Wednesday, February 26, 2014

WHAT HAPPENED TO JUST BEING CIVIL?







The longer I live the more surprised I am by people. Perhaps I shouldn't be. But I'm not cynical enough to believe that people are inherently bad. I just think there are a portion of people in this world who are down right stupid. Take note, I'm not including myself in that group. Well, at least not most of the time.

Take for instance the law they're considering signing in Arizona. The law would prevent people from being forced to serve people based on their personal beliefs. Currently the way the law is written I have little doubt that it will be brought to the Supreme Court and overturned. There is just something about it that leaves room open for some wild interpretations. But why did this law even have to come about? What happened that made this seem necessary?

I'm guessing here but it seems that the reason was due to a wedding cake. Yes, I'm serious. It started in Colorado where a baker refused to bake a cake for a gay couple who got married out of state. They wanted to celebrate and have a wedding cake but the baker refused to bake them one with two same sex celebrants on top because he said his religion didn't believe in homosexuality. One would think that would be the end of the story, right? Not so in today's world. Rather than take the simple route which would have been to visit a different baker and give him their business, the couple chose to visit the local ACLU office instead and file a lawsuit against the baker for discrimination. This led to a court case where the baker was ordered to supply them with a cake. Oddly enough this falls under the civil rights laws. Apparently the civil rights of the couple were violated but not the rights of the baker.  Odd how that always seems to work out.

With that sort of judgment being handed down I'm guessing that lawmakers in Arizona decided to make sure it didn't happen there. Rather than have the ACLU file a similar lawsuit, lawmakers created this law that makes it legal for people to not service someone based on that person (the first one mentioned) religious beliefs. The bill states that No “individual, association, partnership, corporation, church, religious assembly or institution or other business organization” can be sued for declining to bake a wedding cake or professionally photograph a same-sex couple if a “sincerely held” religious belief deters them. That being said the law does NOT use the term gay or same-sex coupe but the way it IS worded would include anyone who qualifies for that those terms. Therein lays the problem. In essence the law as written means that if anyone strikes a business owner as being against his or her religion, they can refuse them service.

Or does it? When we talk about it the initial response is to say that if a business owner doesn't want to serve someone then why should they be force to? That's a knee jerk reaction. Thinking a bit harder you might recall a time when blacks were not allowed to be served in some restaurants or to ride the bus up front. That's the knee jerk reaction from the opposing side. But aren't both of these concepts a bit presumptuous? Aren't they both assuming that the evil business owner will do anything they can to harm someone with this law? No one seems to consider that simple business concepts will play out to either hurt or help that businessman. The baker will lose business as proponents of gay marriage make sure word gets out that he won't make them cakes. I mean why buy anything he/she sells if they feel that way. By the same token those who disagree with gay marriage might buy from him/her for that reason as well. The open market will determine if he/she made the right decision or not.

Those who oppose the law will do everything they can to see it stopped. To date we have seen all sorts of people raising hell about it and complaining about it to the point they are intimidating the governor of the state about what will happen if she signs it into law. Those who are for it are remaining silent. Rather than be judged in the court of opinion they choose to sit back and let it either be voted in or out. Isn't it strange that when it comes to religious beliefs or items that present a conservative perspective the left comes out with guns blazing, yelling from the rooftops about the end of the world...while those on the right calmly sit and watch?

Those who have no religious beliefs will attempt to use the Bible as a way of displaying hypocrisy. Instead they display a lack of understanding of the Bible itself, picking and choosing while accusing those who believe of doing the same thing. One thing I've noticed in these arguments is that the scripture they choose to use is always from the Old Testament. I'm not a Biblical scholar but I do know that many of the tenets in the Old Testament were altered with the coming of Christ in the New Testament. All the stuff about pork, polyester, tattoos and such is in the Old. Find a Biblical scholar and my guess is he can shoot down just about any argument presented using this argument.

On top of everything else how about this for extortion. The NFL, that bastion of decency (you know the group where grown men call each other every name in the book and until one of them gets mad about it they all take it? Or the organization that has numerous cases of drug use among their players going on? That same group who seems to have all sorts of players arrested year after year now for shooting or bashing someone? Yeah those guys) has said that if the law is signed then they will take their ball home. Yes the NFL has said that if the law is signed they will move the 2015 Super Bowl from Arizona to another location. I'm betting that there will be an empty stadium available in Sochi about that time.

So why does the NFL have to be involved in this at all? When did sports suddenly become the playing field to combat political causes? Was it when Bob Costas suddenly in the middle or a program decided to rail against gun use? Speaking of how was that an appropriate topic for a sports program? I mean I could see the discussion on a hunting show but football? How about the NFL just shut up and leave politics to politicians? On the other hand wouldn't fans be ticked off if politicians ran football? Imagine it now as politicians decide that it's not fair for one team to be ahead of the other so they force the winning team to give their points to the losing one. At the end of the Super Bowl both teams win and get trophies and rings. Nah I didn't think you'd like that either.

I guess the one thing this all boils down to in my mind is that people should just be civil with one another. The baker didn't yell at anyone or tell them to go to Hell, he just said his beliefs prevented him from making them a cake. The civil thing to do would have been to say okay fine I'll go to your competitor. One of the biggest problems in this country today seems to be that everyone wants to sue someone over the smallest thing. It ties up the courts and makes no one but lawyers happy in the end. Why don't we instead just stop crying about stupid stuff like this and grow a set. Straighten up and ignore those you disagree with as long as all they're doing is saying no. If violence were involved that would be different. The only violence involved in this case would have been the knife used to cut the cake.

One last point to consider, the only possibility that I can see why this couple decided to force this baker to make them their wedding cake. It has to be one damn fine cake. The kind that no other baker can produce, that will induce gluttony as never before seen on this Earth. Yep, that perfect cake has to be the reason. What else could it be?


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