@bo
"I would be interested to see how many Christians who support self-identification within their religion are against self-identification between genders."
This seems oddly vapid. For myself, I don't see why one's view on whether it is acceptable to identify and express as a Christian should have any causal connection to one's view on whether it is acceptable to identify and express as transgendered.

Put another way, I think all of the following can be internally consistent with themselves: 1) affirming the legitimacy of another's identify as Christian and affirming the legitimacy of another's identity as transgendered, 2) affirming the legitimacy of another's identify as Christian and denying the legitimacy of another's identity as transgendered, 3) denying the legitimacy of another's identify as Christian and affirming the legitimacy of another's identity as transgendered, 4) denying the legitimacy of another's identify as Christian and denying the legitimacy of another's identity as transgendered.

The fact that I am a Christian who falls into category #2 is, as far as I can see, fairly uninteresting on this point.

Admittedly, I also was less than 100% certain of what "self-identification within their religion" was supposed to mean exactly.

Also, strike out "legitimacy" and replace with "acceptability" in my above.

"2) affirming the legitimacy of another's identify as Christian and denying the legitimacy of another's identity as transgendered,"

The irony, of course, is that despite public rhetoric, most of the liberals around here believe Christians should not have the right to express their self-identifty with their religion. Well...maybe not most...but the Tranny community certainly believes that my existence as a religious person should be seondary, and that their existence as a tranny should dictate how I live my life. If I have a private business, they believe I should be forced to provide them service, even if it is against my beliefs.

Now, before all you twadling morons get all up in arms and tell me how wrong I am...

...you are completely and 100% wrong.

Wal-Mart decides WHAT products it chooses to sell.

Automotive suppliers decide what products they chooses to make, and the they also decide what companies they will sell their products TO! That's right...if GM comes to my company and says they want to buy a certain product from us, WE CAN SAY NO.

The hair cutting place down the road can say NO when a customer comes in and demands a certain type of air care.

So....truth is that it is STANDARD PRACTICE for businesses to CHOOSE WHO TO DO BUSINESS WITH and WHAT PRODUCTS TO SELL.

i.e. I you come in an demand that I bake you a cake with a theme that I do not provide to any other customer....it is well within the practice of every other industry to say, "Sorry...I've never provided that type of cake....I think I will pass on this business opportunity..."

The LGBT community will decide to sue me, deny me my right to my belief, and force me to do something I don't want to do.

This is totally contrary to the way business across this country work.

Yes...tranny's think that Christians should NOT have a right to self-identify...or that at the very least, they think the expression of Christianity is an insignificant point in a person's life, and it should be subjugated to any other person's existance and demands.

Since krellin doesn't know what self-identification means within the context of Christianity, he goes on a rant about nothing instead of asking for clarification. As a result, he completely missed the point. Maybe next time he'll ask for clarification. Probably not. I would appreciate it, though; it makes for some two-way civil discourse as opposed to krellin shouting at his computer screen.

Self-identification within Christianity is the idea that someone can be Christian without any regard for their beliefs or whether or not they belong to any major (or minor) Christian church. It suggests that someone who claims to have come to Christ is Christian, whether they are the perfect human being or a serial murderer, and whether they know about God as a trinity or if they even believe in a universal God at all. Many Christians, generally for the better, are growing more inclusive within their religion, thereby diversifying the religion and also destroying the idea that the various institutions within Christianity decide who is in and who is out. It is self-identification that has allowed hundreds of smaller denominations of Christianity to exist (Mormons, Amish, etc.) on top of the three major denominations.

The same principle applies to gender. It's analogous. If one accepts that gender is a) a choice, one that, like our name and maybe our religion, we are typically assigned at or around our birth, b) a social construct that has been ruled over by various institutions for many generations, and c) should not be ruled over by said institutions anymore, then accepting the reality that some people's gender and sex don't match up is not difficult. This is the same principle of self-identification.

In general, it falls in line with the "who the fuck am I to decide for someone else" mindset. It's quite libertarian (lowercase L, though it should be applicable for the uppercase L too).

As an aside, private businesses have always been afforded the right to refuse patrons for just about any reason. However, private businesses are also subject to the laws of the land, which may or may not, depending on the place, include anti-discrimination laws, and if they break those, they should be punished accordingly. If a private business owner has the audacity to refuse to serve someone based on such petty moral disagreement, specifically in your example over the fact that the patron is gay, then the rest of the community and whoever else feels like chiming in also has the right to shit on that business's porch. Two-way street. How joyful our world would be if we had to drive all the way around the whole fucking thing to park one block to the east.

I am interested to note that Krellin things the Christian church is primarily a business and should be regarded as such.

* thinks

Also it may be of interest to Krellin and other US-based contributors that over here in the UK and EU, businesses do *not* have the right to refuse to do business with certain people on grounds of belief. You may find this case interesting:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-25119158

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/world-news/belfast-ashers-bakery-gay-marriage-cake-found-guilty

In the UK a baker is prosecuted for not writing a statement in support of gay marriage on a cake. In my view Bert and Ernie on top of a cake are one thing, but should a confectioner be forced to write a statement on a cake that they do not hold to?
In my view absolutely not, it was as we say in the UK, ''a wind up''.

Meanwhile in Florida a man asks a bakery to inscribe an anti-gay marriage statement on a cake:

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/this-evangelist-asked-a-gay-bakery-to-make-a-traditional-marriage-cake.-now

One can imagine all sorts of scenarios with African-American novelty cake bakers and Confederate flags, Muslim bakers and images of pigs, Jewish bakers and white supremacist cakes......the list is endless. Time for some common sense here I think; although that often eludes the lawyers and the shrill vocal activists.

@Jamie - I know exactly what self-identification as a Christian means. I understand the difference between "bring a Christian" and being the member of a Church, which generally has a loose relationship with "being a Christian", but one doors nor guarantee another.

You intentionally misunderstand and prefer every word I speak, because your mind is preferred, and you are more interested in conflict than understanding.

Jamie, you will forever be a deviant. I pity you, truly.

@Jamie - I guarantee you that businesses in the UK can refuse to do business with other businesses.

As I pointed out, in the most basic example, a grocery store that refuses to carry a product that a customer requests has refused to do business with someone.

For example, a grocery store that refuses to carry Halal food is refusing to serve Muslims.

But do ignorant years like you, who are only interested in narrow-minded perverse interpretations of situations in order to attack Christians, you will blind your eyes to this TRUTH I have made obvious.

But you continue to be the simple-minded, head-in-the-sand child toy choose to be, while the rest of us laugh at you.

Refuse to do business with certain people, that should have said.

krellin, you are flat out wrong.

If you are a privately-owned business which is a place of public accommodation, you have to conduct business with all members of the public so long as their behavior isn't detrimental to your business (e.g. drunks or belligerents affecting other customers). If you are private club, then you can restrict your business to dealing with members only. Businesses do not have to contract with other businesses, but if someone from a rival firm walks in the door to a place of public accommodation, they have to serve that person as an individual.

Go reread Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

http://www.justice.gov/crt/title-ii-civil-rights-act-public-accommodations

@Jeff
Right, you finally convinced me to read the law.

It's not clear that sexual orientation or gender identity would be covered by it as classes protected against discrimination. The text specifies "race, color, religion, or national origin," and the Supreme Court has certainly not (well, not yet) recognized any LGBT group as belonging to a suspect classification that deserves strict scrutiny.

When Justice Kennedy wrote the ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, he very oddly but very definitely avoided grouping same-sex couples into such a suspect classification. He simply said that an expansion of the term "liberty" meant that they could get married -- which was one of the reasons that the opinion felt so weakly-grounded. I don't know the English or European case law (or statute or constitutional law) on these points, though it seems that they're a good bit stronger, but speaking for the United States, refusing to provide wedding services to a gay couple is not a federal offense. This is a major reason that the service companies in question have been brought to heel by authorities at the STATE level ONLY. It's also why the controversial bills that were proposed in various states earlier in the year, allowing the owners' religious beliefs to take precedence over the requirement to provide service, would have been permissible.

It's also worth noting that service companies of this sort (bakeries, florists, hardware stores, even supermarkets) are not covered under the Title II (though perhaps there is case law to expand the statute or other laws have been passed in the meantime; I'm not well-versed on that area of the law), and so while there ARE limits to the type of refusal-of-service that public companies can engage in, there are also limits to the type of companies that are so limited and there are limits to the limits that pertinent companies are bound by.

Places of public accommodation cannot arbitrarily refuse service to customers. There must be well-founded *business* reasons for doing so. Here is one attorney's blog describing this in more detail:

https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-right-to-refuse-service-can-a-business-refuse-service-to-someone-because-of-appearance

Title II of the 1964 CRA only specified a few protected classes because it would not have passed if other types, such as homosexuals, were included. Society was not ready for that change. It is now.

And so, when there are few more contradictory cases from the circuit courts, the SCOTUS will take up this generation's civil rights issue and knock it down in line in accordance with the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. It is just a matter of time. The trend is clear.

"Places of public accommodation cannot arbitrarily refuse service to customers."
Well, actually they can -- IF THE CUSTOMER IS NOT PART OF A PROTECTED CLASS! The piece you've provided gives further support to this, in fact explicitly states it: "If there is no state, federal or local law prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations against a particular group of people, then you can legally refuse to serve that group of people."

"Title II of the 1964 CRA only specified a few protected classes because it would not have passed if other types, such as homosexuals, were included. Society was not ready for that change. It is now.

And so, when there are few more contradictory cases from the circuit courts, the SCOTUS will take up this generation's civil rights issue and knock it down in line in accordance with the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. It is just a matter of time. The trend is clear."
Okay, so now we come to your point. Non-discrimination against LGBT groups SHOULD be banned nationwide (the present state of the legal regime to the contrary in some parts of the country notwithstanding) and it WILL be banned nationwide. And it's highly galling to have to wait for it in the meantime. Fair enough. But please be patient and don't overstate the reality of the present day.

Question, since I like to do this: what's your theory underlying how we determine which groups should count as protected classes (I'm presupposing that there is a limit to the number of protected classes that are actually possible)? I'm not sure there is a well-developed one in American jurisprudence -- it seems as though the courts muddle their way through as time goes on and reflect where the culture or certain subsections of it are moving, though, again, I'm not a lawyer (constitutional or otherwise) and I may be selling the courts short. For myself, I'm pretty sure I don't have such a theory, probably not even really the rudiments of one. Have you thought about it and got some ideas?

The article states this: "The answer is that you can refuse to serve someone even if they’re in a protected group, but the refusal can’t be arbitrary and you can’t apply it to just one group of people." It further gives examples of "A couple of recent court cases illustrate the fine line between discrimination and a justifiable refusal of service."

So while gays are not a protected class, that does not mean that you can refuse to serve them if it is "pretext for discriminating against gays."

The above is not overstating the reality of the day by any stretch. It *is* the reality of the day. Sure, there is no federal protected class for homosexuals, but just because there isn't *explicit* protection, doesn't mean that the protections aren't there. That's what Jim Crow was all about--explicitly saying that categories of people (by race) were to be treated differently. It's also why racists were so up in arms about the CRA: Jim Crow was inverted so that discriminated classes became protected classes!

So to your question: I don't have a great underlying theory about protected classes either. Ideally, there would be none and everyone would be treated the same. However, that is not possible in today's world. If there are not explicit laws, then some people will behave unethically or immorally and "do the wrong thing."

The courts have to muddle along because certain laws are passed to slow down the inevitable. Religious Freedom Restoration Acts will eventually be thrown out because they create arbitrary corner cases for every imaginable instance. The Equal Protection Clause is *huge* which is why social conservatives of many stripes want it repealed. (gotta run, will rejoin convo later)

@Jeff
"So while gays are not a protected class, that does not mean that you can refuse to serve them if it is 'pretext for discriminating against gays.'"
Then I didn't make my point very clearly. LGBT persons ARE a protected class in a number of states (20, I think the article said?) under STATE LAW ONLY. This would include Colorado. If there were no state law extending protections to the LGBT community in Colorado (or, failing that, no municipal or county law extending the same protections), then the suit could never have been brought because there would have been no law to appeal to. It's only because Colorado enacted its own law that the "fine line" exists.

"The above is not overstating the reality of the day by any stretch. It *is* the reality of the day. Sure, there is no federal protected class for homosexuals, but just because there isn't *explicit* protection, doesn't mean that the protections aren't there."
Actually, I'm pretty much certain that it does, if you don't live in a state that has chosen to extend protected-class status to the LGBT community. State law is very important on this point, especially since FEDERAL LAW IS SILENT on LGBT as a suspect classification (except under certain equal housing or equal employment regulations; I forget which, and I forget where I read it).

"Ideally, there would be none and everyone would be treated the same."
Oh, if only. In a world of conflicting, sometimes contradictory, interests and sentiments, there's no way to avoid privileging some over others at least some of the time.

"The Equal Protection Clause is *huge* which is why social conservatives of many stripes want it repealed."
As a social conservative, I certainly don't want the Equal Protection Clause repealed. But I would prefer that it not be applied to new groups of people simply because they've been successful at organizing political support and affirmation for their particular stripe of psychological makeup, personal identity, and associated behavior -- unless and until a further constitutional amendment is enacted to provide for this. I understand that "psychological makeup, personal identity, and associated behavior" could apply to religion as well, but I'm much more willing to accept that on constitutional grounds since religion (unlike LGBT rights) is an explicitly recognized category in the Constitution as presently extant.

" there's no way to avoid privileging some over others at least some of the time"

Or, say, the rich, almost all the time! (It is much easier to be Catelyn Jenner, say, than poor black trans woman who can't get a job - save sex work, where she is open to violence) The only exceptions to the rich being things like Ghengis Khan, who killed the rich mongols and allowed the poor mongols join his horde... (And similar power shifts, like the Russian Revolution... 'WE' don't do these things)

"...until a further constitutional amendment is enacted..." - how very democratic? This is what works in Ireland ( where we recently voted to end the constitutional ban on marriage, and then government passed legislation tecognising gender identity) But unfortunately the United States does not have the ability to pass such constitutional changes. Democracy does not always scale well - however, states with the power to enact these changes are a much closer scale to Ireland; and having them empowered to do so seems fine (even if you have to leave some states behind)

The supreme court's continued power grab is not particularily democratic, i don't think anyone finds that situation a good one.

(Link unrelated)
www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/12/transgender-children-have-to-respect-who-he-is