Anti-Discrimination Ordinance Rejected in Indiana Town

Oh freaking Indiana, yet again I’m ashamed to live in you. Not surprising though, it’s Goshen. Northeastern Indiana is pretty rural with a high Amish/Mennonite population…

Makes me think of that line “Bad people do bad things but it takes religion to make good people do bad things.”

other wise good people made an immoral choice.

why?

because of religion.

“Where do we draw the line?”

I’ll tell you where…we draw the line at making judgments about a person based on qualities that have NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO with that person’s ability to do a job, pay the rent, care for a sick friend or understand the difference between ignorance and compassion. Rather sadly, on that basis, the person who asked the question must be ruled out.

@ Kirk

That’s the thing, Christians believe being gay is a choice.

My response to that nonsense is always the same:
“If it’s a choice, then you could choose to be gay.”
If you assert that you cannot be gay, why do you insist it’s any different on the other side of the fence?
If you claim that you COULD, you must have considered the option…
(at this point, I smile, wink and invite them for a drink…which always forces them into ‘It’s NOT a choice for ME…God made me straight!”)

Sadly, even that degree of cognitive dissonance fails to move them an inch.

we draw the line at making judgments about a person based on qualities that have NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO with that person’s ability to do a job

This is of course the correct answer, but the question then becomes how to achieve this, or even how to determine what these qualities are. To take an example that’s considered all too infrequently, people who’ve taken a few years off of work are often harassed by prospective employers to explain their “work gap,” since employers realize that it’s harder to exploit anyone who has the financial means to leave an undesirable situation.

But then, this is just one of the thousands of ways that employers will attempt to discriminate (and like this one, you’ve never even considered most of them). Seeing how much trouble it is getting something obvious like rights based on gender and sexual identity passed by government, it becomes obvious that using government to end discrimination is a utopian dream.

Now, as far back as Voltaire (unfortunately, I don’t have a direct quotation on hand), it’s been known that a free market makes discrimination impossible since hiring poorer-quality workers in order to ensure that they have the proper skin color, gender, ethnicity, etc., will be a huge competitive disadvantage and lead to the bankruptcy of the firm. (This also has the advantage of not requiring an enumeration of the thousands of subtle forms of discrimination: market forces will act exactly the same whether or not we understand why they do.) Discrimination will thus exist as long as we attempt to fight it through anti-market regulations carefully crafted by the very firms they’re intended to restrain so as to be worthless or even counter-productive.

In Goshen, Indiana a gay book seller can now legally refuse to sell a book to a straight person or a gay cab driver can refuse to take a straight person to their destination for no other reason than their sexuality. If Indiana has the estimated 10% gay population they could really make a fuss if they wanted to.

Except that would be wrong.

That’s the thing, Christians believe being gay is a choice.

Hmm. That makes me wonder whether or not being ignorant, pig-headed, backward, chauvinistic, retrogressive, xenophobic, homophobic, eduphobic, superstitious, racist, sexist, irrational, hypocritical, malevolent and violent BUMPKINS is a choice.

Maybe the poor things can’t help it.

@ Richard

eduphobic

I haven’t looked it up, yet…but I’m gonna. Guessing “fear of education”.

Thanks, tho. If it turns out to be a real word, am totally adding it to my vocabulary in high rotation (and congrats…that happens so very rarely).

It’s a recently coined term, n’est pas?

PS. Hemant – LOVE the 4 minute countdown for edits! EVERYONE should have this. No more typos! I hate you.

There’s no good reason anti-discrimination laws should not be extended to people based on their sexuality and gender identity. But that doesn’t mean some religious people won’t try to justify their bigotry.

CHOICE is immaterial

We should probably extend anti-discrimination laws to murders and pedophiles too. After all, just because people make the choice to murder people doesn’t mean they should go to jail or anything like that. People who don’t make the choice to murder people don’t go to jail. So we should treat people who murder and people who don’t murder equally.

RIGHT?

OF COURSE NOT! Hemant had about 60 articles in a row that showed his lack of reasoning, and then one that was semi-meaningful, and now he is back to the drivel.

Jon:

If you can’t explain using non-religious terms why being gay should be considered immoral, we don’t care. Obviously it’s not applicable.

Anti-discrimination laws discriminate: race, religion, color, sex, disability, national origin and ancestry. It’s not just sexuality that’s missing, everything you could discriminate apart from the things listed are discriminated against by the writers of this legislation. I notice atheism isn’t on the list, shockingly.

But they’re things that someone doesn’t choose, right? Wrong, religion is something people can choose. Some people can choose their race because the concept is imaginary, it’s not based on biology. The very concept of race changed throughout history. A recent study of Turkic groups found that ethnicity wasn’t based on ancestry in some groups in central Asia. Religious people only seem to care about homosexual acts, which are a choice.

It’s inevitable that all those that disapprove of “discrimination” also discriminate on a daily basis. Not hiring a blind person to be a taxi driver is discrimination against a disability. There’s justified discrimination and unjustified discrimination. The problem is prejudging, profiling, and not basing beliefs on evidence.

Miko,

You’re right that this type of legislation worthless or counter-productive.

Now, as far back as Voltaire (unfortunately, I don’t have a direct quotation on hand), it’s been known that a free market makes discrimination impossible since hiring poorer-quality workers in order to ensure that they have the proper skin color, gender, ethnicity, etc., will be a huge competitive disadvantage and lead to the bankruptcy of the firm.

Even if that were true, that’s a utopian idea, pure free markets like that have never existed and won’t exist. In the markets that have existed and exist, discrimination can and does happen. Progress was made culturally and collectively winning equal rights not through market forces.

I think we should take “protections” away from everyone…to level the playing field. Isnt that the Rights argument about Affirmative Action!

No “special” rights or protections for;

Non-Whites
Woman
Disabled/Handicapped
LGBT

and

RELIGIOUS PEOPLE.

See how the country would feel than;

lynchings, burning churches, hate crimes, sexism, etc… yes all, let’s go backwards…not forwards…towards a more civilized country.

All I can say is this; If all the Christian fundamentalists in congress were to suddenly die, there would be happier, safer, and more productive Americans in the USA.

Use that quote you trolls…put my name on it…and praise your mythical god that I am NOT the ruler or king….religion would be outlawed!

Corey Mondello
Boston, Massachusetts

And being gay is not the same as pedophilia

.

True. But look at the statistics about the number of gay men that are interested in young boys vs. straight men involved in pedophila. It has a staggeringly higher occurence in homosexuals.

@Takma’rierah

Jon:

If you can’t explain using non-religious terms why being gay should be considered immoral, we don’t care. Obviously it’s not applicable

So, if you can’t explain things in non-atheists terms than its not applicable?

I’ll give you another chance to make your statement then.

We treat them equally. We don’t treat them the same.

Exactly. Which is why people that argue for gay “marriage” are very silly.

You’ve missed my point. I said that as a point against your stupid analogy between gays and murderers. Treating gay people equally means allowing gay marriage, without the damn scare quotes around the word.

What hypocrisy that Atheists whine about discrimination against them when they freely admit they would slaughter those who disagree with them if they had the ability to.

And people wonder why Atheists don’t get elected???? There is your answer!!!

Do you have a coherent point in there? At most the one commenter said that (and at least part of the comment was sarcastic) and you extrapolate to all of us?

So, if you can’t explain things in non-atheists terms than its not applicable?

No. Re-read what Takma’rierah said.

But look at the statistics about the number of gay men that are interested in young boys vs. straight men involved in pedophila. It has a staggeringly higher occurence in homosexuals.

Even if this were the case (and I emphasize the if) I would like to point out that a child’s relatives are more likely to molest a child than a stranger. Should we then ban children’s relatives from interacting with them?

Child Protection Services exist for a reason. Do you think that if we allow gay adoption and marriage that child sexual abuse rates will increase?

You are wrong.

“the ratio of heterosexual to homosexual pedophiles was calculated to be approximately 11:1.”

Except that you haven’t even read the page that you link to. It actually supports Jon’s argument, not yours.

Please don’t make Jon look comparatively sensible.

Way to go christians! Make yourselves look moral and ethical. Not.

So, if you can’t explain things in non-atheists terms than its not applicable?

I’ll give you another chance to make your statement then.

Ooooh, another chance; how charitable of you.

“Nonreligious terms” isn’t really the same as saying “atheist terms,” because I’m talking about terms without religion applied to them, not atheist-specific terms. There are a few basic morals that are true across humanity because they’ve helped us to survive by working together in groups; don’t kill, don’t lie, don’t steal, et cetera. Religion (and culture, but culture is too nebulous and vast to be relevant here) arbitrarily applies new rules on top of these that really have no outside necessity; if you’re part of this religion, obviously you will feel very strongly about it, but we’re not part of your religion so we don’t care about your particular imposed rules.

It’s like if you walked up to someone and told them that they must never ever wear blue because wearing blue attracts flesh-eating Snorglehoffs, and then being angry because they look at you funny and wear blue anyway. Similarly, we don’t care about religious reasons to dislike homosexuality because, lacking belief in these rules, we have no reason to; therefore, all such arguments will fail. I know many Christians think that atheists are merely in denial of god’s existence in order to get away with sinning, but that’s simply not true–we don’t hide in corners cackling madly to ourselves about how bad we’re being or feeling ashamed that we’re sinning but just can’t stop. In fact, for most of us it doesn’t even cross our minds, because these arbitrary rules really, indeed, mean nothing to us. We’re about as concerned about judgement day as the person on the street is concerned about being attacked by Snorglehoffs. It doesn’t come up. Try to ban us from wearing blue, and of course we will be very upset.

If we let these religious nuts believe in a magic sky fairy what next? When will they start fucking goats? What disgusting perverts those religious nuts are. Always with the goat fucking.

Christian does not equate with bigotry. A significant amount of the support for this ordinance came from Christian pastors in the community. Our Mennonite pastor was in favor of it. Our former pastor, also Mennonite, attended the meeting in favor of the ordinance. Apparently the councilman who switched his vote was under pressure from his fellow Republicans.