Via the Plank, a sure sign you have lost the argument over gay marriage if this is what you are trotting out:
Kevin Smith, director of Cornerstone Policy Research, the group that led the fight against same-sex marriage in New Hampshire, said Mr. Lynch had misled state residents.
“However the governor wishes to couch his decision on this,” Mr. Smith said, “the fact remains that by signing this bill, he will have broke his trust with New Hampshire voters after repeatedly stating that he opposes gay marriage. This amendment does nothing to protect the religious liberties of independent business owners, such as photographers and caterers, who in good conscience cannot perform their services for same-sex marriage ceremonies.”
Think of the caterers! The defense of marriage has now undeniably morphed into absurdist farce.
TenguPhule
You only realized this now?
TenguPhule
cleek
sounds like a golden opportunity for the free market to work its magic.
Shinobi
Right, because if someone attempts to hire you to perform a service, you are REQUIRED BY LAW to perform said service.
TenguPhule
Actually you are required by law not to discriminate against your customers.
KG
“Hi, will you cater our wedding with 500 guests?”
“Sure, 500 guests should cost about $10,000.”
“We’re gay, you know.”
“Oh, in that case, no.”
“Ok, well, we’ll go to the guy down the street that will.”
Problem solved, I think.
Zifnab
Wow, really? This will be a problem because it doesn’t include an amendment to specifically condone business bigotry.
I think the simplest way to solve this problem is from a libertarian angle. Just stick these kids in front of your store
http://edkrebs.com/herb/god-hates-fags-308.jpg
and I’m betting you won’t have to worry about picking up any undesirable business. See? Free Speech meets the Free Market. Everyone wins.
In the mean time, everyone else will have to just get by on gay-friendly caterers and photographers. Which will be a struggle because its always so damn hard to find a gay wedding planner.
KG
@ 5: yeah, but proving that is a hell of a lot more difficult (and costly and time consuming) than it’s worth. Those cases usually arise where there is already a valid contract and then they service provider changes its mind (example: one person comes in, signs a contract and it doesn’t come up that it’s a big fat gay wedding, then caterer finds out and says they won’t do it). Unless you’re talking bar/club/restaurant/store that tells people they can’t even come in to begin with.
Tonal Crow
A wingnut sez:
Fix’d. Didn’t we hash through this issue years ago? Why are the ‘phobes recycling the same arguments the racists used against the 1964 Civil Rights Act?
asiangrrlMN
I thought you meant Kevin Smith of indie film fame for a minute there. And, John, I love you for working in Eddie Izzard into your title.
As for the actual argument, I go with KG on this in his first comment. If people don’t want to make a gazillion dollars off gay people getting married, they don’t have to cater a gay couple’s wedding. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of gay wedding planners, florists, caterers around, anyway.
As Margaret Cho said (and I would link, but YouTube is being fussy), gay florists, makeup artists, wedding planners, etc., should boycott straight marriages. “If I can’t get married, you can’t get married. You think you can do your makeup yourself? Aw, boo hoo. Who needs a floral arrangement now?!?”
Personally, I would not want to use someone who didn’t want to serve me to the best of his or her ability. They don’t want my money? Fine. However, I do believe in separation of state and church. So, whatever. I have a hunch that when money is involved, most people who work in the industry will find a way to quiet their consciences on the issue of gay marriage.
Martin
It would be fun to start a campaign for pharmacists and other services to deny services to Christians, that it violates some equally arbitrary religious liberty.
Dennis-SGMM
“Religious liberties.” Isn’t that an oxymoron?
MR Bill
Horrors! You mean all member of the public are covered in a public accommodations law?
It’s like Lester Maddox complaining about serving those nasty black people in his restaurant. Next thing you’ll have to serve Jews.
Tonal Crow
@Martin:
Yeah, something like a prohibition on assisting in cannibalism (look up “transsubstantiation” if you don’t get it).
used to be disgusted
@11: Srsly. Personally, I have no problem with civil unions. But if Evangelicals are allowed to marry, I want to make sure that there’s a special clause protecting my right to refuse to attend. Or send gifts.
cleek
only the free-range ones, though. the factory-farmed Jews have no flavor.
JGabriel
Kevin Smith:
If Republicans start whining that they’ll move out of states that have gay marriage, can we call it “Right Flight”?
.
dadanarchist
This is totally off-topic, and maybe it has been brought up before, but did anybody else know that Ron Paul has a son named “Rand.” That is some next-level wingnuttery.
Apparently, Rand is running for the Senate.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/scorecard/0509/Ron_Pauls_son_running_for_Senate.html
Quaker in a Basement
Cake or death?
Cake, please.
Martin
Actually, you do.
You can refuse to do a wedding, but you can’t refuse to do it because they are gay. (Actually, you probably can because I doubt that gays are a protected group, but that’s the issue, whether gays would be a protected group, like blacks, etc.)
Tonal Crow
@JGabriel:
Or “Going, Going, Gone Galt?”
John Hamilton Farr
John, this gay marrriage shift gives me more hope than any other “issue” these days. Actually, none of the others gives me any frigging hope, but this one does. I get choked up every time I read about another state seeing the light. Oh, yes.
It’s that significant, because there isn’t any big “movement” to legalize gay marriage! Oh sure, among a number of activists, but well under the collective’s radar. Rather, this is happening on a deeper level, where people unconsciously find themselves just doing the right thing and moving on.
Evangelical on a Soapbox
@Quaker in a Basement:
Cake or death?
Death, please, as long as it’s ostentatious faux martyrdom.
JGabriel
dadanarchist:
Yes, and Paul Ayn is pissed.
.
NonyNony
Honestly I have to say – I REALLY don’t think I’d want someone “forced” to cater my wedding. These people are going to be in charge of your food, you know. If I found out a prospective caterer had a religious objection to my wedding, I’d thank them for their time, cross them off my list and move to the next one. And it doesn’t matter what their objection is – I don’t want someone who I’m trusting to feed my guests to be fuming about having to do it and wanting to sabotage the whole thing. That would just be kind of stupid.
asiangrrlMN
@dadanarchist: Yes. He was on Rachel’s show last night, and I just couldn’t watch him.
@Martin: When W. did his asshole move of making a law that said a religious person didn’t have to disclose his religious beliefs before being hired for a medical service job and then couldn’t be fired if he refused to serve someone (read, teh gays) because of his beliefs, I said that I was going to get hired at a Catholic hospital and start denying treatment to Catholics because of my religion.
I wouldn’t really do this, but sometimes, I just get so damn frustrated at the idiocy.
Still, I really don’t think there are going to be too many caterers, florists, etc., who will turn down the green just because the couple is homogeneous.
Quaker in a Basement
Caterers, florists, and photographers?
I defy anyone to find me a gay couple that doesn’t already know dozens of each.
JGabriel
NonyNony:
That’s probably the most effective tactic. Before you know it, you’ll have fundie caterers screaming, “You can’t keep me from catering your faggy wedding! That’s discrimination!”
And they’ll be totally sincere.
.
asiangrrlMN
@Martin: Oh, I know, legally, they do. I’m just saying, if they want to cut off their nose to spite their faces, well, I don’t give a fuck.
@Quaker in a Basement: Death. No, no, wait. I meant cake!
Ahhhh, you said death first!
Well, I meant cake.
Oh, all right. You’re lucky we’re the Church of England!
gbear
Cake for me too please! Lots of frosting. mmmm
What, does he think that marriage licences are rationed and that when teh gays take all of them the straight couples will just have to live in sin until more are available?
Marriage licences are like Dorrito’s. They’ll make more.
asiangrrlMN
@gbear: You are teh funny. This thread is killing me. More humor, please!
TenguPhule
And they come in all different flavors.
Also, it’s always better to have more then one.
MR Bill
The boyfriend is going to ask for the Cool Ranch flavor wedding so we can wear the Stetsons and boots…
Punchy
Apple Jews or Orange Jews?
Jay
In Oklahoma we have a very popular bakery/catering joint that has a unique way of making its stand against gay marriage. They will do cakes for gay commitment ceremonies, but will not put images of two women or two men touching or looking at each other on cakes of any sort. This way they’re not descriminating against anyone, but they’re still being douchebags for Jesus.
With ingenuity like this who needs religious protections?
spudvol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNjcuZ-LiSY
terry chay
Actually John this is a big deal among wedding photographers (and I assume the same across the wedding industry).
For some reason they equate not being allowed to discriminate against gays as like a restaurant being told they have to serve someone without a shirt. It has a surprising amount of traction among my libertarian friends—I used to live in Silicon Valley so I have a lot of these “libertarian” friends.
It’s a subtle thing and a weird debate point of right wing wankery—I sort of shrug my shoulders and wait for the clue to get pounded into these people.
It’ll happen in a few years and they’ll be rightly embarrassed.
feebog
Oh crap. All those Gay Wedding Receptions are going to have no host bars.
slag
Not to generalize about the folks in the catering or photography industries, but am I the only one who suspects that gay people may actually be slightly over-represented in said industries?
mcc
Here’s an idea. How about we set up a website where homophobes in the catering or photography business can register as homophobes, and then we’ll try to get everyone to boycott them because they’re homophobes. Everybody wins?!
PhoenixRising
Honestly, I’d have been more than satisfied with the first one, had it not been invalidated by my state.
Having attained more than one with the same spouse, I feel certain that it would have been way better to only have one. And in that way, they are unlike Doritos.
However, we did get to try two very different flavors, which made it special.
Long Line of Happy Gays at Courthouse flavor was really very different than Six Sessions of Religious Counseling for the Happy Couple flavor, and not just because that second one involved a really fluffy dress and chiffon.
Try ’em all and post your review here!
slag
@terry chay: So wait, the libertarian point of view is that we need government to tell us who can and cannot get married in order to protect the wedding industry?
I think matter and anti-matter just collided in my brain.
PeakVT
The defense of [ traditional ] marriage has now undeniably morphed into absurdist farce.
And soon will be confined to the South. Like Republicans.
asiangrrlMN
@Punchy: Ding ding ding! Winner!
@MR Bill:
Crap. Now I want Doritos. Aaaaaargh!
@Jay: Nice. Douchebags for Jesus. I think I will steal that.
Indylib
OT Top House GOP Recruiter Wants Pro-Choice Candidates
And the idjit backs off and apologizes to Rush “Lardass” Limbaugh in 5..4..3..
TenguPhule
Same sex couples will soon be the only reliable authorities on weddings, having experienced so many to the same person.
All Gay Justices of the Peace, the ultimate leveler of the playing field.
Punchy
In England, they suck on fags at straight weddings, too.
asiangrrlMN
@slag: Dat’s ok. The Davinci Code dude can help you out with that. P.S. There are also many LGBT folk in theatre.
@PhoenixRising: I haven’t tried even one, and I’m pretty content in that. I like being the only chip in my bag.
Chips. Doritos. Want. Oooho, shiny thing!
Michael D.
Yeah, gonna be a real problem for caterers.
Generally, caterers will have about as much problem working a gay wedding as the guy who’s hired to do the hair and make-up.
Betsy
@slag:
No, the libertarians just don’t like being told they can’t discriminate against people. Most of them don’t like ANY nondiscrimination legislation, not just gay-related.
MR Bill
NonyNony@25:
I’m trying to imagine “forced catering” but it just looks like Monty Python or SNL:
“This is Jane Baptist, hard at work getting a wedding cake ready.
She doesn’t know it, but she’s about to be FORCED TO CATER A GAY WEDDING!”
(Women, evidently lesbians, are sneaking up on her with submachine guns..)
MikeJ
I pointed this out at LGM. The legality of marriage has nothing to do with discrimination law. Could you sue a photographer who wouldn’t shoot a civil union? How about a state unsanctioned commitment ceremony, which in fact is what the case they always bring up was about. In the actual case there was no legal wedding, yet the photographer still lost. Legalizing marriage doesn’t change anything.
RandyH
Think of the Florists!
Senyordave
No, the libertarians just don’t like being told they can’t discriminate against people. Most of them don’t like ANY nondiscrimination legislation, not just gay-related.
Not that an argument matters to many people, but when I hear that I usually ask what if every company in the US decided they didn’t want to hire “fill in the blanks for any group”?
They would have whole towns in the south bringing back the Sundown Laws.
burnspbesq
@ Mr Bill:
Just promise me you won’t show up at the altar looking like Billy Riggins (see “Friday Night Lights,” season 3 finale).
terry chay
@slag: Welcome to the “libertarian” (in quotes) view that is pro forma of Silicon Valley (shall I call it Nerdistan?). I can’t tell you how many of these “libertarians” argued about the evils of “card check” with me. *sigh*
In their view a business should have the right to refuse service for any reason and “the market will sort it out.” In my view, that doesn’t explain why the “market” never did sort out the fact that black infants were dying at a rate 20x higher than white infants up until Civil Rights Act got tied with the Medicare Act (forcing hospitals in the South to desegregate if they wanted Medicare dollars). What’s to believe the market is going to sort out the business of people ripping off other people for a bunch of photos?
If you want to understand where this argument comes from, just do some research on “Elane Photography.” It’s a big deal to a small segment of people (religious conservative wedding professionals).
demimondian
I’m surprised that nobody has pointed out that The Cake is a Lie
anonevent
John,
Do you ever have a title you go looking for a story to use the title on?
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@demimondian:
Nice! A Portal reference.
I bet the new line will be that same-sex marriage is a backdoor waiting to be exploited by illegal immigrants, since those dang Mexicans will have twice as large a marriage pool in the quest for American citizenship. Think of all the fake gay marriages!
asiangrrlMN
@The Cat Who Would Be Tunch: I, myself, am already involved in a fake gay-marriage, kind of, to TattooSydney on this very blog. It could happen TO YOU.
I also caved and bought the damn Cool Ranch Doritos. You people are evil.
MR Bill
@ burnspbesq
Not bloody likely.
@ The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
Aww mann, “GAy Green Card” is a Jack Black Vehicle…
‘Muy mas macho Manuel gays it up for the Woman and County he loves”. I’m casting John Goodman as his husband..
MTiffany
If you replace “same-sex” with “mixed-race” it’s like it’s 1950 all over again! And we know how the Republicans think America was at its best in 1950.
Religion is just a convenient justification for letting people rationalize their petty bigotries. It’s time to call the religious zealots out on their bigoted bullshit.
Zifnab
@burnspbesq:
Not hickish enough. He still had sleeves.
Zifnab
@MTiffany:
You don’t have to go farther than my home town of Houston to see it in action. Mega-church superstar Joel Osteen is a freak’n industry down here. The guy has to be worth over $100 million easy and I’d be surprised if he paid a dime of that in taxes.
Dr. Loveless
@Zifnab:
FTW.
demimondian
@asiangrrlMN: In fact, I have been asked to change my internally visible job title to “Portal to Evil”.
— demi “Yeah, it’s a cool place to work” mondian
Jeff Berardi
Well, I’m a photographer myself, and I personally know no less than six gay photographers; and I think only eight gay people total.
Let me just give a brief lecture on the wedding photography industry. It. Is. Competitive. The real pros are besieged by a thousand dicks on Craigslist who own a DSLR and think they’re Annie fuckin’ Lebowitz, trying to shoot weddings for what a quarter or an eighth of what a real professional has to charge to make ends meet. On top of that the high-end clients that are the life blood of the industry are drying up in this economy. So you’ve got more and more people chasing less and less money. It’s a rough time to be a wedding photographer.
The point is, refusing to do weddings is basically just saying “I’d like a better, more enlightened person to have this business instead”. So knock yourselves out, idiots. The competition will thank you.
A la lanterne les aristos!
See now, when ‘Prop 8 The Musical‘ touched on this subject, they were *kidding*.
gex
@KG: Bully for you if you live someplace where there will always be an alternate that will perform the service for you. But there are larger parts of America where all providers of a service will refuse to serve gay people. What are you, are Republican? Is the market the answer to EVERYTHING?
Mnemosyne
@Jeff Berardi:
I can’t help wondering why that idiot photographer in New Mexico had never heard of saying, “Sorry, I’m booked that day” if she didn’t want to do a gay wedding. Why e-mail back and say, “No gay weddings”?
When we (a straight couple) were getting married, we contacted 6 photographers and interviewed 3 face-to-face before making our decision. We spent a full 1/3rd of our small budget on them, but it was well worth it.
Tattoosydney
@asiangrrlMN:
No one told me we had to eat Doritos! Yuck.
Little Dreamer
Oh for crying out loud, the level of hatred coming at regular folks from the wingers is getting really ridiculous.
I realize it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion… but, is it still legal to not cater to bigots? I think that’s going to be a new campaign I’m going to set up. I wonder how legal it would be to place a sign saying “We do not serve bigots” in the window of an establishment, and how many bigots would challenge it?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
As Demi pointed out, the cake is a lie.
And wraparound sunglasses! Nothing says COOL like some wraps.
Fixed.
Shirts are optional, being gay is not.
They also have been known to use a bundle of faggots to start a fire.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Translation: “Waaah! Business owners who aren’t bigoted knobs will have an advantage over business owners who are bigoted knobs!”
I for one am looking forward to the NOM commercial. It’ll feature a florist, a photographer and a caterer huddled in a storm cellar while outside a big gay hurricane tears everything to shit. One by one they’ll recite the terror they felt as they watched tens, then hundreds, then thousands of dollars in business go to competitors. “There’s a storm coming, and I just crapped my pants. Also.”
Anne Laurie
Hey, those ‘arguments’ worked perfectly for, like, almost 100 years! The Talibangelicals, being simple creatures of habit (like your dog) manage to overlook the fact that the arguments haven’t worked for the last 30 or 40 years. Or maybe they’ve convinced themselves that it’s still 1958 in Heartland America(tm).
Wile E. Quixote
@John Cole
First they came for the caterers, but I said nothing, because I was not a, no wait, fuck that, I’m not going to go there. Jesus fuck, I want to set up a catering business (and now that I’ve been laid off I do have the time) where I exercise my religious liberty by discriminating against Christofascists? I can see it now
On second thought I’ll just look for another IT job, I worked for a caterer and it ain’t easy.
Wile E. Quixote
@Jeff Berardi
I think that “A Thousand Dicks on Craigslist Who Think They’re Annie Fuckin’ Liebowitz” would be an awesome name for a band.
Steeplejack
@Zifnab:
Win.
Steeplejack
Win.