re: Indiana Religious Freedom Bill

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There is nothing in that statement that says I have to say why, I can refuse just because.

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A court can if a case is brought against them. They can plead the 5th but if they are not providing a reasonable answer, the court will most likely assume discrimination did in fact occur. I doubt any lawyer would recommend that.

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You are allowed to pick and choose who enters your home,

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That is a very good point. My question to that point is, do you operate your business selling "widgets" from your home? If so then by all means exercise your freedom. If your business is open to the public, then it is illegal, on a federal level to discriminate. A work around would be to make your business a private "club" with membership.
I have no problem with whom a person does or does not do business with. Just don't try and cover up bigotry with bullshite religious pretext.

edit: changed a word

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So if a baker previously baked cakes for straight weddings, they have to bake cakes for gay weddings?

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Correct. If in someone's religious beliefs they believe God wants two dudes to get married, then you would be discriminating against their relationship with God simply because you have a differing religion.

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Gay weddings =/= Straight weddings, no matter how much you want them to.

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A gay wedding is no more un-Holy than a Muslim or a Hindu wedding. Why does one offend you more than the other?

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That is a very good point. My question to that point is, do you operate your business selling "widgets" from your home? If so then by all means exercise your freedom. If your business is open to the public, then it is illegal, on a federal level to discriminate.

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Exactly.

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Then the bill is discriminatory and should be struck down.

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Much to the chagrin of the homophobes that finally think they won a battle in the Homo Wars, I think it will be.

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Are Muslims and Hindus trying to wed at churches?

Do they want wedding cakes?

Variables here you are not accounting for.

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What?

I"m not gay but I don't see the point in this bill. This is stupid

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I'm just spouting bs, but my reason to not serve TeLe is because I don't want to, there is no other reason, I just don't want to serve you. Where is the discrimination?

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Agreed. You can do that. But, if discrimination is assumed by someone willing to bring charges, a court would decide if you did it on a whim, or if you there were legal conditions that allowed you to refuse service. This has been well played out in court, I'm afraid.

I like Texas. I love how we are a right to work state. I am also anti-discrimination. If someone just wanted to fire someone for any reason, they could always just make an accounting reason out of it. When it comes to being a business that serves the public however, turning down a patron for an arbitrary reason is a bit easier to prove discrimination.

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In an ideal world people would be free to serve whoever they wanted to and the free market would weed out the racists and bigots.

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I used to think that way, but I'm more of the opinion that The Civil Rights Act was a good thing. Humans aren't the smartest creatures at all times, and if we can use some common sense things to nudge people along in the right direction, why wait for the free market to do an imperfect job? The free market isn't the only way to solve problems, IMO.

TeLaFaWx, I'm so glad you're in this thread. You do a great job of explaining that which is hard to understand for some.

I find it difficult to think that so many people accept the idea of "private" business as being a personal right. They see the current religious discrimination against gays as okay but don't see the big picture which would have to include the acceptance of discrimination by anyone against anyone else.

Some want religious "freedom" to extend into every facet of American life. Our nation's founders and the Constitution they forged laid out the parameters for religious practice in the U. S.

No religion can be part of our various governments, for example. Nor can religious laws supersede a civil system of rules. It is the latter that proponents of religious "freedom" want to accomplish.

They want to override anti-discriminatory civil laws with laws that grant them the right to selectively provide services to the public based on whom they feel are in concert with their religious beliefs.