[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.