business away from them everyday of the week and smile doing so.

Poor business people, that's all I've gotta say.

Dan

They have the right to be.

And you STILL don't get it. Read the effing law, it has NOTHING to do with targeting or discriminating a particular group of folks NOTHING.

Mike Pence is right on this topic. Too bad many of you can't see it and instead listen to the twisted way the liberal media wants to spin it.

Get informed people!

How about christians finding a homosexual owned T-shirt company and making them produce shirts that read "God opposes homosexuality", or "homosexuality is an abomination"!!!

That should make liberal heads spin.

I'd trade mine and throw in a couple each Senators and Congressmen to boot.

Here is what is supposedly different with the Indiana law that has people upset.

What makes Indianas Religious Freedom Law Different?

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics...-religious-freedom-law-different/388997/

This was part of your quoted source?




Its hogwash.


Actually, in hindsight, its [bleep] bullshit.

It is what it is.

SCOTUS already ruled in Burwell v Hobby Lobby that closely held corporations and businesses are reflective of the individuals that lead them - AND THEIR FAITH.

What the Indiana law does that is different than federal law is to allow religious liberty as an affirmative defense in the event that a business owner is sued for discrimination.

That's it. It doesn't even state that people can deny business on religious grounds. it merely states that judges and juries must allow a defense on the grounds of religious Liberty. They can still lose. It's not a "get out of liberal jail free" card. A judge and jury could still find for the plaintiff if no definitive religious objection is proven.

Oh, so that's the whole liberal crux.

It removes any restriction from citing the 1st Amendment.

Shear and utter bullshit...

Can the Feds make a lesbian baker bake a cake for an anti-gay rally?
Can the feds voce a Kosher deli to sell pork?
I need to know these things.

That all looks good to me and is as it should be.

Homosexuality would still be wrong even if every religion in the world said it was right. The "laws of nature" referenced in the Declaration of Independence is a reference to unassisted human reason (human rationality unassisted by divine revelation). The "laws of nature's God" referenced in the same sentence of the same document is a reference to the revealed word of the living God. Both reason and revelation are in perfect harmony in their condemndation of homosexuality. For the life of me though, I cannot understand why people always ground their argument in religious premises when those premises have no authority whatsoever to a non-believer. The far better approach, IMHO, is to appeal to the laws of nature and of nature's God---viz., reason and revelation as the ground and basis of the argument.

George Washington once expelled a soldier from the Continental Army for what he called the "detestable vice" of sodomy. In a criminal code written for the Commonwealth of Virginia Thomas Jefferson made sodomy a felony punishable by castration. In this Jefferson only followed the common law. The notion then that somehow discrimination against homosexuality is unconstitutional is positively absurd. It is an invention of liberal jurisprudence and Leftist nihilism having nothing whatsoever in common with the Constitution as understood by those who framed and ratified it.

The Preamble to the Constitution defines the ends of the Constitution as to "secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity". By definition, a blessing is something God would want you to have; something God thinks is good for you; something good in the eyes of God. Most emphatically the Founders did not consider sodomy to be a liberty constituting a "blessing". In other words, they did not consider sodomy a liberty, the right to engage in which either they or the Constitution was intended to protect.

Jordan

That whole Trinity thing...

What the packers fans seem incapable of grasping is that this law and the reason for it has nothing to do with discriminating against homosexuals.

The intent of this law and the protection businesses are seeking has solely to do with gay marriage, nothing to do with discrimination.

If one is a Christian, he or she cannot in any way condone, support or participate in a gay marriage. The reason for the gay marriage push in this country is to get the public to affirm and condone the gay lifestyle as legitimate and equal to that of a hetrosexual union.

The Gospel clearly states to hate the sin but love the sinner. Supporting gay union in any way shape or form is embracing the sin, which is diametrically opposed to Christ's teachings and the Church.

People can spin it any way they want, but that is the truth of the matter.

Excellent post!! I tried to argue that perspective with liberal coworkers (teachers-ugh) and they pretty much looked at me like I was just another bigoted homophobe. No concept of property rights or how the market would pick winners and losers. They just threw around the commerce clause.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PwrixbhUbs

That was good; informative. Who did his hair plugs?

"The amendment to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act released Thursday prohibits service providers from using the law as a legal defense for refusing to provide services, goods, facilities or accommodations. It also bars discrimination based on race, color, religion, ancestry, age, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or United States military service."


So how long until a church falls under service provider and the homosexuals demand churches allow them to get married in their buildings?

I think that's where the ultimate push is going. Camel's nose under the tent flap and all.

What exactly does the RFRA do if it does not permit a religious objection as a defense?

And what is a service provider under the laws definition?

And does the amendment apply to civil and criminal cases?