[Georgelemental]

Your theory doesn't explain this part, though (emphasis mine):

> It is no longer enough for conservative Christians to tolerate same-sex marriage—now they must be legally required to bake cakes and design web pages for the weddings. It is no longer enough to protect gay students from harassment—now these students must have access in elementary school libraries to how-to manuals for anal sex. Public schools must encourage prepubescent students to explore the many possible gender identities without their parents’ knowledge. Biological males self-identifying as females must be allowed to compete against females in sports. These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement. But however much the backlash has hurt the original cause, the controversies keep activists in business.

[Martinussen]

That entire paragraph is mostly a strawman, or, if you're feeling charitable, coming from an extremely surface-level awareness of the actual issues they're talking about.

[red-iron-pine]

"Anything I don't agree with is a strawman"

[Martinussen]

Not at all, but I would absolutely argue pretty much all instances of "List of single-sentence heavily polarised and editorialised talking points" are. You're not looking to engage in a good-faith discussion by throwing out a pile of points and hoping nobody puts in the effort to actually engage with every single one - look at the sibling thread to my comment and the disproportionate amount of effort it takes to respond without just being pulled aside to debate the minutiae of specific events.

Of course, that is all assuming they actually have some level of familiarity with what the topic being discussed and the talking points they are using. They could simply be uninformed, but trying to engage in rhetoric before learning more at that point doesn't seem like it would be in good faith either way.

(That is not to say that one should never respond to an argument that takes way more rigor than throwing it out there took, but it's definitely not "should always" either :p.)

[anal_reactor]

Not necessarily.

I can recall that a few years back I was browsing some right-wing forum and someone wrote "they will force you to have sex with them" which seemed absolutely ridiculous.

Then I was browsing a left-wing forum and the concensus was "refusing to date black people is racism and therefore the worst thing you can possibly do, refusing to date transsexuals is kinda allowed but we'd rather see you do".

I had a "shit, they were right" moment.

[TheNewsIsHere]

I submit that the idea that it’s racist at face value not to date a Black person is ridiculous. If we indulge that type of view with any sort of seriousness, we’re just lending undue legitimacy to that idea.

It is no more or less ridiculous than me being sexist because I am not interested in women. I’m not sexist. I’m just not into women. Reasonable people can identify the difference. We shouldn’t mistake crazy views for sane ones.

[anal_reactor]

The argument goes like this: if a sizeable part of the society refuses to date black people, then black people are in a disadvantaged position.

> It is no more or less ridiculous than me being sexist because I am not interested in women

I tried saying this but "race is race and gender is gender, two totally different things".

[beej71]

Who is forcing you to date trans people? No one. They were not right. C'mon.

[TulliusCicero]

> It is no longer enough for conservative Christians to tolerate same-sex marriage—now they must be legally required to bake cakes and design web pages for the weddings.

This is a bit of a gray area because of religious freedom, but generally businesses open to the general public aren't allowed to discriminate against protected classes, because that used to go rather poorly for society.

If a business refuses to bake a cake for black people's weddings, is that okay?

> It is no longer enough to protect gay students from harassment—now these students must have access in elementary school libraries to how-to manuals for anal sex.

This sounds like a bit of an exaggeration of what's going on, but I think normalizing talking about sex would be a huge boon for education. Treating it like this taboo mysterious thing is worse than being matter of fact about how it works. Sex is a fact of life, just like many other things taught at school.

> Public schools must encourage prepubescent students to explore the many possible gender identities without their parents’ knowledge.

And? Is it bad to teach things to kids now? Those other gender identities are out there, why would it be wrong to teach about?

> Biological males self-identifying as females must be allowed to compete against females in sports.

This one's iffier, I think it should come down to whatever the science says about what's a substantial advantage or not, ideally per-sport (and I'm sure some sports will have women with an advantage over men).

> These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement.

[Citation needed] here for most of this. You really think requiring businesses to serve gay people is unpopular with...gay people?

[Georgelemental]

> If a business refuses to bake a cake for black people's weddings, is that okay?

The critical distinction here is that your sexual orientation does force you to marry someone of a particular sex. It is perfectly possible for a homosexual (or bisexual) individual to marry someone of the opposite sex, and it is perfectly possible for a heterosexual to marry someone of the same sex. Masterpiece Cakeshop and 303 Creative's owners (to reference the highest-profile cases) refused to service weddings because the prospective spouses were of the same sex, not because they were homosexual. (In contrast, if a black person gets married, that will always be a "black person's wedding", so refusing to service it on that basis would be racially discriminatory.)

[wtfwhateven]

>The critical distinction here is that your sexual orientation does force you to marry someone of a particular sex.

>It is perfectly possible for a homosexual (or bisexual) individual to marry someone of the opposite sex, and it is perfectly possible for a heterosexual to marry someone of the same sex.

These seem contradictory? I guess you meant to say "doesn't force"

>In contrast, if a black person gets married, that will always be a "black person's wedding", so refusing to service it on that basis would be racially discriminatory.

Using your logic it would be perfectly fine for someone to refuse to bake a cake for a mixed race couple. Nobody's forcing them to marry someone of another race right? So discriminating against them is fine because... reasons?

Regardless the "distinction" you keep insisting on is wholly useless and meaningless for any reasonable person, all it does is attempt to justify the behavior of someone who believes Leviticus 20:13 is correct (the person uses the Bible to justify their actions so it's safe to assume they believe in the entirety of the bible including Leviticus 20:13).

[Georgelemental]

> I guess you meant to say "doesn't force"

Yes, sorry.

> It would be perfectly fine for someone to refuse to bake a cake for a mixed race couple.

It would be legal to refuse to bake a cake celebrating an interracial marriage. Not "fine"—it would be morally wrong, and if an establishment did this I would boycott them for it—but it would be constitutionally protected speech.

[beej71]

> It would be legal to refuse to bake a cake celebrating an interracial marriage.

Is this true? It seems like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would apply. (That law protects against racial discrimination, but doesn't protect the LGBTQ folks.)

[TulliusCicero]

This is the level of obtuseness we're talking about here, that's necessary to defend this sort of reasoning:

> Well, a straight dude technically could marry a guy! It could happen!

[wtfwhateven]

I think it's unfortunate that the people who push violent extremist ideologies don't receive more pushback. These are people that believe in Leviticus 20:13. Some may say they reject Leviticus 20:13 but that must also mean they reject the alleged infallibility of the bible. Many Christians do not reject Leviticus 20:13 and other horrid passages. The "religious freedom" angle is wholly insincere and just an attempt to claw back some of the power they've lost. "Religious freedom" is sadly synonymous with "make it legal to discriminate against people again". This is also demonstrated by Christians trying to make exceptions in "religious freedom" to shut down groups they don't agree with. They tend go silent if you mention Leviticus 20:13 because they agree with Leviticus 20:13, they just don't want to reject it because of their "beliefs", and they don't want to tell you they agree with it because it makes them look bad.

Many of the replies in this thread that advocate for this ideology are attempting to make distinctions that don't exist (or are meaningless) to justify discrimination. Everything they've said can be applied to interracial marriage too but if you tell them that they go silent because they know they need to eliminate gay marriage first before they go after interracial marriage.

It's extremely gross and deceitful behaviour. I would prefer these people be sincere and just say they dislike gay people instead of incoherent and nonsensical arguments they make as a facade to hide their true intentions.

All of this is an act to move society back in their favour. "Give them an inch and they'll take a mile"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Mountain_Mandate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

They, sadly, want a theocracy. They want to discriminate against LGBT+ people in the workplace. They want to refuse service to anyone they don't like the look of. They want to use Leviticus 20:13 again without repurcussions. They won't tell you to that because of optics. But Leviticus 20:13 exists in the bible, the book they use as a moral compass, the book they believe morality itself is codeified.

It's extremely difficult for any reasonable person to give any of this an ounce of good faith. It's literally arguing against people who want gay people slaughtered. There's not much discussion to have with such extremists.

It's useful to remember that Hanlon's razor is a joke that came from a joke book.

Project 2025 is what they want to lay the groundwork for all this horridness.

Religious extremism is abhorrent.

[zzo38computer]

> This is a bit of a gray area because of religious freedom, but generally businesses open to the general public aren't allowed to discriminate against protected classes, because that used to go rather poorly for society.

It should not have to do with religion. It would be if it is a custom order; custom orders can potentially be anything. If they refuse a custom order, they can lose money and they can get a bad reputation, but that isn't to be disallowed, I think (unless they are going against what they have advertised).

They should not be allowed to refuse to serve black people, or white people, or gay people, or transgender people, or tall people, or bilingual people, etc, regardless of what is being ordered (including custom orders), and regardless of their personal opinions of such a thing; they should serve them anyways. (They may refuse to serve foreigners who do not have the correct money; if that is the case, then the customer will have to exchange their money elsewhere first, and then this business will be able to serve them.)

However, they may refuse to write certain words on the cake (regardless of what those words are, or what language they are written in), refuse to copy a complex diagram, refuse to bake a cake with a colour (or combination of colours) that they do not have, refuse to cast a spell on it, refuse to throw it at the wall, refuse to put a 3' cake into a 2' box, refuse to make something that you do not know how to make (especially if the customer refuses to explain), refuse to make something if the customer does not speak your language (and nobody is available who can translate; although if such customers are common then it would be good customer service to hire someone who does know their language), etc. If the customer is able and willing to alter the decorations themself when they get home, they can order a plain cake (or whatever parts they are willing) and then do the rest by themself at home.

However, refusing a custom order can give them a bad reputation and cause them to not earn the money from the sale that is not made; so it is better to accomodate reasonable custom orders if they can.

> If a business refuses to bake a cake for black people's weddings, is that okay?

I should think it depends on what exactly is ordered, like above. If black people come in and say they want to order a wedding cake, then it is not OK to refuse; they should bake a cake (and sell it to them, for the same price that they would charge anyone else) anyways. If they ask them to draw specific pictures on the game, then they might refuse (although it may give them a bad reputation, and they would not earn the money from the lost sale), although if the order is reasonable then it would be better to not refuse (regardless of their personal opinions).

> This sounds like a bit of an exaggeration of what's going on, but I think normalizing talking about sex would be a huge boon for education.

You are probably right; it is probably an exaggeration and that is what it seems to me, too. (I do not have any actual data or reports about this, though.) About the second part, that is a separate issue but also probably right.

> This one's iffier, I think it should come down to whatever the science says about what's a substantial advantage or not, ideally per-sport (and I'm sure some sports will have women with an advantage over men).

That is what I thought too. It will have to be considered individually for each kind of sports. It will also have to be considered why they have gender segregation, and if they should have gender segregation, and if so, what criteria they should use (it is not necessarily as simple as only yes and no).

And you are probably also right some will have women with an advantage over men (on average it will be; but this is not always the case between two specific individuals). (On average, men will usually have more physical strength, but women will usually have more physical endurance. This is what I had read in a scientific article about women hunting.) However, it is not necessarily only per sport; some are team sports with different designations of the people in each team; possibly women will have an advantage on average in some positions but not others, and tall people will have an advantage in some positions but not others, etc.

[indigo0086]

So much written, so little said

[Tao3300]

I still think the cake thing was weird. I mean, why would you want someone who doesn't like you or hates your lifestyle to make you a cake? You really think they're going to do their best work?

Hey, Person-Who-Doesn't-Like-Me, commit to this creative project celebrating what you don't like about me. I can't wait to see it.

[TulliusCicero]

If a generally-open-to-the-public business refused to service women or black people or Muslims, should we be okay with that too, because hey, they probably don't want someone who dislikes them to provide them a product?

[Tao3300]

You must be replying in the wrong place. I didn't say it was okay. I said knowingly forcing someone to do this is a good way to get a shitty cake.

[paulmd]

At the end of the day the person coming to a public accommodation for a service or good doesn’t and shouldn’t need to know anything about the religion of the owner. Why should they? What does that have to do with me buying a muffler from their store or a bouquet of flowers?

Living in a world where we have to follow all the weird -isms of each individual proprietor (including, yes, racism) would be a social nightmare and incredibly disruptive to social order. Which it was.

[Tao3300]

You must be replying in the wrong place. I didn't say anything about buying mufflers or flowers, or "all the weird -isms of each individual proprietor".

I'm not talking about broad principles and generalities here. The cake thing was weird. I wouldn't expect to get a very good cake by pressing the issue. I should think it much more likely I'd get some haphazardly-assembled, bare-minimum, passive-aggressive excuse for a cake.

[paulmd]

No, I’m not replying in the wrong place and i cited the portion of your comment I was responding to.

I think your idea that a proprietor reducing the quality of the product because they disagree with someone’s private life is literally the problem in a nutshell, you have just said that we need to just tacitly tolerate discrimination in public accommodations. The quality of the cake should simply have nothing to do with the implicit characteristics of the customer at all.

Furthermore, you’re suggesting that since they will just discriminate anyway in lower-key ways if we ban overt topline discrimination, that we should just legalize overt topline discrimination and let it happen. That’s wrong/bad too.

Like you’re just suggesting open discrimination should be legal because we can’t stop 100% of it. That’s a fucking shitty take/shitty belief system you hold.

[smitty1e]

"The issue is not the issue: the revolution is the issue."--David Horowitz

We absolutely cannot read minds, but leaving open the possibility of other, less positive motives might be prudent.

[cogman10]

The explanation is simple, conservative outrage over non-issues.

To the first example, it's the same as whining about restaurants being forced to serve black patrons. If you are business open to the public you should serve the public. The slippery slope is beyond obvious. Can a doctor refuse to treat gay patients? A lawyer refuse to represent gay clients? A professor refuse to teach gay students? Regardless, conservatives won this one. Business owners can discriminate based on sexuality. Hurray? Yet why is this activist bringing up a case they already won?

The next examples of "how-to" manuals in elementary schools simply isn't something that exists. Further, it's frankly cover for the real agenda, pulling out any book making even the most glancing reference to homosexuality (billy has 2 dads) or past racism (MLK existed). It's a lot of hot air and fire over books not shelved in elementary schools. Perhaps in highschool or junior high, which is age groups where more explicit texts are acceptable.

> and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement.

Completely the author, a conservative that likely does not support gay rights, opinion.

> the controversies keep activists in business.

I actually agree with the author here. Yes, the controversies keep the activists in business, but WHO are the activists? The answer isn't who the author identifies.

Consider how many rightwing outlets repeated the lie "Now schools are letting kids identify as cats and poop in litter-boxes!". Which activist do you suppose started that?

[Georgelemental]

> If you are business open to the public you should serve the public. The slippery slope is beyond obvious. Can a doctor refuse to treat gay patients? A lawyer refuse to represent gay clients? A professor refuse to teach gay students?

If many businesses were doing that, that would be pretty bad, yeah. But the activist demands go far beyond that. Masterpiece Cakeshop and 303 Creative LLC weren't sued for refusing to serve gay clients—they were perfectly willing to serve gay clients! What they were sued for was refusing to provide services that would express support for a specific event—a gay wedding. It's like the difference between refusing to sell cakes to white people, and refusing to bake a cake for a white nationalist event.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

> simply isn't something that exists.

Quick internet search:

https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/story/2022-06...

Excerpts from the book in question: https://thedaughter.substack.com/p/34th-filthybooks-example-...

[TulliusCicero]

> Masterpiece Cakeshop and 303 Creative LLC weren't sued for refusing to serve gay clients—they were perfectly willing to serve gay clients! What they were sued for was refusing to provide services that would express support for a specific event—a gay wedding.

It's a gay wedding because they're gay. It's like refusing to service black people because hey, they're having a "black wedding"!

The gayness here is a property of the clients, the people requesting the service, it's not that the wedding itself was super gay.

[Georgelemental]

> It's a gay wedding because they're gay.

No, it's a same-sex wedding because the two people involved are of the same sex. There nothing inherently impossible about a homosexual marrying someone of the opposite sex, or a heterosexual marrying someone of the same sex. They are unlikely to want to do those things, of course, but they could if they did want to. (And, of course, many people are not exclusively homosexual or heterosexual!)

Millions (billions, if you consider the entire world population) of people believe that the institution of marriage is inherently something that happens between a man and a woman. Just like many people believe that marriage is inherently exclusive/monogamous, or inherently not permitted between close biological relatives, or inherently reserved to people above a certain age, or 1000 other restrictions that you or I may or may not agree with. Is it illegally discriminatory against people with siblings to refuse to bake a cake for a wedding between brother and sister? What about a polygamous Mormon marriage where the husband is taking his 17th wife, would refusing to service that event be illegal religious discrimination?

[TulliusCicero]

> It's like the difference between refusing to sell cakes to white people, and refusing to bake a cake for a white nationalist event.

This comparison is beyond ridiculous. Being gay isn't an ideological choice, it's an inherent property of the people involved.

If someone's a dwarf, you gonna say "well it's not that they were unwilling to bake cakes for little people, they just refused to provide a service for something they're religiously opposed to -- small weddings"?

[Georgelemental]

> Being gay isn't an ideological choice

But marrying someone of the same sex is. It's perfectly possible for someone who is homosexual to marry a partner of the opposite sex, and vice-versa. (And of course, many people are bisexual!)

[TulliusCicero]

Gentleman, the reasoning of the social conservatives:

> Marrying someone of the same sex is an ideological choice, you see, completely divorced from being, y'know, gay

This is how stupid they think everyone listening to them is.

[wtfwhateven]

This cake shop refuses to make a cake that is pink and blue because trans people. You knew that as it's in the article you keep linking. If this person could legally refuse to serve LGBT people entirely he absolutely would.

[cogman10]

> sell cakes to white people, and refusing to bake a cake for a white nationalist event.

Good job comparing a gay wedding to nazis.

> Quick internet search:

And here's the followup story

https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/opinion/story/2022...

The novel was not pushed by the liberals or whatever. It was a rouge and fired staff member that decided to place the novel which ended up in the library doing an inventory. Nobody is advocating for that book to be in an elementary school library (including the author).

But this is the issue with this hot button conservative issue. 5 more seconds of googling to find the followup and response and you would have seen that the library board did exactly what you'd want them to do. But now, it's a national issue because one library had a rouge (now fired) employee.

[ahazred8ta]

We refer you to the Rouge Angles Of Satin https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RougeAnglesOfSat... ...

[Tao3300]

Rouge in a library is a bad idea anyway. It could stain the books.

[wtfwhateven]

OP knows all of this, he's being dishonest to push an agenda sadly.

Look at his submission history and you'll see similar attempts to do that. In his comments he also comes to the defence of an ex moderator of 8chan that had answers other than "no, absolutely not" to whether CSAM should be allowed on it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40385450

[tivert]

> The explanation is simple, conservative outrage over non-issues.

IMHO, that's not an explanation, that's gaslighting. One of the simplest things to do if you do not want to listen to or address someone else's concerns is to simply deny they exist. That's often very easy to do, because those concerns genuinely do not exist from perspective of the person doing the denying, especially in today's polarized and politically segregated environment, and it saves the effort of trying to understand and empathize with someone else's perspective.

[cogman10]

No, it isn't.

Remember a few years back when CRT was all the conservative outrage? What about a few years before that when political correctness was the big boogieman? How about the terrorism fearmongering?

The conservative movement is one that is CONSTANTLY creating and forgetting outrages. If you've paid it any attention over the years you recognize the constant cycles it goes through freaking out over non-issues.

My state, Idaho, spent a million dollars doing a witch hunt trying to root out the CRT from classrooms. When they couldn't find anything, they tried desperately hard to hide the fact that they just wasted a bunch of state funds. This year, to help combat "migrant caravans" (A nice recurring theme of conservative outrage), my state sent the police down to the boarder to do... nothing, they can't do anything because state police from Idaho can't enforce boarder laws in Texas.

I was conservative long enough to know that that "empathy" is entirely one sided. No conservative is trying to "empathize" with any sort of notion deemed "woke". They are there to demonize. That's because the very nature of conservativism is to shut down anything that falls out of your current world view and resist change. It's a closed mindset. And it's one that conservative commentators exploit readily.

Once you see the pattern of conservative outrage, you can't unsee it. It's literally been a part of our modern political scene for decades (even centuries). It's nothing more than warmed over John Birtch society tripe.