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wait are we seriously just gonna... ignore what started this? Why are we ignoring somebody comparing refusing service to queer peeps to the kkk. How are we not addressing this?

The petition response has a bit that says,
"Indeed, although simply believing in white supremacy or belonging to a white supremacist group—while abhorrent—is not a crime, the federal government has successfully charged white supremacists over the years using many federal statutes, including those prohibiting civil rights violations and solicitation to commit crimes of violence." (Emphasis mine.)
The FBI link states,
"The Bureau has been investigating the criminal activities of white supremacy extremists like Ku Klux Klan members since as early as 1918." (Again, emphasis mine.)
So basically being a member of the KKK is perfectly legal if morally repugnant, according to the US Federal government. The government of a free, democratic state has no business being a) Thought Police or b) Morality Police. Its business is prosecuting lawbreakers, which is what both quotes say the government has been doing.
To answer your other question: as EAUO noted, it's illegal for a business to decide not to serve a costumer. If you're a private person, sure, you can say that KKK isn't welcome in your house or similar things, but you're forbidden from doing that as a business.
I don't particularly like the KKK (it's hard to like people who hate me because I belong to a certain ethnoreligious group), but KKK membership does not suddenly make its members not citizens; as citizens they are afforded certain rights. It's that simple. Going "only people I agree with deserve civil rights" is immoral, and it doesn't matter whether your in-group is liberals, Christians, LGBT people or Klansmen.

And, yes, the government white supremacist organizations to be terror groupes.

How is saying "we don't welcome people who belong to white supremacist organizations here" a bad thing?

Well, I think that my argument still stands, and TIL a bit more about USA Federal Law.

Most of the google search results for "KKK domestic terrorist organisation" are things that say "why isn't the KKK designated as a domestic terrorist organisation", so I conclude that no, it's not officially classified as one. It's a hate group yes, but hate isn't illegal. You cannot discriminate against someone because of what's basically their feelings — you can only prosecute hate groups when they break the law. Until a Klansman breaks the law, he's a citizen like you and should be afforded the same rights not to be discriminated against or denied service. There's little difference between denying a Klansman service and denying a "kill all men" feminist service.

I know I'm not a Permission giver, so this is more of a general opinion, but I found it a great read. I know nothing about LoK, but I like the characters a lot, and I find myself hoping that Shimon and Caprice will make another appearance.

I'll leave climate change alone, since I've already vented my spleen over it and others are carrying that topic just fine without me.

So, sin.

I get the Christian position that sin is sin, period. I get that a lot of Christians feel that celebrating a gay wedding would be as wrong as celebrating murder.

But the thing is, not all sin is equal. You don't try to outlaw exclaiming "Jesus Christ!" in a heated moment; you don't work to legally force people to stay in harmful marriages, or ostracize people who have affairs; you don't even try to refuse service to the many, many people who commit other kinds of sex-related sin, like having oral sex out of marriage, for instance.

Even if someone were to walk into your flower shop wearing no wedding ring and a big button that says "I am a cunning linguist!" with a blatantly suggestive mouth on it, you'd still be obligated to sell that person flowers, even if you're sure they're going to be given to that person's significant other as a prelude to getting freaky, because what they get up to in private is none of your bloody business, and it's not up to you to judge them. That's God's job. Pray for them if you want to; ask if they're interested in talking about Jesus if you want to; but if they say no, then you back the hell off. If we sexual deviants all end up getting destroyed in the Apocalypse, that choice is our right as beings with free will.

Christians do not treat all sin the same. The kind of sin that two (or more!) people get up to consensually, that doesn't actually harm any other person, is not the same as murder, or rape, or theft, or anything else that is (a) nonconsensual, and (b) destructive to health and property. Trying to convince others that it is is both offensive and hypocritical. Please quit it.

Oh, and yes, if the KKK guy wanted the cake guy to make a cake that said something along the lines of "Hooray for 100 years of brutally tormenting black people!", he could in fact refuse that, 'cause it would be against the law. Hate speech is not protected under the First Amendment, and I hope to whatever power there may be that we never allow that to change.

Now, on the book. I haven't read it either, so I guess we're even. It doesn't really matter, because the thing is, the racist has every right to believe what he believes and even to pass it on to his children, too, even as the public school system lauds the end of slavery and the heroism of people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. What he doesn't have is the right to spout off about how dirty and/or sick and/or evil black people are in public, to threaten people who disagree with eternal fire and torment, or to interfere with other people's freedom to marry interracially if they want to. A racist baker would be just as obligated to sell that cake to an interracial couple as a Christian baker is to sell to a gay couple. He also does not have the right to be free from the judgement of others for his beliefs—nobody does. He may believe his racism is perfectly justified, but that doesn't make his position respectable or correct, and we don't have to put up with it in public—including public schools.

In public, under the law, everyone is equal (or should be). But that has never stopped anyone from being free to believe what they choose and live according to those beliefs in their private lives, and it never will.

Unless Trump and Pence decide to actually kick out all the Muslims, put women in jail for making difficult decisions about their own bodies, and force gay kids into electroshock conversion camps, I guess. 'Cuz, y'know, small government, right? {= |

~Neshomeh is admittedly arguing more from a place of passion than of logic, but hopes her logic is clear and present, too.

This is probably the most offensive thing I have seen said about gay people since Jacer was here. Desdendelle's comments can be attributed to ignorance, but I assume you are American and therefore should know better. Especially since the KKK targets gay people too. You are literally comparing the oppressed to their oppressors and honestly the only reason I sound so calm about it is because there's a word filter on the board.

Des, uh, the KKK is a hate group, officially classified as a domestic terrorist organisation. It's... a bit different refusing service to someone who's openly a member of it.

As far as the right to not associate with someone, there has been a line of US Supreme Court Cases that suggest there is a right to associate, and as such there is an implied negative right to not associate. Now, the line of cases went from allowing certain organizations to not associate with certain groups (namely African-Americans) to stating that they are required to do so. But the difference was because they were essentially for profit organizations, but the idea that a private individual can choose to or not to associate with another person still exists. The government cannot force me as a private individual to be friends with another individual. The difference occurs with an organization it is pretty well established that organizations cannot refuse to associate with people. With perhaps a few exceptions. So I disagree only to the extent that you are referring private individuals, not businessmen. For example in the case of the Baker, the Baker as a baker cannot refuse service to to an individual, but once the Baker leaves the Bakery the Baker is perfectly entitled to even refuse to look at a particular person. Love it or hate it, that's basically the law. Now that is an oversimplification, but that is the gist of it.

On one hand, he seems like a great candidate. On the other hand, Bender and HK-47 are already set to run. Now the robot vote will be split! Curse you, First Past the Post!

(I'm not even going to touch the way you present gayness as in any way comparable to thinking lynching black people is awesome. Just, not with a barge pole.)

1/ Richard Lindzen. According to Wikipedia's quoting of the New York Times, "'He agrees that the level of [carbon dioxide] is rising because of human activity and that this should warm the climate.' He also believes that decreasing tropical cirrus clouds in a warmer world will allow more longwave radiation to escape the atmosphere, counteracting the warming." So his stance is that people are causing climate change and that unverified factors will counteract this.

Glancing over the abstracts of his papers (references 9 and 51 on his Wikipedia article), his data seems very lacking: the first paper claims his proposed negative feedback has not been replicated by later testing, while the second (link) says his data is not from the same radiation he wants to talk about. So no, I don't particularly trust Richard Lindzen Against The World, now that I've read what he actually wrote.

2/ No-one is claiming we're going to turn Planet Earth into Venus 2.0; that's pure hyperbole on your part. What the entire scientific system is telling you is that Earth's ecosystems are fragile. Twelve thousand years ago, the Sahara Desert was a fertile landscape; natural climate change turned it into a band of yellow acros the entirety of North Africa.

And the Earth is fine with that. It doesn't care if the Sahara's dry or if there's rainforests in Antarctica. The planet - and life on it - will survive, and flourish.

But if we destroy the ecosystem around us, if we become the Sixth Mass Extinction, then that is (to slip into Christian idiom) a vile sin indeed, a violation of one of the very first commands ever given to humanity: to rule over the Earth, not to destroy it. Worse - we're part of the ecosystem we're endangering. Our food animals, our food plants, are part of it. If we push through this incredible shift in the climate, we stand a very good chance of wiping our civilisation, and quite possibly our species, out for good.

In the first Science of Discworld book (from memory), there is a perfect quote which sums up this position: "We can't destroy the planet. We might just be able to save ourselves."

3/ But let's assume we don't feel the least bit of guilt about genociding entire branches off the tree of life, and that we all decide locusts are the best meat or whatever. In four pictures, here's why allowing the planet to warm - regardless of whether it's our fault - is still catastrophic.

1 & 2: Arctic sea ice minimum in 1979 and 2015. The graph plots said minimum. Note that since sea ice floats, this is not causing an increase in sea level.



3: Antarctica, noted for being covered in 6.4 million cubic miles of ice. Note that, as yet, this has not started receding in the same way (I blame the heat-sink effect of it being on land), but that it exists on the same planet as the North Pole.



4: Maps of North America and Europe if all that ice melted and precipitated a ~58 meter sea level rise. I've helpfully marked my house on the Europe one (it's underwater).



This is an extreme - or rather, it's an endpoint. As I said in point 2, it's happened before - during the Cretaceous, when most of Europe was an island chain, and North America had an ocean running through the middle of it. But even a fraction of that sea level rise - when, not if, Antarctica gets in on the mass melting act - will be an unimaginable disaster for places like, oh, the cities that America has built all along its coasts?

4/ Copernicus: actually, it used to be the enforced religious opinion that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Copernicus was a priest who struggled with that fact his whole life, and only published on his death bed because of it. Galileo wrote essays which convinced most scientists, and led to him being tried by the Inquisition, banned from writing or teaching his theory, and being placed under house arrest. So no, Geocentricism wasn't the majority opinion - it was a religious doctrine which scientists had not yet researched. Do you want to try and claim that climate change hasn't been looked into...? Thought not. ;)

(If you're interested in Copernicus and Galileo, by the way, I cannot recommend Dava Sobel's books A More Perfect Heaven and Galileo's Daughter highly enough. She makes it clear - particularly in the latter, which is built around letters from his Catholic nun daughter - that both men were deeply religious, and didn't have the slightest intent of breaking with the Church - they just wanted to discover the truth about the universe around them.)

hS

... since I'm no scientist, but I will argue ethics with you:
Mr Valastro should not discriminate against a Klansman. In a proper democratic country, regular citizens do not take the law into their own hands; if said Klansman is a criminal he should be taken care of by the authorities, and in the meanwhile should be able to buy a cake like everybody else. (The case where the authorities don't address the Klansman's crimes is a different kettle of fish.)
In general: there's no such thing as a right to not be associated with somebody, and there is a right to not be discriminated against, especially when it comes to things you don't choose like sexual orientation (if you think you can choose sexual orientation: do you honestly think you could turn bisexual if you'd want to?).
A religion (any religion) is like a dick: it's cool that you have one, but you shouldn't be waving it around in the street and you definitely shouldn't be shoving it down people's throats without their permission, especially children.

"To which I've basically replied, in essence, that his example is not as clear-cut as he thinks it is."

Yeah, but you're wrong. And you may not be defending Trump himself, but you appear to be defending one of his most terrifying policies, so there's that.

Shall I give you some more examples? Let's try homosexuality, shall we?

Conservatives love to claim that being gay is a lifestyle choice. They come up with all sorts of horrible things "designed" to "cure" these people. And someone who believes in this just became Vice President. If Trump dies, the President of the USA will be a man who believes in shock therapy.

Science is clear on this: homosexuality (and a bunch of other tangentially related things, like being transgender) is largely genetic. Now, knowing that, are you going to abandon your "homosexuality is a sin" outlook and fight to protect them from Pence? Or are you going to ignore the science and the suffering of human beings?

tl;dr: you may not be actively defending Trump or his cabinet, but you are defending his policy, and that's just as bad.

Man, I'm angry tonight.

You're admitting that you haven't read the literature? Fantastic! Why, then, do you have such an assured opinion?

I have a science degree. Global warming came up. I have seen the literature. I assumed that you'd just been misled by Fox News and the like, but now you're admitting you were arguing from complete ignorance?

Go educate yourself. Maybe once you finish that, you won't be a palaeoconservative anymore.

Moral issues are arguable without any particular expertise. Policy issues are often arguable, so long as you have a decent knowledge of what you're on about. Science issues? If you have any clue how science works, you'll know that arguing directly* against the consensus is just stupid.

*Disclaimer: science is constantly updated, but what doesn't happen is theories being completely thrown out. They get superseded by new, better theories which more fully explain the data.

I have absolutely no intention of apologizing to you for calling you out on how your positions and beliefs demonstrably hurt me and mine. Your "conservative successes at the ballot box" are ones that actively impede the rights of others less fortunate than yourself to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and I no more owe you an apology for saying so than I do David Duke for calling him a racist. Your OP was talking about how you're scared of being called a bigot for talking about your faith, when actually, you're going to be called a bigot for trying to deny people rights. Your post comparing a gay couple being denied a wedding cake with a Klansman being denied a celebratory cake of some description is a false equivalency so vast it defies human imagination. You're whining about losing a right to discriminate that you never possessed in the first place, and you have the gall to demand an apology from someone explaining to you why that's a problem.

Do not presume to condescend to me. If nothing else, you're no sodding good at it.

One: Have you been paying attention to anything I said? Nowhere was I defending Trump.

Please recall the history of this thread:
VixenMage asked: “Why are you afraid of Democratic positions?”

I replied: “I, for one, do not think that we are afraid of Democratic positions, per se, as much as that we vehemently disagree. The things that I, for one, am afraid of, however are
1) Democratic positions being touted by media and academia as the only reasonable opinion
2) conservative successes at the ballot box being derailed by left-leaning lawyers in black robes."

Seafarer replied, "[I]t's more likely that academic results are picked up by the media and become Democratic positions because of their rigour, and that conservatives simply refuse to believe them (often due to established interests)?"

To which I've basically replied, in essence, that his example is not as clear-cut as he thinks it is.

Now where in that entire exchange was there a defense of Trump?

Two: I do not know what you are implying with that last sentence, nor am I asking you to elaborate. And in this case, I do not even need to answer for myself: the third paragraph in Badger421's post elsewhere in this thread is answer enough.

I know that you are afraid, and I will not deny that you have every right to be. Nor will I deny that those hateful things happened, or that they are wrong.

But I'm willing to bet that whatever you are implying about me is wrong and out of line, and that you need to apologize.

but there are two teensy-weensy but ever-so-crucial, little, tiny details in the article that they got wrong.

(Please tell me that someone's able to pick up the reference that I smuggled in there without having to resort to Google!)

1) That second check is not constitutional, it's statutory. To be precise, even though the Twelfth Amendment does state that the President of the Senate (a.k.a. the Vice President of the United States) shall count the electoral votes in the presence of the House and Senate, the provision cited regarding determining whether the vote was "regularly given" is in a statute: 3 U.S.C. § 15 (United States Code, Title 3, Section 15) to be exact.

2) When a federal statute refers to the "executive" of a State, it means the governor of the state, not its Secretary of State. So the people that the article should have named are Washington Governor Jay Inslee, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

Details aside, however, I must agree that it would be quite the capstone to the 2016 election if even more discord were to arise at the very tail end of the process.

Please take a closer look at what I said in response to Seafarer. Both times, I conceded that climate change is a real thing. I nowhere said that it was a hoax.

And one has to have less than one functioning brain cell to deny that rising sea levels are currently a threat to coastal communities and low-lying island nations—meaning that those affected must receive appropriate aid. So obviously, it would be small comfort to say from an ivory tower, "The current warming is part of a greater cycle," even if the argument is true. (Note that I am not trying to make this argument here.)

As I said before, my point of disagreement is not with the existence of climate change, but with the narrative that "if something isn't done, WE'RE GOING TO COOK OURSELVES TO DEATH!!1!!!11!"

As I conceded to Seafarer, I am clearly ignorant of the literature on both sides, and given your first-hand experience about it, I have all the more reason to actually start reading sooner rather than later.

But what I do know is that there is literature on both sides. And that was all I wanted to say in the first place: if there is an argument on the other side, then deal with the argument; do not resort to demonizing the other side as a shortcut to reasoned discussion.

have shown you that despite my initial poor choice in sources, I should be taken seriously.

As for Alex Jones, I honestly had no idea who he was before your post, nor that he was a noted conspiracy theorist. I do not travel in those circles. My older brother (who is no conservative) shared that video on Facebook, and I, proud as I am about my heritage, already prone to believing the worst about Clinton, and ignorant of who was doing the talking, took it as incontrovertible truth. I know that that is no excuse for not having done more digging into who it was that I was listening to, but at least you now have some context.

1. I would like to attempt to disagree with you using a correct premise, so please correct me if I'm wrong:
   
   I am under the impression that these businesses wish to refuse service to gay couples because they wish to avoid condoning sin. Is that right?
   
   If so, then is it not their mission to avoid condoning all sin? Should they not strive to avoid selling to ex-cons, to adulterers, to rapists, to people who take the Lord's name in vain, etc.? Are they doing thorough background checks to be sure they aren't giving aid and comfort to anyone who violates the will of God?
   
   …
   
   ... Okay, I suppose if the name of your business is "Christian Weddings for Straight Christian Couples," you're exempt from the above logic. Have fun catering to your niche market; just don't be surprised if it doesn't pay enough to keep the doors open.
   
   Your formation of the premise is correct…in part. Hopefully, no Christian believes that, e.g., a gas station owner should refuse service to a gay driver, or that a Christian who owns a grocery store should try to weed out the gays from among his patrons. Where I see the line being drawn, however, is where the owner believes he is being asked to participate in the celebration of something he believes is sin. Obviously, there is room for disagreement: Some Christians believe that the Christian baker is no different than the gas station owner or convenience store owner, while others believe that the fact that a personalized service is being given for this particular event is tantamount to giving his imprimatur to it.
   To give what I believe would be a parallel example: Are you familiar with the show “Cake Boss”? Now let’s say that a member of the KKK wanted Buddy to make them a cake to celebrate an upcoming anniversary. Here’s the question: Does that member of the KKK have the right to demand that he be able to get a cake from Buddy, or does Buddy have the right to say that he does not want his name associated with them? (Or to extend the hypothetical even further: would the inevitable change.org petitions that would erupt be wrongheaded?)
   
   As I think about this, though, perhaps I should have looked for a different example of my fear that any dissent to the portrayal of homosexuality as a harmless “alternative lifestyle” would be ipso facto branded as bigotry. So allow me to use a different example.
   I’m sure you at least heard about the book “Heather Has Two Mommies”. Now, I will readily admit that I have not read the book, nor do I know whether it is used in schools; I am only using this as a foundation for my argument.
   Given the increasing visibility of homosexuality, and the nigh-inevitability that homosexual couples will start to form families, I am willing to concede that children will have to learn that these arrangements exist. The point that I’m trying to make is that if that child’s parents try to teach him that such an arrangement is sinful, my fear is that such an opinion would be deemed to be as gauche as that of a racist who hates interracial marriage. However, while the racist hasn’t a leg to stand on (“[God] hath made of one blood all nations of men”), the Christian has every right to believe what he believes.
   
   Is there room for the other side to disagree? Certainly.
   To refuse to patronize our establishments? Of course.
   But to use the courts to silence dissent? To use the schools to tell the next generation that the Christian is no better than the racist? That’s where I draw the line.
   


2. Seriously, so what if it's not as bad as 99% of reputable scientists say it is? Can't we make the world a better place anyway?
   
   I do not want to argue about climate change. That was not my intention.
   
   Please recall the history of this thread:
   VixenMage asked: “Why are you afraid of Democratic positions?”
   I replied: “I, for one, do not think that we are afraid of Democratic positions, per se, as much as that we vehemently disagree. The things that I, for one, am afraid of, however are
   1) Democratic positions being touted by media and academia as the only reasonable opinion…”
   And my interaction with Seafarer is an illustration of just that: the point remains that there are reputable scientists that believe that climate change, though extant, is not the existential threat that it is being touted as being.
   That is all I wanted to say: that to deny that man-made climate change will turn Earth into Venus if nothing isn’t done should not automatically lead to that person being labeled as a conspiracy theorist. As long as you can back up your opinion with facts, you should be heard. To allude to something you alluded to in your own post: it used to be the majority opinion that the Sun revolved around the Earth. I’m willing to bet that 99% of the scientists of Copernicus’s day said the same. Yet nowadays, we hold it as unquestionable truth that Copernicus was correct.
   
   Now, yes, obviously, green technology is generally a good thing to invest in regardless of how much of a threat global warming is: no one wants to live in a smog-filled city, for example. But that’s the point: there are generally other reasons besides global warming (clean air, clean water) to invest in technologies that pollute less than current technology does. The only point of contention would be whether a new technology would be worth the added expense if its only saving grace was that it prevented global warming—a controversy that I am admittedly ill-equipped to confront, and which is beyond the scope of what I wanted to say.