Apple Urges Arizona Governor To Veto Anti-Gay Legislation 917
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "According to NBC, Apple has confirmed that it urged Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to veto a bill that would allow business owners with strongly held religious beliefs to deny service to gays and lesbians. Last November Tim Cook announced that Apple was building a sapphire glass plant in Mesa, AZ, that would bring 2,000 new jobs to the state. 'Apple is indisputably one of the world's most innovative companies and I'm thrilled to welcome them to Arizona,' said Gov. Brewer at the time. 'Apple will have an incredibly positive economic impact for Arizona and its decision to locate here speaks volumes about the friendly, pro-business climate we have been creating these past four years.' According to Philip Elmer-DeWitt, it sounds like Tim Cook may be having second thoughts about how 'friendly' and 'pro-business' the climate in Arizona really is."
It's because we allow freedom of religion (Score:0, Interesting)
This really is dangerous, as religion should be contained and eliminated from society.
Religion serves no positive purpose, and only works to hinder the good that government itself does in socialization.
Eventually religion will die, due to the socialization that the world is currently experiencing due to communications technology. Can you imagine a middle eastern person in 23 AD learning about science and pornography and art and cultures?
Some of the shit we know & see these days must be completely insane to the mind of a primitive person that would actually thinks religion is real.
And of course, you'll notice that religion is strong in non-socialized rural environments, where people don't get to normally interact with other races & cultures. Once they actually start to interact with black or gay people they end up figuring out that they're not so bad, and that their religion was probably lying to them all along.
Re:First blacks, (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of the religions around here are against this sort of discrimination.
Me, I'm sick and tired of the piecemeal approach. You can only be legally protected from discrimination if your identity group gets enough political clout to get on the "race, religion, national origin,..." list.
It's still legal to discriminate against people for being fat, supporting the Green Party, or any other thing that's not on the list.
Why isn't it just illegal for employers and service providers to discriminate against people for every irrelevant thing?
Re:First blacks, (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:First blacks, (Score:5, Interesting)
It's obvious to me -- in that it trips my bullshit meter -- that posting a sign at the Circle K on the corner that says, "Sorry, no homos." is wrong - deeply wrong - but I can't make a logical argument against the business that doesn't get into businesses being dependent on roads and police and fire and other government services, and as such, the government can make rules that force you to cater to your enemies. Businesses need licenses, and depend on state services -- after that, I got nothing. Let the shitty businesses out themselves as close-minded bigots.
It's sort of a tragedy of the commons (it looks like tyranny of small decisions [wikipedia.org] is a more accurate name). If you allow discrimination in "private" business, you reduce the availability of some product or service to the group that you're discriminating against. If the availability gets reduced enough, you begin to get a class of people that can't participate in the economy, or even in society at all, because there's simply no way for everyone in that group to get what they're trying to buy, even if they have the money. Obviously this is a much bigger issue when it comes to basic necessities like food and housing, but it can still cause problems for general consumer goods and services.
Re:First blacks, (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, find me a case of where a church was required to host a gay wedding and I will help fund their defense. Churches are places of worship and are protected. The only cases of things like that are cases where they did not limit access except to gay couples and I have never seen it with a church. Only with the auxiliary services they offer- Adoption, Housing, etc. In most of those cases they took Federal money. The issue was not that they could not limit it, it was that they could not limit it while using MY MONEY. If YOUR money cannot pay or abortions or condoms then MY MONEY can not pay for things I can not use.
Having gotten married as a gay man I can speak on this in a way you probably can not- first person. My friend and his husband were turned away (well my husband and I on their behalf since we were doing the planning), and in one instance we were ok with it in another we were not. Our first choice for caterer turned us away by saying they would rather not do it and why but that they would. They then kindly offered us a referral and helped us get started with them. The second was for the venue, they just said no, rudely and then began to tell us why we were horrible people. Them I referred to the state to deal with the consequences. The first realized their obligation and if no one else would have done the wedding they would have- because they realized that they would never want to be in the same place we were.
At the end of the day if you want to serve the public, then serve the public. If you want to serve only your church, then start a membership, charge a membership fee, and serve only members.
As for traditional... Christianity is only ~2014 years old and marriage predated that in the time of the Greeks, the Romans, and in places with no mon-theistic gods so to claim it as a religious ceremony of tradition with limits can only be done if you ignore history. Many cultures allowed for plural marriages, and others allowed for extra marital relationships, and multigender marriages. Heck some are even described in the Bible. So for those that argue tradition I ask.
Who's tradition? From what time frame? In what culture? As interpreted by whom?
Homosexuality was ok with the Greeks... Can we go back to that time?