Prop 8 ruled unconstitutional

[None-of-Lonely-Nights]

Here you go: Post!

Don't give them something they can report you for. People on here love it when they can get someone banned that they disagree with. The only way to win against a troll is not to play the game.

But I'm not playing the game. His next post is his last (with respect to that line of conversation).

[Soheran]

In all my conversations with other people, I have never gotten what I think is a reasonable answer to this question.

That may be because your question doesn't make any sense until it is a bit more specific.

Do I think restrictions on the discretion of private owners who own what are in effect public places will lead to anti-gay harassment? No--well, not any more than free speech protections in public forums already do. I don't think the Mormon Church should be legally obliged to, say, permit same-sex couples to kiss within its churches, and by the same token I don't think that, e.g., gay bars should be required to admit homophobic proselytizers. I think both should be permitted in public places, regardless of whether or not they are technically owned by some private individual or institution.

Do I think restrictions on the complete discretion of private businesses to refuse to hire or serve whoever they like will lead to anti-gay harassment? No. Anti-discrimination laws apply to certain job-irrelevant statuses: race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc. They do not apply, and there is no reason to expect that their logic extends, to restricting the capacity of business owners to sanction employees or customers who engage in objectionable conduct while on the job or within the premises.

What people say is something like "But government is our ally. We need government to protect us against those bigoted people out there. They're our best hope at this particular moment".

And then I think: "A government powerful enough to give you everything it wants is powerful enough to take it all away".

Government everywhere and always has the power to take everything you have away. This is the first premise of the state, that it makes the rules and enforces them with a capacity for violence that far exceeds that of private parties. Without this reality, its role as the resolver (via law) of disputes between citizens would amount to little, because the loser could not be bound to obedience.

The question, then, is not how much power government has, but how it should be used. I will admit to preferring its use to protect LGBT people (and others) from discrimination than its use to enforce the will of property-owning bigots, who also, let us not forget, ultimately rely on state power to kick out people to whom they object.

[Grave_n_idle]

"they were detained by Mormon church security officers for sharing a kiss on the cheek on Main Street Plaza, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." -(http://www.aolnews.com/story/gay-kiss-i ... aza/566994)

Posting back to me a source that says exactly what I just said... not really a rebuttal, per se.

Looks like the same thing as kicking someone out of a dorm room, house, front lawn, apartment, or any other kind of private property to me.

Not even vaguely, unless your apartment is the main thoroughfare, or your dorm room is a central street.

[Grave_n_idle]

Do you honestly think that if the legal precedent existed that someone can't restrict what happens on their property, that there wouldn't be homophobes using that precedent to harass gay people on their property?

In all my conversations with other people, I have never gotten what I think is a reasonable answer to this question.

That's because it's anot a real question, with real application.

No one is saying that the government should intervene to say that gay people can smooch on a homophobe's couch, or to allow homophobes to stand round your bed marking your gay sex performance.

In the LDS case mentioned - the Mormon church have charged two people for trespassing - on the city's main thoroughfare. A thoroughfare that many argue should never have been sold to the church in the first place, and wouldn't have been if the LDS didn't exert so much pressure. It's one thing to say that the driveway to a person's house is private property - to sell the central plaza to a religious group who are going to impose religious law on it? Different (and, I think, pretty Un-American) thing.

[Whole Conviction]

Do you honestly think that if the legal precedent existed that someone can't restrict what happens on their property, that there wouldn't be homophobes using that precedent to harass gay people on their property?

In all my conversations with other people, I have never gotten what I think is a reasonable answer to this question.

What people say is something like "But government is our ally. We need government to protect us against those bigoted people out there. They're our best hope at this particular moment".

And then I think: "A government powerful enough to give you everything it wants is powerful enough to take it all away".

There already are restrictions on what you can do on your property. One of the things in (I believe) both America and Australia is discriminate. A shopkeeper can't refuse service to someone just beucase they're black, or gay, a woman or a muslim. If there's some compelling reason that such categories should be excluded (say, female-only 'safe bars'), then that gets around them.

This is because prejudice goes beyond simple individual actions. You keep saying 'hate is hate'. I agree, but add: 'some hate causes more harm than others'. In the case of homophobia, sexism and racism, the individual acts are not the sole problem; the real problem is how they reinforce societal barriers and power structures.

Everyone in society has an interest in increasing everyone else's access to every benefit society has to offer. For this reason, there's a difference between truly private property (such as your own home, where it's expected that only people you invite enter) and 'private property' such as a store, or thoroughfare, that you may own, but people can reasonable expect to enter unless they are excluded. Those two conditions are related, but fundamentally different.

Therefore, yes, I do say that excluding a couple from kissing in a semi-private (really, public) area such as a street outside a church is wrong and I would support it being barred, regardless of who owned that stretch of real estate -- particularly if it wasn't clear that it was private property (and it sounds like it isn't).

This is what separates that from the 'bursting in on a dorm room' situation. That and the harm/benefit. The couple in the news article wasn't making anyone else listen to them, or attracting attention in any way other than doing what any normal couple would. The arsehole bursting in on the dorm room is not only entering a domain where normally people must be expressly invited, but he's trying to force people to listen to him.

The two situations are utterly unrelated.

Now, if I owned a stretch of street and I saw a hetero couple kissing on it, I wouldn't kick them off. If I saw a street preacher saying gays are evil, I wouldn't kick him off... until he started doing it repeatedly, in which case he'd be disrupting the ambience and THAT would be the reason to remove him. Not because of his religion, or his message (necessarily) but the disruption.

[Muravyets]

Suppose that, in fact, straight people are overrepresented among child molesters.

That is, actually, the fact.

What exactly does this mean for public policy? What does it mean for U.S. society and culture? It seems to me that it means absolutely nothing.

It means that it is seriously malicious to keep circulating the opposite statement, which is a lie fabricated for only one purpose, and that is as an incitement to murder. I am among those who have been threatened with death because, so I was told, I am a danger to children (it started with "You keep away from my kids!" when I had no idea this fellow had kids, and wouldn't have thought he had much prospect of them; continued with a general rant about hellfire; and, when I tried to just walk away, developed to a gun pointed at me until I heard out his lecture). I greatly resent it that you continue to circulate the slander which could have cut short my life.

I really, really, really, really find it hard to believe that SCOTUS does not want to take this case. Why wouldn't they? Are they not human beings? Are they not as influenced by wanting to have their names on TV and in the paper like [almost] everyone else.

They get their names in the paper no matter what cases they take. I really, really, really, really find to hard to believe they want this one. They prefer to take issues after all sides have been thoroughly argued several times in a number of courts; the pathetic performance by the proponents of Prop 8 in arguing their side makes this an unattractive case for them.

I'm rather sick of the "Ohh, I'm gay, poor me" sob stories. It's sure as heck not going to work against someone who is also LGBT.

You keep telling us how LGBT you are, and yet you keep spreading these anti-gay lies and making false comparisons and strawman arguments such as below. You claim to be gay and pro-equal-rights but you sure argue like a rank homophobe.

"Straight people are all violent morons" claim is also a slander. And I greatly resent it that you continue to circulate this slander. I really resent it. It's as meaningless as the "Gay people are pedophiles" slander.

I was raised by two straight people whom I love very much. Very much so. I very much resent it when people advocate hatred twoards them.

But back to the topic=

You said "They prefer to take issues after all sides have been thoroughly argued several times in a number of court". But I don't think this is particularly true. You can take the two gun control cases that they recently decided for starters. There was not much legal precedent around the circuts in that regard. And yet SCOTUS took up the gun control cases.

You don't need more than this. Of course he is not LGBT.

Because genes and their relationship to the environment aren't that cleanly understood.

I think its inherently impossible to eliminate homosexuals from pre-sceening, I just think maybe you could catch 40-50% of them or so (and that's being optimistic).

Thank you. That clears that up nicely.

Oh, you are not going to be so stupid as to not actually read the other thread are you?

No, I won't be that stupid. I have the content of your posts right here to judge by, and I stand by my initial assessment that you are being dishonest with us. Your disclaimers about being gay and in support of gay rights fall flat in the face of your persistent promotion of the worst slanders against gays -- lies which have been debunked many times over many years by evidence presented by others in this very thread -- and your ridiculous claims that heteros and Christians are being oppressed by paranoid gays and how the only reason you'll never get a fair hearing is because NSG is infested with people whose political opinions you assume are leftist and thus opposed to you.

And yet you expect us to believe that you're not a homophobic, religiously motivated rightwinger who is against the gay rights movement. You expect us to believe that on the basis of you saying so, in direct contradiction of the actual argument you've been making. Yeah, right. Forget it.

EDIT:: I wrote the above before I got to the part where you first claimed that you never presented the claim that homosexuals are more likely to molest children but that you had, in fact, denounced such claims; then you went and made and defended that very claim again; then denied that you had just done it; and then defended it again. That was quite a trick. Thanks for demonstrating it. I think we're done here.

[Tmutarakhan]

There already are restrictions on what you can do on your property. One of the things in (I believe) both America and Australia is discriminate. A shopkeeper can't refuse service to someone just beucase they're black, or gay, a woman or a muslim.

A shopkeeper can't refuse service to someone just because they're black, a woman or a muslim; but in the majority of American states (29 out of 50) it is perfectly legal to do so just because they're gay.

[Ashas Favor]

There already are restrictions on what you can do on your property. One of the things in (I believe) both America and Australia is discriminate. A shopkeeper can't refuse service to someone just beucase they're black, or gay, a woman or a muslim.

A shopkeeper can't refuse service to someone just because they're black, a woman or a muslim; but in the majority of American states (29 out of 50) it is perfectly legal to do so just because they're gay.

Source please

[Helertia]

If Hitlers parents had been Gay....

Ergo all gay people should be worshipped as the Gods we are.