Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Apr 1, 2015 -> 02:51 PM) Of course its hypocritical. But Im an opportunist, I dont get many chances to call out China/Qatar etc (and quite frankly Im not sure that they even care what I think), but when I see something that looks like bigotry, I have no problem calling people on it. I mean deep down this just seems like tyranny of the majority. That's fine for you, but when you're a company trying to gain some positive publicity it seems completely disingenuous. Now that I think about it, it's also interesting that people believe Hobby Lobby was such a terrible decision because corporations can't hold religious beliefs, they're just legal entities. Yet corporations can have "beliefs" about social issues like this. What's the difference?

Texas scout guy reports Shaka to Texas on a 5 year deal.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Apr 1, 2015 -> 12:05 PM) I seriously thought this was an April Fools joke. Maybe it's because I saw it today. I did too.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Apr 1, 2015 -> 02:24 PM) So, doing business with Indiana means you hate gays, but baking a cake for a gay wedding means nothing? Just as you are implying guilt by association, so are the bakers etc. who don't want to do business with gay weddings and be guilty of supporting it by association. Well if you buy gas you're supporting beheadings of terrorists so...the logic makes sense. Also, everyone one of you on a computer/phone hate children and the labor they're forced into. Tsk, tsk. I'm getting a kick out of all these huge companies condemning the law while at the same time continuing to do business with countries in the middle east, china, etc. Not allowing someone to refuse to work at a gay wedding totally unacceptable, pull the plug. Continue doing business in China with their human rights violations, meh. Talk about PR opportunities.

I think the response so far just sort of proves my point about where we're at in society these days about acceptable/not acceptable behavior...

I guess this can go in the tech thread: Amazon Dash: https://www.amazon.com/oc/dash-button/ref=b...pf_rd_i=desktop Get a little button, put it in one of the rooms of your house, press it when stock of an item gets low and it'll buy it automatically from Amazon. Seems like a cool idea until you remember that buying a product on your phone takes approx 20 seconds these days.

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Mar 31, 2015 -> 11:02 AM) Respectfully, you are completely wrong about this. The ADA has employment and public accommodation provisions, and alcoholics are protected under both. How in the world does it not apply to "private business owners?" And the people who sue for being drunk at work lose those cases on summary judgment. The law is pretty clear. Some of your posts in this thread are really inaccurate as a matter of law; none more than this one. The requirement is 15 or more employees before the ADA kicks in. Bakers and photographs don't normally employ that many people. I should have clarified. But I think there is a difference between accommodation and discrimination on service, i.e., not selling you a beer. I might be wrong on that, I'd have to do some research. Seems to me those are two different questions: you can make the appropriate accommodations for disabled people to be in your business and be in compliance with the ADA. But is not serving someone with a disability like alcoholism a violation of the ADA? edit: I have a hard time believing the law says that a bartender HAS to serve an alcoholic. That's forcing a private individual to, in essence, inflict harm on a person. What else have I said that's wrong?

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Mar 31, 2015 -> 10:34 AM) This is false. Alcoholism is a protected disability. It is only legal to not serve drunks. Under the ADA, with mixed success it seems (how dumb is it that people sue for losing their job while operating cars while drunk during work?) Either way, that doesn't apply to private business owners and i'm not sure it would apply to serve/not serve situations. Does an employer have to provide accommodations for an alcoholic? Potentially yes. Does a university operated beer stand have to serve an alcoholic? I don't think so.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Mar 30, 2015 -> 11:21 PM) See that big, bold word there? While you are right, you CAN be, it just doesn't happen. Everyone has a hand out for something. If you are pro environment, then the government will fund focus groups, start a committee, fund a boatload of studies, create a new agency with a huge budget to watch over the environment, and make sure that the budget never shrinks. If I were in office i'd have no problem enacted legislation to curb emissions, prevent dumping into public water ways, making liability easier to prove, upping fines, etc. None of that costs money. I'm not saying there would be zero cost, but you can still be fiscally conservative about it. Fiscal conservative doesn't mean spend $0, it means spend money on necessities and let the market/private sector take care of the rest.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 31, 2015 -> 09:30 AM) Is the same baker that is refusing gay weddings, making cakes for divorcees second weddings? If yes, then there is 100% clarity in my mind that they are discriminating. Let's assume they would/they do refuse to serve divorcees AND gay people. In some states, despite being consistent, they'd still be in violation of the law.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 31, 2015 -> 09:07 AM) Here is my problem with this whole idea. If we are really to accept that this is based on biblical Christianity somehow, and by someone's warped interpretations of the bible, you as a Christian can't serve anyone who is living a life of sin, I have news for you... Your business is going to suck, because your only potential customer is Jesus Christ himself. I agree they're picking and choosing the sin, but it's legal to not serve alcoholics, adulterers, thieves, etc. etc. In some states, it's illegal to not serve someone who is gay.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Mar 30, 2015 -> 03:05 PM) In this country they sure as hell do. I literally just gave you two examples that cost next to nothing. You can be pro-environment without also demanding the government pay for a bunch of crap. Not to mention, being a fiscal conservative doesn't mean you don't want to spend ANY money on social issues. You just don't want to spend as much. And you sure as hell don't want to raise taxes to do it.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Mar 30, 2015 -> 03:02 PM) Way to cherry pick... Fine, I retract the road statement -- the rest stands. AND the rest stands completely counter to a fiscal conservative. Not all social issues require money...

What? That's crap. You can be a blend of both. You can not care about and/or support gay marriage or abortion rights and still not want the government to keep raising your taxes or spend money on needless things.

Well, agree to disagree I guess. Edit: i'm curious, why does the content matter? Let's say it's not objectionable (e.g. porn) and it's not threatening, but it's still anti-gay. A bunch of "gay marriage is a sin" type stuff. Even then?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 30, 2015 -> 02:27 PM) The best answer is that we keep public accommodation laws because there's no reason to get rid of them and lots of historical reasons to keep them. So given my example of the gay copy shop owners, you think it's right and just that they have to serve Christians that openly hate them and work to deny them equal treatment, or be faced with a lawsuit?

Again, I said in a perfect world. And I acknowledged that we might not be there yet. But I don't think we'll ever go back to that situation, and if a restaurant owner refused to serve blacks, the response would be massive. You can't even tell a racist joke these days without a massive response and boycott. What's a better outcome there: the restaurant goes out of business because of the backlash, or they get sued, pay some damages, and stay open for business? Other than some nutjob KKK-types, who discriminate with a law or without a law, no one is supporting that owner.

That's me, basically, and the problem is all of the candidates I would be interested in make themselves look like dumbasses just to get out of the primary.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2015 -> 01:26 PM) Exactly why there should be extra safeguards, like not allowing them on the streets, requiring trigger locks, and not having a single pilot alone in the cabin. The difference being that those "safeguards" may or may not (probably not) drop the murder rate, whereas adding a 2nd person in the cockpit WILL prevent some lunatic pilot locking the door and crashing a plane.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2015 -> 01:25 PM) If I read all the "negatives" correctly, you think the government has a compelling reason to prevent discrimination against black people by private businesses, but the government shouldn't do the same thing for homosexuals? Based on case law and precedent, yes.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 30, 2015 -> 01:06 PM) But why? What good does that do for society? Which part? edit: if you're referring to letting people discriminate, it's because I don't think people should be required to serve anyone they don't want to. Society is going to dictate what kind of discrimination is acceptable (e.g., not serving a black person because they're black), while other types of discrimination are going to be ok (e.g., a gay store owner serving a known Christian zealot hell bent on going after gay people). To me that's a better system than laws that dictate only certain people are afforded protections while others aren't. I asked Balta about who else should be added to the list of protected classes, at what point do we draw the line? Why not just not have the line when there aren't fears of a segregated society anymore.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2015 -> 10:48 AM) I'm ok with reasonable safeguards which clearly did not happen in this case - that's a clear failure of imagination on the part of the airlines and manufacturers. I'd probably be ok with reasonable safeguards on firearms as well. But since every time I try to suggest some either that's impossible or its an undue burden on this important group, I wind up saying f*** it. If my only 2 options are idiots who think they're rambo walking down the street with concealed weapons or banning them, then get rid of them all. But that's bulls***, at least with the posters here, because we have all generally agreed to a bevy of additional requirements including registration, training, further penalties on sellers, etc. and yet it's still not enough. And those aren't the only options. Currently there are a number of laws on who can have a gun, how it can be used, when it can be used, etc. Just because criminals don't follow the law doesn't mean they don't exist.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2015 -> 12:11 PM) If I'm a white southern kitchen owner and I don't want to serve African Americans at my counter, can I put up a "Whites Only" sign? If a group of black people sit down there and I refuse to serve them, doesn't the owner have the right to remove them for harming the business? This has something of an historical precedent. I still say, in 2015, yes. Let them do that and see what the response is. But regardless, keeping it to the law in question, I have a hard time believing that anyone will be able to claim that serving black folks substantially burdens their religious practice AND that the government doesn't have a compelling reason to prevent that sort of discrimination given existing federal law and precedent on discrimination based on race, the second key requirement to the law.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2015 -> 10:49 AM) The Indiana based Church of Cannabis has now been incorporated and its sincerely held belief is that their religion has the right to use marijuana. Drug cases have failed at the federal level. This law does nothing to change that. Whether they can win at the state level I guess is a question for their courts, but technically they'd still be in violation of federal law.

QUOTE (Tex @ Mar 30, 2015 -> 09:53 AM) Setting aside the obvious baiting aspect, this is a very good question. I believe one of the categories we should treat as a distinct group are those jobs where you are responsible for other people's lives. I am not certain the connection between guns and depression is. The idea that in both situations someone can cause the death of someone else. 99% of the time it doesn't happen, but 1% of the time it does. Balta likes to point to the 1% with guns and say "see look how dangerous, ban them all!" Yet with planes and depression he's willing to give a pass apparently because it doesn't happen that often. The logic in the reaction isn't consistent.