![\"UnisexToilet\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/572\/2016\/06\/UnisexToilet.png\")
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Image by \u201cClkerFreeVectorImages\u201d (4-13-12)<\/span> [Pixabay<\/a> \/ CC0 public domain<\/a>]<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n This discussion occurred in the combox<\/a> of\u00a0my post,\u00a0\u201cForced\u201d Morality & Ubiquitous \u201cBigotry\u201d<\/a>. Words of TheAgnosticAtheist<\/a> will be in blue<\/span>. Words of Michael <\/a>will be in green<\/span>. These guys didn\u2019t call be a bigot as soon as I gave my different opinion, so actual dialogue between thinking human beings was possible<\/em> (oh, what a rare joy these days!).<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n So you\u2019re saying that only your religious views have to be accepted? That was the issue that hound was focused on. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019m not for gay marriage, I\u2019m not even for straight marriage. The government should butt out of personal affairs. But, if one person has a right, does that not mean that everyone should have the same right? To deny someone a right based on your religious views is the exact opposite of freedom. Under certain religious views you should be executed, that doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re just going to stand back and let you die.<\/span><\/p>\n As for restrooms, it should be up to the owner of the establishment to decide on what system he or she or whatever wants to enforce. In my place of business all restrooms are single restrooms that are not gender specific and are all the exact same. Regardless, the main reason people are against the restroom bill is because of rapists and the like. However, is that not the reason why we have laws against it? If a man wanted to walk into a female restroom, what will stop him? Not a damn thing. And there\u2019s no harm in it. If someone assaults\/rapes\/whatever another person, the law will take care of it.<\/span><\/p>\n I said nothing about which views have to be accepted. But if you want to know my opinion: I am in favor of complete freedom of conscience (including religion, atheism, or anything else, unless it is physically harmful to others: like terrorism).<\/p>\n My point was that he wants to argue the typical polemical point that Christians force our morality down everyone\u2019s throats. I replied by showing that the coercion these days is in quite the opposite direction: \u201cgay marriage\u201d and bathroom laws and the slaughter of the innocents, who have no rights and are subjected to someone else\u2019s imaginary \u201cright\u201d to destroy them. All of these things force radically secular, anti-traditional views on Christians and other traditional-minded folks (or force preborn babies to be heartlessly tortured and killed).<\/p>\n My additional point was that, not only has the definition of marriage been suddenly changed, but anyone who dares even object to that is immediately classed as a bigot. No one can disagree with the notion of unbounded homosexual practice without being accused as a hater and \u201chomophobe.\u201d This is beyond absurd: bizarrely ridiculous.<\/p>\n I oppose the practices and redefinition of marriage but don\u2019t have the\u00a0slightest<\/i> personal animosity towards any given homosexual person. To the contrary, I\u2019ve always found them quite congenial and amiable and likable.<\/p>\n Can you really not see the difference?<\/span> Rights are a shield, not a sword. The Bible says \u201cThou shalt not suffer a witch to live.\u201d Should the murder of people who practice Wicca be legal? Can your religious right trump through their right to life? Of course not!<\/span><\/p>\n How is it any different with (paraphrasing) \u201cThou shalt not suffer a gay to marry\u201d? Does your religious right overwhelm their right to hospital visitations, inheritances, and all the other standard fare of a marriage? No. It doesn\u2019t. Rights are a shield, not a sword. You can use it to prevent your church from ever having to perform a gay marriage, but you can\u2019t use it to stop gay people from entering into a legal contract.<\/span><\/p>\n The most clear reason why religion can\u2019t be used that way is because it is just plain impossible \u2014 many religions disagree with each other, so there\u2019s actually no way to respect them all in the law. Your religious rights *have* to end when they force other people (not in your religion) to do something they don\u2019t want to do. Otherwise, other people\u2019s religions would be able to force you to do things you don\u2019t want to do (like get gay-married, or have an abortion, or walk into an opposite-sex bathroom \u2014 none of which, I\u2019d like to point out again, are you forced to do.)<\/span><\/p>\n The definition of marriage only<\/em>\u00a0changed for non-Christians. Christians can still call marriage \u201cbetween a man and a woman.\u201d Christian churches can still refuse to marry gay people. Literally nothing has changed for the way Christian churches operate, so where is the coercion?<\/span><\/p>\n . . .\u00a0The scenario I had in mind (that I failed to describe adequately) was a married couple, no will, in which 1 person dies. In this situation the law \u201cdefaults\u201d to the other person getting everything. Prior to gay marriage, if you had a gay couple in a similar situation (cohabiting for decades even), no such protections existed. The surviving member had no \u201cdefault\u201d legal claim on their partner\u2019s stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n I rendered no opinion about those inheritance scenarios. I might be inclined to agree with much of it. What I protest against is the radical redefinition of marriage itself.<\/p>\n As I stated, the coercion is in being essentially forced to accept these laws, or else be classified en masse<\/i> as a bigot and hateful person.<\/p>\n Also, as usual in these discussions, you completely miss my point about abortion. It\u2019s not about mothers being forced to abort (as in China), but about the babies being forced to be killed because of a so-called \u201cchoice\u201d of the mother. That\u2019s the ultimate coercion.<\/p>\n Secondly, law will be based on some worldview or other, because it has to have a moral base in order to say that \u201cthis\u00a0<\/i>is wrong and that<\/i> is wrong and will be punishable by law.\u201d<\/p>\n By and large, but never totally, a vaguely Protestant Christian worldview used to provide that backdrop in America. Now it is a roughly humanist and secularist left-leaning \/ liberal worldview that is the prevailing presupposition.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s silly to argue as if there is no such chosen background. Whenever law says something is \u201cwrong\u201d or \u201cpermissible\u201d it\u2019s inevitably there.<\/p>\n So when Christianity was dominant in law, people protested that it was forcing non-Christians to do stuff or be subjected to things that they didn\u2019t agree with.<\/p>\n Now that secularism reigns triumphant, Christians are bearing the brunt of the coercion against their will and increasingly have rights taken away from them, and have to be subject to mass societal marginalization and demonization.<\/p>\n Insofar as there were wrong things done to secularists in the past (not to mention black people and women, etc.) \u2014 as there certainly were \u2013, it doesn\u2019t justify the same being done to Christians today.<\/p>\n Two wrongs don\u2019t make a right.<\/p>\n Refreshingly, the Supreme Court voted unanimously to not take up the case about the nuns, where they were forced to deal with contraceptives: against their religious conscience. Talk about \u201cforced\u201d? There\u2019s a sterling example.<\/p>\n But it was so outrageous and absurd that even the half radically secular Supreme Court saw it as such and refused to take up the case.<\/p>\n So there is hope for at least partial legal sanity.<\/p>\n I do<\/em> sincerely thank you for not calling me a bigot, simply because I disagree with you and hold a morally traditional Christian view of things.<\/p>\n Gay marriage \u2013 This doesn\u2019t really have anything to do with Christians. The fact is that as long as someone is licensed by the government to marry two people it is no longer a religious-only thing. Let\u2019s say they don\u2019t have a federal license, now they can still marry people, but the government wont recognize the marriage. That doesn\u2019t mean the marriage has to be void, just means they\u2019ll have to go to a city hall and register as married. It is the fact that they are federally licensed that prevents them from not turning away gay couples.<\/span><\/p>\n bathroom laws \u2013 What\u2019s to stop someone from walking in the wrong bathroom if they really wanted to? No one is imposing restrictions on churches or your own homes. Furthermore, where in the bible is this covered?<\/span><\/p>\n Abortion \u2013 no one is forcing a Christian to get an abortion, so I don\u2019t see how this is forcing anything on Christians.<\/span><\/p>\n Now let\u2019s look at the other side of this argument.<\/span><\/p>\n Why did it take so long for gay marriage to become a possibility?<\/span> I\u2019m not saying your a part of the specific groups of Christians that do this, only that Christians, at least in part, do shove their beliefs down other people\u2019s throats.<\/span><\/p>\n You made the same dense reply about abortion that Michael did: utterly ignoring my argument. I stated:<\/p>\n [E]very baby who is legally killed in his or her mother\u2019s womb. . . didn\u2019t ask to come into existence. Now that they are here, the mother\u2019s so-called \u201cright\u201d all of a sudden intrudes into their existence, to the tune of their arms and legs and head being torn off, or their being scalded to death before being murdered.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It is their<\/strong>\u00a0right to life<\/em> that is trampled upon. That<\/em><\/strong> is the coercion. Got it? But of course, pro-aborts simply fantasize their lives away as not life or not human or not a person, so they can rationalize the daily, massive torture and murder.<\/p>\n The objection to the bathroom nonsense is, of course, that it will be exploited by perverts, pretending to be transgender, so they can see naked women. So that is a violation of the right to privacy of our daughters, mothers, sisters, and wives, and girlfriends and female friends.<\/p>\n Good grief. One would think that the blessed \u201cright to privacy\u201d which was the backdrop of legal abortion, would be honored in terms of having privacy to undress and go to the bathroom. But not in the\u00a0nutso, wacko, insane society that we now live in.<\/p>\n My wife and daughter have already said that they will never visit a public restroom. The main reply will likely be that we are exaggerating instances of exploitation of the law by perverts and child molesters, etc. Perhaps. Time will tell. But right now, I could say that I feel like I am a woman today and go to a woman\u2019s locker room to watch all the naked women and girls, and according to this insane pseudo-law, no one could do anything about that.<\/p>\n The absurdity is (again) in the radical redefinition of gender, to make it totally subjective, rather than biological and genetic, which is what it is in objective fact.<\/p>\n The ongoing legal \/ societal insanity is in redefining a person to not be a person (Roe v. Wade in 1973), then marriage to not be what it has always been, and now to redefine gender away from objective genetics to mere subjective preference.<\/p>\n What will be next? I think in 20-30 years, forced sex with children will be the next thing. After all, if we can define away a child in abortion, why not reduce them to sexual objects for our pleasure? Which is worse: murdering them or using them for our own hedonistic sexual thrills? Rape may also be defined away as \u2018biological necessity\u201d or what not. Women are reduced to mere objects of pleasure in pornography. The next logical step is to abuse them in person by raping them against their will. The more this happens in practice, the more likely it\u2019ll be made legal.<\/p>\n No one could have imagined legal childkilling, same-sex \u201cmarriage\u201d or fluid gender back in the World War II era, so it\u2019s not too far-fetched to conceive that unimaginable things from today\u2019s perspective will be tomorrow\u2019s norms, just as these three things have become today.<\/p>\n The consistent thread through all of the madness is anti-traditionalism, and anti-Christianity.<\/p>\n I do thank you for not calling me a bigot, simply because I disagree with you and hold a morally traditional Christian view of things.<\/p>\n Related Reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n Dialogue: \u201cAnthropological Advocacy\u201d of Same-Sex Marriage<\/a> (+ Part II<\/a>) [8-22-15]<\/p>\n Are Coercion & Persecution Coming Soon for Catholics? <\/a>[9-2-15]<\/p>\n
\nYou, personally, do not have to get gay-married. <\/span>
\nYou, personally, do not have to have an abortion.<\/span>
\nYou, personally, will never be forced into an opposite-sex bathroom.<\/span>
\nDespite the love affair Christianity has with victimhood, you guys aren\u2019t under any actual coercion. You can\u2019t point to something and say, \u201cSee, I have lost money\/property because of these anti-Christian laws.\u201d Gay people, however, can point to when they couldn\u2019t inherit anything from someone they spent 40 years with. They can point to being denied visitation rights at the hospital while that person died. They can point to *actual* damages, not just perceived ones.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWhy is prostitution illegal in most states?<\/span>
\nWhat groups are constantly trying to make abortion illegal?<\/span>
\nHow many christian decorations are put up in government buildings?<\/span><\/p>\n