kengr

A lot of talk is going around about people's religious beliefs being denied by various laws.

I'm sorry, but in none of these cases are their beliefs or their right to express them being denied.

Instead, their right to *inflict* those beliefs on other people in the course of their job is being denied. That's a very different thing.

Kim Davis (the county clerk in Rowan county, Kentucky who just got jailed)? She took an oath to carry out the duties of her office. When those duties conflicted with her beliefs, she wanted to be able to keep the job and at the sdame time *not* do the duties she disagreed with.

Sorry, doesn't work that way. She could have issued the licenses, but that conflicts with her beliefs. Fine

She could have resigned the job and protested the issuing of licenses by whoever replaced her.

But she chose to keep the job (and the $80,000 a year salary) and *not* carry out a duty of the job. Even after a federal judge ordered her to. So now she is in jail. That's the way it works.

You either follow the law, or you do your time. As I've commented in the past, many people these days seem to forget that civil disobedience *is* breaking the law and that you should be prepared to take the consequences. You don't get to say you shouldn't *have* consequences.

Same goes for all the other folks trying to play games with marriage equality.

The businesses that don't want to serve gay customers in places where that's a violation of antidiscrimination laws. They can either serve everyone equally, or they can close the business. Or they can deal with the legal penalties. Those are the choices.

And it's *not* discrimination against their beliefs. Again, it's that we have these laws for a reason, and it's so you can't treat certain types of people as second class citizens. You are free to *nelieve* that they are inferior, sinful, or whatever. And to talk about your beliefs. But you are required to treat them like anybody else if that's your job or your business.

the fact that donald trump can make a lot of money inspires me - if he can do it, how hard could it be

An important but oft overlooked point regarding all these rich people.

How much money did they *start* with? Often their money (or their family's money) was far higher than a "normal" person would have. That's not "merely" a "step up" it's a *huge* advantage.

The resources you have to start with influences the results in a *very* non-linear manner. 10 times the starting resources doesn't give you 10 times the results. More like 100 times.

Another important point is "who did they know?" What sort of contacts did they have from family, friends, school, etc. This is another force multiplier.

If you "know somebody" you aren't just more likely to get a job. You are more likely to get a *good* job (as opposed to an "entry level" job that's essentially dead end.

And this, btw, is why upper middle class types think "get a job" is a reasonable thing to tell somebody. Because they *do* have starting resources and contacts (or did when *they* were entering the work force).

"middle" midle class folks think this too. Many of them have gotten a rude shock when they got dumped back into the job market and found out that they no longer have the contacts that got them a good job when they were young.

Ok, the owners of that former bakery in Gresham OR got the final judgement for their refusal to serve a lesbian couple.

It's $130,000 or so.

A lot of folks including one annoying local radio/TV commentator keep making noises about how out of line this is compared with things like speeding tickets.

They miss the fact that it's not that the couple didn't get their wedding cake. It's that they didn't get it BECAUSE THEY WERE GAY.

The owners are vowing to appeal, and making comments about how it's a violation of their first amendment rights.

Sorry, this is another thing much like the civil disobedience bit I went into yesterday.

The first amendment says you have freedom of speech. It does *not* say that you can't get into trouble for what you say or do.

They are perfectly free to make comments about how they disapprove of "gay marriage". and they are free to claim it's part of their religion.

What they are *not* free to do is run a business and then discriminate against people for being gay.

Don't think that's right? What would you say if they'd refused to make a cake for an inter-racial couple. Or a black couple?

It's the *exact same thing*.

Also, they *could* have stayed in business and simply quit making wedding cakes for *anybody*.

As a person providing a service to the public, you are *not* allowed to refuse service because someone belongs to a group covered by anti-discrimination laws. Period.

Note: that doesn't mean you can't refuse service to a member of one of those groups. You just can do it *because* they belong to the group.

Refuse someone for being a woman, no. Refuse her because she's an arrogant pain-in-the-ass, no problem.

Also, just consider where allowing people to refuse service based on their religious beliefs goes. Christian Scientists (and members of some other churches, including one notorious local one) could refuse to sell medicine or to provide medical services.

Oh wait, some "Christians" do that already with regards to birth control, the morning after pill and other things. :-(

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. Otherwise the libel & slander laws wouldn't exist. Not would "inciting to riot".

Freedom of religion isn't a get out of jail free card either. You are free to live your life according to your beliefs. You are *not* free to try to force others to conform to your beliefs. Which is what those business owners are doing.

If your beliefs preclude "assisting" with some things, then you'd best not have a job where that could come up.

ps. The owners closed the bakery a couple years ago but are apparently still selling stuff from their house. That's skirting things, but as long as they do it in a way that they aren't serving "the public" but can claim it's "friends" they should be ok.

As of Midnight, recreational pot use is legal. *Getting* it is the tricky part.

Untiil y=the OLCC works out rules (many months down the road) there's no place to *buy* it.

So the only legal way to get it is to have someone giove it to you or to grow it yourself.

To celebrate legalization and mke a gesture at solving the "how to get it" Problem NORML was giving away pot at midnight. Supposedly. pot & seeds.

Silly me, I figured that if I left home at 10:30, I'd be ok.

I got to the Burnside bridge at 11. The giveaway was at the west end. When I realized I was riding past a *line*, I had to backtrack until I was three-quarters of the way to the *east* end.

There was a long, long wait. Eventually around onethings started moving faster. Which turned out to be because they were out of pot.

A guy with a bullhorn was saying to go to a medical marijuana dispensary near the Hawthorne bridge and they'd have pot to give out. He said "right now".

Well, there wasn't anybody there. Finally, at 10 to 2, someone arrived and said they'd be giving free pot to folks with medical marijuana cards.

I gave up and left. In part because I'd mostly been interested in the seeds.

So I headed home. I swung by Voodoo donuts, as it being after midnight I had money in my account and could spend some on a luxury. :-)

When I got home I texted Fay and she got her pick of the donuts as a birthday present. She picked a bacon maple bar.

That left another for me, plus two apple fritters and a mango tango (I'd been worrtied she'd want that, I'd wanted to get two but they only had one)

I shall be crashing soon. The ride, combine with all the standing in line has tired me out.

stats
total distance: 12.6 miles
max speed: 17.2 mph
moving time 2hr 15 min
moving average: 5.5 mph

I'm *highly* irritated afte reading all the BS coming from the anti marriage equality folks.

First off all the stuff about marriage being designed or set up by God.

Sorry, that is a tenet of your religion and as such *cannot* be a factor in *any* secular legal decision.

Second, there are *two* very different things referred to as "marriage. One is a something often down by a priest or other religious official and is often consided a sacrament by Christians.

Today's decision has *no* effect on that because it wasn't even *about* that.

Let me remind some folks that "gay marriages" were being performed by some *christian churcjhes 40 years ago. I attended a couple in the 1970s.

Their *church* considered them to be nmarried by *legally* they were not.

And that brings us to the *second* thing called "marriage". It's *legal* status. And has absolutely nothing to do with the religious kind of marriage. Yes, there's considerable overlap between the folks who are religiously married and those who are legally married. But that doesn't mean that one depends on the other.

The courts have *no* authoprity over the religious kind of marriage. But they are the *only* authoprity over the civil (lkegal) sort. Religions and religious tuypes need not apply.

Now, the next set of arguments are variously phrased as "judicial activism", "defying the will of the people", or "denying the democratic process".

These all depend on completely (and usually *deliberately) misunderstanding who the courts and legal system work.

The whole *point* of the Constitution (and amendments) is to set up things that are *not* subject to politics nor to "the will of the people". That's because the founders had lots of examples going clear back to the anmcient Greeks of what happens if you *don't say that there are things not subject to popular vote.

So unless you can amend the Constitution to sauy otherwise (and that's really hard *on purpose). If the Supreme Court rules on it, that's the end of it. And it is *not* denying voters rights. Because the decision is saying that the voters do not *have* the right to vote on this subject.

BTW, one of the things that pretty much guarantees a decision *against* you is if it is obvious that the law the SC is being asked to look at is based upon aniums with little or no other justification.

Reading the justifications for the "gay marriage" bans, and the arguments when thety were overturned (and especvialy the ranting today) makes it very clear that this *is* what's going on.

And the whole point of things like the Bill of Rights is to say that the majority can't vote to withold things from a minority just because they don't like them.
So a lot of folks ned to grow up and realize that you *don't* get to pass laws making your religious beliefs into legal restrictions.

And now the next phase in the war...

There have been a number of "religious freedom" arguments. And laws that claim to be for that.

Sorry, but your right to exercise your religion *ends* at the point you attempt to make someone else comply with your beliefs.

don't want to issue marriage licenses to gays? Don't get a job that involves marriage licenses.

Don't want to hand out birth control (or "morning after" pills)? Don't get a job as a pharmacist.

And BTW, there's actually evidence of organized efforts yo *get* people who are against those sorts of things into those sorts opf jobs specifically so they *could* deny various services to people.

And this "you can decide not to do your job if doing so violates your religious beliefs" is a *major* can of worms. Because *none* of these bills restrict it "gays".

Want a Christian Scientist caseworker deciding not to process your medical claims? It's *legal* under those laws!

(full disclosure: My mother was born in 1909. Her father immigrated from Ireland in the late 1800s. So I'm third generation Irish-American, and due to the large generation gap heard a *lot* of stuff folks farther removed from Ireland haven't)

Yesterday the local news anchors were joking around about how one hadn't had anything green handy so he'd decided to wear something "orangish". I forget his justification.

The other anchor (who'd grown up in the Boston area) mentioned that there that would have gotten him pinched.

Neither seemed aware of the historical context, which makes wearing orange on St Patrick's day a *very* strong political statement.

Go back a few decades and wearing orange would have gotten you a lot more than just "pinched".

For some context go read the wiki article on the Orange Order

But in essence wearing orange on St. Patricks day is right up there with dressing as a Klansman for the 50th Anniversary of the Selma March. Or wearing a Swastika at a Jewish event.

The Orangemen were effectively a protestant terrorist group, quite a bit like the KKK. They went after Catholics.

Mind you there's a lot of blame on both sides, but that doesn't make the stuff they did right.

45 years ago (June 28, 1969 at 1:20 am EDT) A bunch of transvestite, drag guens and other "undesirables" did something unexpected.

When the New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, they didn't go meekly and try to aavoid trouble.

Instead they fought back. And things quickly escalated to a riot.

The riot died down eventually only to revive the next night. Go google "Stoonewall Riots" for details.

Some things haven't changed. TG folks still gret tossed under the bus by the rest of the LGBT "community" when it looks like they'll be an embarsassment. Same goes for bisexuals.

But thing have improved a *lot*. Heck, at the current time marriage equality is either the law or the subject of a lawsuit to make it legal in every state of the US.

Maybe in another 5 years, things will be even better.

While looking up something else, I discovered that the "thimerisol" that so many folks are scared of in vaccines (and isn't even *in* them anymore, anyway) was widely sold under another name...

Merthiolate.

Yeah, the stuff that was widely used for *decades* as a topical antiseptic.

*That* is one of the things people are panicking over.

What was I looking up? Merbromin, better known by the trade name Mercurochrome. Another widely used topical antiseptic.

Why is neither sold in the US any longer? Because they got moved from the "generally accepted as safe" category (used for things that'd been in widespread use for a long time before FDA regs covered them) to "untested" (meaning nobody has done the extensive and expensive tests that the FDA requires for "new" drugs).

They got moved solely because they contain mercury.

It's unlikely that they'll get the tests done because it'd be horrendously expensive and since any patents expired a long time ago, anybody who paid for the testing would be out the money without being able to get it back from sales, since everybody else could under cut their prices because the *other* companies wouldn't have to pay off the testing costs.

I didn't check for thimerisol, but merbromin is still sold over the counter in every country except the US, Germany and France. So it's *obviously* horribly dangerous.

Yep, a punk band filmed a (very short) bit of porn on the front lawn of the "church" we love to hate.

http://gawker.com/punk-band-shoots-porn-film-on-front-lawn-of-westboro-ba-1440680143

I don't entirely approve, but then again, the odds of *that* ground actually being hallowed are slim.

Do I have to tell you this is Not Safe For Work?

.. it doesn't mean what you think it does.

Ok, Portland is one of the last places in the US to have open air water storage in an urban area. For the last seven years the city had been fighting an EPA's order to close or cover over the reservoirs at Mt. Tabor and Washington park.

A month or two back, the city announced that they were giving up the fight.

So a few days ago folks started protesting the decision (where have they been for the last seven years? And they need to talk to the EPA, not the city).

So they were gathered at Mt. Tabor, which happens to be a city park. As with most such, it closes from midnight to 5am. Some opf the protesters wouldn't leave and got arrested. At least of was one camera saying something like "so much for the first amendment".

Sorry, guy. Your arrest had nothing to do with the first amendment. The first amendment says the government can't stop you from speaking your mind. It *doesn't* allow you to speak your mind at a location that is closed to the public.

If you'd complied with the rules, you could have stood on the sidewlk just outside the park and kept right on protesting.

This sort of thing is *way* too common.

The first amendment also doesn't allow you to use someone else's property (real or virtual) to speak your mind. If they don't want you using their platform and kick you off, that's not a violation of your rights. In fact, your attempt to use it against their wishes is a violation of *their* rights.

Matter of act, as I had to explain *far* too many times back when I helped run a BBS, this gets into freedom of the *press*. The owner of the "press" (BBS, web site, blog, newspaper, TV station, etc) is the one who gets to determine what can and can't be said there, You want to spread your view using that sort of media? Fine, you are perfectly free to start your *own* site/paper/whatever.

But nobody owes you a platform. And even in "public" spaces, you are subject to rules like hours of access, noise laws, and the like.

Frankly, I sometimes think we could use a "freedom of silence" or some such. That is, a specifically enumerated right to be able to tell folks "I'm not interested" or "I've heard it before" and then they'd have to *shut up* and quit bothering you. Yeah, it might incresase the problems with apathy, but frankly, if you are accosting folks who'd tell you that, you are wasting your time anyway.