Business owners cited religious reasons to deny service to black people too. The KKK was founded as a nominally Christian organization.
Folks who fought for Jim Crow laws did not view themselves as willfully evil people who discriminated for no reason. They viewed their own support of segregation as a principled moral stance. That's why they fought so hard.
Gay marriage was an obvious win for individual rights and liberty. This issue is different: the discussion isn't around whether bars should be allowed to kick out LGBT patrons, it's whether bakers and photographers should be compelled to offer services which might be against their conscience. That's a important right that could be taken away, so it isn't obvious compelling bakers not to turn away LGBT clients is a net win for individual rights.
It's a tough issue, but so are all civil rights laws. They all force a business owner to serve or accommodate customers they might not want to. Calling something a religious objection shouldn't be a universal pass IMO.
Among other reasons, what do you do when people start inventing religions to get out of doing things they don't want to? Should the government be in the position of deciding which religions are "real"? Just look at the history of Scientology or modern Satanism for examples.
For me this issue is so frustrating because in the gospels, Jesus repeatedly went out of his way to accept and bless society's cast-offs. He tells his followers to turn the other cheek and be wary of imposing judgment.
Yet today, people who supposedly follow his teachings are eager to do the casting off themselves, based on a few sketchy line readings from elsewhere in the Bible. I just don't understand how someone can read the New Testament and come away with "be mean to gay people" as a priority message.
what is the fundamental difference between a bar "offering service" to patrons, and a photographer "offering service"?
Perhaps more importantly, the difference between that and a landlord "offering service"?
We talk about the wedding cakes and the photographs, but it's important to remember that less than 50 years ago, blacks were constantly turned away from houses in nice neighborhoods for similar objections.
Your comment shows that you have not done even the most basic research into different kinds of Old Testament law, their function, how they relate to the New Covenant, underlying principles from Creation, etc. For example, how do you reconcile Christians eating non-kosher meat, since it is also forbidden in the OT?
You haven't even begun to consider these issues, yet here you are issuing sweeping proclamations about the contents and motivations of other people's hearts. Dare I say that you are not fostering anti-Christian feelings because of your understanding, but you trawl archaic text to justify anti-Christian feelings that already exist.
> For example, how do you reconcile Christians eating non-kosher meat, since it is also forbidden in the OT?
Because they don't want to follow that rule, and they see other Christians not following that rule.
Under your interpretation (that Christian attitudes are recieved from the Bible) Christian law would have remained largely static for the past 1600 years since the Bible was compiled, which is clearly not the case. For example, the treatment of adultery and usury have changed unrecognisably.
Having either attended or helped perform mass for half of my life, I can tell you for a fact that most Christians have no interest at all in treating the Bible as 'law' and instead use it for inspiration, comfort, or occasionally a crutch when making tough decisions. They recieve their morality and prejudices from themselves and from their peers.
If anyone was actually interested in treating the Bible as law then Theology would be a legal field not an academic one.
> ... you trawl archaic text to justify anti-Christian feelings that already exist.
Nonsense, I haven't said a single anti-christian word... and my pre-existing feelings are against the rationalisation of bigotry being treated as special, or worthy.
Prejudice (and we all have plenty) is to be examined and squashed, not protected.
> ... how they relate to the New Covenant
This is topical. Jesus teaches "love thy neighbour", and the Good Samaritan, lessons that we could all let a little closer to our hearts in times of wall-building, rejection of refugees, and threats of war.
