quote:

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the state of Michigan Wednesday over a 2015 law that allows private adoption agencies which receive state contracts and taxpayer funds to “use religious criteria to screen prospective foster and adoptive parents for children in the foster care system and to turn away qualified families on the basis of sexual orientation.”

They claim that allowing religious adoption agencies to screen out applicants based on sexual orientation “harms vulnerable children by denying them access to loving families that they desperately need and violates the Establishment and Equal Protection Clauses of the United States Constitution.”

The ACLU seeks declaratory and injunctive relief ensuring that “private child placing agencies that are contracted by the State and funded with tax dollars to provide adoption and foster care services to children, do not turn away same-sex couples or other potentially qualified families based on religious eligibility criteria.”

“Decisions about adoption and foster family placements should be made based on the needs of the child, not the religious beliefs of the agency,” Jay Kaplan, staff attorney at the ACLU of Michigan’s Nancy Katz and Margo Dichtemiller LGBT Project said in a statement. “There are 13,000 children in Michigan’s child welfare system. Allowing agencies to turn away loving, qualified families based on religious criteria creates fewer families for children, reducing their chances of being placed in a suitable family, or any family at all.”

However, proponents of the law, signed by Governor Rick Snyder (R), argue that religious-based adoption groups face a threat to their religious freedom and would close if they were forced to go against their beliefs and place children with same-sex couples.

Gov. Snyder cited a letter he received from Bethany Christian Services arguing that requiring religious groups to place children with gay parents requires them "to abandon their faith or abandon the children they serve."

"That is an untenable choice, one that inevitably results in fewer resources available to recruit families and place children in loving homes," they wrote.

"Focus on the Family strongly supports the religious freedom rights of all businesses and organizations, including faith-based adoption agencies," Jim Daly, president of the Christian organization, Focus on the Family commented Wednesday.

"Not only have the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby and Trinity Lutheran decisions reaffirmed long-standing principles by which government should respect the free exercise rights of organizations that seek to operate according to their deeply held beliefs, but such respect enables entities like faith-based adoption agencies to fill a critical need in society," he said.

Michigan is one of just seven states with laws exempting religious adoption providers from facilitating adoptions for same-sex couples. The others states are Alabama, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia.

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) is attempting to pass the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act of 2017, which would withhold 15 percent of federal funds for child welfare programs from states that refuse to contract with agencies for their religious beliefs.

“There is no good reason why any of these care providers should be disqualified from working with their government to serve America’s families simply because of their deeply-rooted religious beliefs,” Kelly said in a statement introducing the legislation in April.

“When it comes to helping kids and making families stronger, all service providers – religious or otherwise – should have a seat at the table,” he emphasized. “No provider should ever be forced to violate their faith in order to help give each kid a loving and caring family.”

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ORIGINAL: bounty44

that's an interesting question jv---but you want to assert that Christians should never resort to the law to defend their faith practice?

in the same vein but perhaps more important than Christian bakers:

"ACLU Sues Michigan Over Allowing Religious Adoption Organizations to Turn Away Same-Sex Couples"

quote:

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the state of Michigan Wednesday over a 2015 law that allows private adoption agencies which receive state contracts and taxpayer funds to “use religious criteria to screen prospective foster and adoptive parents for children in the foster care system and to turn away qualified families on the basis of sexual orientation.”

They claim that allowing religious adoption agencies to screen out applicants based on sexual orientation “harms vulnerable children by denying them access to loving families that they desperately need and violates the Establishment and Equal Protection Clauses of the United States Constitution.”

The ACLU seeks declaratory and injunctive relief ensuring that “private child placing agencies that are contracted by the State and funded with tax dollars to provide adoption and foster care services to children, do not turn away same-sex couples or other potentially qualified families based on religious eligibility criteria.”

“Decisions about adoption and foster family placements should be made based on the needs of the child, not the religious beliefs of the agency,” Jay Kaplan, staff attorney at the ACLU of Michigan’s Nancy Katz and Margo Dichtemiller LGBT Project said in a statement. “There are 13,000 children in Michigan’s child welfare system. Allowing agencies to turn away loving, qualified families based on religious criteria creates fewer families for children, reducing their chances of being placed in a suitable family, or any family at all.”

However, proponents of the law, signed by Governor Rick Snyder (R), argue that religious-based adoption groups face a threat to their religious freedom and would close if they were forced to go against their beliefs and place children with same-sex couples.

Gov. Snyder cited a letter he received from Bethany Christian Services arguing that requiring religious groups to place children with gay parents requires them "to abandon their faith or abandon the children they serve."

"That is an untenable choice, one that inevitably results in fewer resources available to recruit families and place children in loving homes," they wrote.

"Focus on the Family strongly supports the religious freedom rights of all businesses and organizations, including faith-based adoption agencies," Jim Daly, president of the Christian organization, Focus on the Family commented Wednesday.

"Not only have the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby and Trinity Lutheran decisions reaffirmed long-standing principles by which government should respect the free exercise rights of organizations that seek to operate according to their deeply held beliefs, but such respect enables entities like faith-based adoption agencies to fill a critical need in society," he said.

Michigan is one of just seven states with laws exempting religious adoption providers from facilitating adoptions for same-sex couples. The others states are Alabama, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia.

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) is attempting to pass the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act of 2017, which would withhold 15 percent of federal funds for child welfare programs from states that refuse to contract with agencies for their religious beliefs.

“There is no good reason why any of these care providers should be disqualified from working with their government to serve America’s families simply because of their deeply-rooted religious beliefs,” Kelly said in a statement introducing the legislation in April.

“When it comes to helping kids and making families stronger, all service providers – religious or otherwise – should have a seat at the table,” he emphasized. “No provider should ever be forced to violate their faith in order to help give each kid a loving and caring family.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/laurettabrown/2017/09/20/aclu-sues-michigan-over-allowing-religious-adoption-organizations-to-turn-away-samesex-couples-n2384335

yeah---lets pressure the church into stopping a good work. biting noses to spite faces always works.

quote:

ORIGINAL: heavyblinker

quote:

ORIGINAL: ManOeuvre

quote:

ORIGINAL: heavyblinker
Maybe not hate, but intolerance that is rooted in ignorance is objectively bad for society.
And placing free speech over anti-discrimination empowers those who DO discriminate based on hate.

It also takes away power of the state to compel one to act in a given way.
I agree that intolerance, iff rooted in ignorance is sometimes objectively bad for society. Using the power of the state to compel someone to violate their principles is one hell of a heavy hand, one I'd be hesitant to use myself except under the most dire circumstances, and anything involving a cake doesn't qualify in my book.
There is no such thing as anti-discrimination. There is only the power to force people to discriminate in a direction they're otherwise disinclined to, and at the barrel of a gun, no less.
First they came for the christian bakers, and I said nothing, because I'm neither christian nor a baker....

The state isn't forcing him to bake the cake.
He is free to refuse to do so.

What he can't do is run a business that openly practices discrimination.
So if his beliefs mean that much to him, he should simply accept that he isn't suited to running a business in this society.

It's really amazing how the right has turned this issue completely around as if the baker is the victim here.

So okay... here's a question-- why can't businesses refuse to serve black people? If I run a restaurant and I see a black person, using your logic, I should be able to tell him to leave, right? There are plenty of restaurants in town... he can go to one of those. So everyone wins-- he gets to eat somewhere that accepts his kind of people, and I get to keep my fucked up beliefs.

I can even dress it up in religion if you want... black people are the sons of Ham, therefore unclean. It's in the Bible, don't you know?

Now defend my right to refuse service to black people... otherwise we'll end up with tyranny.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ManOeuvre
You're right of course that the state isn't likely to force anyone to bake a cake. Said state will, however deprive someone of their property, and in the extreme, their liberty and life. That's what I meant by force. A similar case in Oregon in 2015 involving a lesbian couple netted a $135000 USD award against the bakers.

Private business = private problem. I think you should have the right to refuse service to black people, or white people, or any other people you'd prefer not to do business with, for any reason, or for no reason at all. This is the sort of thing that is much better dealt with by Yelp ® than the long arm of the law.

Public service = public issue. I don't have a problem, as a public servant (technically a servant of Elizabeth II) with being bound to refuse no customer.

I agree with you that it's wrong, and even objectively bad for society, to refuse service due to race or a number of other involuntary traits. I just don't think it's a good use of public funds (and by extension, force of arms) to punish someone for doing so, particularly when public opinion and the free market can exert tremendous pressure on their own.

Of course there was a time when only the avant-garde chose to regard negroes as fully human, and restaurant owners in more than a few neighbourhoods would lose only negro business for shutting them out. I sometimes wish history would pick up the pace a little myself, but I can't shake the idea that one cannot be compelled to perform a moral act, only punished for an immoral one, as the compulsion itself negates the necessary agency for a moral decision.

Aside from anything else, using force (which is all the state can do) to decide the matter one way or the other is not an argument. A man compelled is not a man convinced. Who would you have bake you a cake?

I think the list of things that are objectively bad for society is rather long, and bound to grow; I have no doubt that my grandchildren will have certain facts in hand much better than we do with respect to, say, the nutritional merits of certain foods, or the proven negative effects of smartphones, etc. I just hope that it will be voluntary freedom of (dis)association, social ostracism and market forces that push people away from big macs, sodas and tumblr feeds, and not laws banning their sale. I really hope that the list of things one can be punished for doesn't grow at nearly the same rate.

Hobbes' Leviathan doesn't come cheap; best to keep it small and spend it wisely.

quote:

Now defend my right to refuse service to black people... otherwise we'll end up with tyranny.

quote:

ORIGINAL: heavyblinker

How does the nature of homosexuality have any bearing on whether or not it's okay to discriminate against homosexuals?
And homosexuality isn't like pedophilia FFS... that argument is about as valid as when radical feminists claim that all heterosexual sex is rape.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Greta75

It boils down to, do we want to respect religious beliefs or not?

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

quote:

ORIGINAL: Greta75

It boils down to, do we want to respect religious beliefs or not?

greta, since godlessness is a large proponent of leftism, right there is a partial answer.

very much at the core of the problem is a mixture of militant homosexuality and virulent anti-Christianity.

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

quote:

ORIGINAL: Greta75

It boils down to, do we want to respect religious beliefs or not?

greta, since godlessness is a large proponent of leftism, right there is a partial answer.

very much at the core of the problem is a mixture of militant homosexuality and virulent anti-Christianity.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucylastic

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

you might enjoy this:

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/09/14/liberals-surrender-to-the-awesome-power-of-conservative-sexiness-n2380807

The best birth control out there is a MAGA hat or a Trump Tshirt.

quote:

ORIGINAL: heavyblinker

quote:

ORIGINAL: Made2Obey

quote:

ORIGINAL: heavyblinker
No you just creep me out... as in, when I read your bullshit, it makes me wonder what sorts of horrible things you could be capable of.

If you truly believe that then it would seem to be prudent not to poke the beast with the stick of argument.

Probably true.
I'm actually already pretty embarrassed by how horrible this thread is, but it's not like the discussion is interesting so flame wars are pretty much unavoidable.

Anyways, onto the blocklist he goes.

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucylastic

quote:

ORIGINAL: tamaka


Great. I expect to never hear a reply from you to me again.

You can ensure it never happens by putting him on hide, quit fucking whining and just do it
bloody drama llamas

Try to mind your own fucking business for once in your life.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucylastic

whoosh.

quote:

ORIGINAL: heavyblinker

The free market only works to punish wrongdoing so long as the masses are just, but the masses are not naturally just.
This is why we have laws.

https://www.justice.gov/crt/federal-protections-against-national-origin-discrimination-1

People can frown on racism today and demand it tomorrow.
Laws remind us not to fall into barbarism... even if some people don't understand why barbarism is wrong.

And it isn't about the cake... it has never been about the cake.