Quote Originally Posted by Adrian II View Post
You say that, for instance, a Christian church is rightfully allowed to refuse Muslims. Then why can't a Christian church be rightfully allowed to refuse gays?
My answer is along Goofball's explanation. It has to do with essential quality. A Catholic priest can refuse to marry Jews, atheists or Protestants. But he can not refuse wheelchair-bound, black, terminally ill or gay Catholics. Likewise, a modelling company can not refuse a black applicant for their accounting department, but they can do so for their model department if they are looking for extras for a remake of Braveheart.
Quote Originally Posted by Don
I find it rather surprising to see Louis that you're so thoroughly 'modern', you've evolved to a position of compelling belief in others. I guess "live and let live" just doesn't cut it anymore, eh?
Not today it doesn't cut it. Today is for hangovers and resentment and bitter strife with the entire world.

(some soccer tournament)

Neither in America nor in Europe is it allowed to put up a windowsign in a privately owned bar that says 'No Italians served'. If you do not disagree with this being illegal, what then, gives religious institutions more rights than privately owned firms? We're a free society and not a theocracy, aren't we?

Now there are times indeed when I dream of a city full of 'No Italians served' signs. Times when I agree with Xiahou: "I would support the right of a restaurant owner to make any stupid decision that they want. It's their property, it's their business, it's their labor". But a pluralistic society can't function like this.

Let's say that it is somebody's - let's call him Ynogarf - firm belief and deep inner conviction that he should not have to share a workplace with Arabs. Is he allowed to not hire Arabs? I mean...surely employing somebody and being stuck with him for forty hours a week is a deeper infringment of Ynogarf's personal life than spending twenty minutes marrying two people whom you'll never see again? Not to mention, that it is (hypothetically) Ynogarf's own private firm. What of his freedoms?
Now say that Ynogarf finds some ancient dusty texts that say something to the effect of 'And on the twentieth day the burning bush had sayeth "the dade and the palm doth not share the same oasis". And then whispers this line over and over again while burning incense during full moon. Does this mean that now, all of a sudden, he'll be allowed to discriminate against Arabs at his workplace whereas above he was not, what with his freedom of religion and all that?

Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou
Our constitution makes special allowances for the free practice of religion.
So it does indeed. This freedom of religion did not establish freedom of religion at all. The 'freedom' of it is deceitful language, for what it establishes is un-freedom. It creates a hierarchy in freedoms of thought and gathering, thereby undermining them. It says that some thoughts are better than others, and proceeds to grant them priviliges. Christianity is to the American constitution what aristocracy was in Europe - something which enjoys an inherently priviliged status.