That's an interesting straw man. No, I do not believe it is a moral failing to be Christian. Yes, I do believe it is a moral failing to be against gay rights.
Tolerance of the intolerant is in itself intolerant.
Additionally, it's not that they don't advocate for gay rights, it's the they actively fight against them. I think this changed very recently, but it has been the case most of their history.
That said, I'm of the mind that most large corps do stuff that is against human rights in one way or another - sweat shop abuse, crushing of labor unions, among many others - and purchasing from Chickfila isn't much different from drinking Coke or buying Nestle. It's part of society. If you avoid corps with rights abuses you must avoid nearly everything.
You're conflating two completely different things.
Not advocating FOR gay rights isn't a moral failing. But that's irrelevant for what Chick-Fil-A are accused of (and frankly a straw man).
Advocating AGAINST someone else's rights or freedoms, even when those rights have no impact on your beliefs, is a moral failing. That's what Chick-Fil-A is doing.
So, no, it isn't a "2-way street" when one side is just asking to be treated equally and the other is asking that OTHER PEOPLE are treated like a sub-class of people.
“Gay people shouldn’t have the same legal rights as straight people” is a moral position? Which commandment is that one?
It’s a wedge issue used to whip conservative voters, not a moral issue. Nowhere in the Bible does it say you must fight to prevent heathens from filing taxes jointly.
Well, many conservative christians would say that gay people already had the same legal rights as straight people - that being the right to marry (+have sex with, etc) another person of the opposite sex. To them, conflating "the right to marry other men" with that would be like conflating it with "the right to marry children".
Is "should pedophiles be legally allowed to have sex with and marry the people they are attracted to" a moral issue to you? I mean, the kid consented!
Yes, most of us would say that's different. But why it's different is a moral position - and so to some people, it's really not different.
(Also, "the correct answer isn't a moral position, while the incorrect answer is an immoral position" is a bit of a contradiction. If "gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry" is an immoral thing to believe or act on, then you're acknowledging the choice of positions as being a moral one. "I should be able to kill all the people I see" is also a moral position, of course)
The reason men must be able to marry men is not a moral rationale, it’s a legal one. There is a well established legal doctrine that says you can’t make laws that discriminate on the basis of sex without some sex-based reason.
There’s no sex-based reason for why I should be able to have a woman at my side in the hospital but not a man. You don’t need a womb or breasts to to speak to the doctor on my behalf. That’s ridiculous. If my sister can choose to have a man by her bedside, so should I be allowed to. That’s equal protection.
There is no similar protection for children. Literally no one is able to choose a random 12 year old boy to make decisions for them in the hospital. And that’s fine because there is no equal protection for kids. Nor should there be. They are legally wards of their parents, not adults. They very intentionally do not have the same protection under the law that their parents do.
None of this has anything to do with morality, it has to do with equal protection under the law.
That's a very good argument for why gay marriage should be allowed, and IIRC the one that the supreme court followed. That doesn't mean that there aren't still people who would challenge the morality of such.
Morals and legality are different. Marijuana is federally illegal - does that make it immoral to produce/distribute/possess/consume? I would say no, and a large part of the country would say the same. Similarly, I think a ton of people would freak the fuck out if the supreme court legalized marrying prepubescent children - it might now be legal, but that doesn't make it moral.
The moral position that people fighting gay marriage have is that the current caselaw is wrong, and that equal protection shouldn't be interpreted that way.
You keep indicating at some hypothetical argument from morality. Can you just lay it out? First you claimed both sides were relying on a purely moral argument, but you seem to have moved on from that after I gave the constitutional argument for gay marriage. Now you’re arguing there’s a moral argument against gay marriage, but I can’t fathom it. Can you be more specific?
> “Gay people shouldn’t have the same legal rights as straight people” is a moral position? Which commandment is that one?
I've been trying to explain how it's a moral position for some people, in response to this statement of yours. I'm not sure how to make that argument in a way that would be convincing to you, in large part because it's not convincing to me.
And I suppose we may be getting some wires crossed - for a lot of people in the world, there doesn't have to be a justification for a moral belief - or at least not one you would accept. "My religious authority told me" or "my parents told me" might not be as acceptable in the society we live in today, but they've all been extremely successful throughout history.
A person may be moral in one part of their life, and immoral in another. A person may be kind to the needy that they see while walking down the street, while being cruel to the needy out of their sight. A person may be kind to animals, yet cruel to their family, or vice versa. I do not believe it can be accurate to describe something as complicated as a person as moral or immoral, in the same way that there is no total ordering over the complex numbers.
When I say that being against gay rights is an immoral position, it does not mean that a person is immoral, because that is an ill-defined phrase. It means that in the context of their speech and actions on the topic of gay rights, they are behaving immorally.
I agree that there is a spectrum of beliefs, and that it is necessary to meet somebody where they are. Each step is an important one, and beliefs change slowly.
Where I grow angry is when it is implied that Christianity is inherently and irrevocably against gay rights. Where I grow angry is when it is implied that all Christians must be similarly against gay rights. Where I grow angry is when it is implied that my faith must be a tool for bigotry, rather than an instrument of community.
Christianity is inherently and irrevocably against gay rights. All three religions of the book are against gay rights. It is not possible to be a faithful Christian, Jew, or Muslim while also supporting gay rights.
There are many denominations that LARP as Christian, Jew, or Muslim while advocating for gay rights, but they accomplish this by discarding large parts of their holy texts.
I draw a distinction between supporting homosexuality and supporting gay rights. Someone can believe that homosexuality is wrong and harmful while still believing that people have a right to choose[1] to be homosexual.
[1] For purposes of this discussion when I say "choose to be homosexual" I mean to choose to perform homosexual acts, get married to someone of the same sex, etc. I don't mean it in the sense of whether or not feeling homosexual desire is a choice.
If one believes that an activity (be it homosexuality, eating pork, or using emacs) offends the Almighty, and one also believes that we all will have to answer to the Almighty eventually, it doesn't make sense to fight for the right of another to cause that offense.
I can think of a few reasons that it might make sense:
- One could believe that, by making man in his own image, God desired that men be able to make their own decisions even if those decisions sometimes displeases him and/or they will eventually answer for.
- One could believe that a free society ultimately allows one to better accomplish God's will even if it also means that people are free to do things that you don't agree with.
- One could feel that, since humans are imperfect, it is possible that they will misinterpret scripture or apply it unjustly. Therefore, it may not be safe to force people to follow a given way of life.
- One could feel that judgement is the sole domain of God and therefore human law should not seek to enforce purely moral issues.
No, they support a subset of Christianity that uses their faith as an excuse to hate others. No one cares about your faith, until you start wielding it as a club to beat others.
Stop spreading FUD. The narrative that Christians are somehow targeted is misleading at best, false in reality. In the west white Christians have a huge amount of power and influence and giving any of it up feels like persecution to a group that doesn’t know what that means. It also really benefits certain media organizations to perpetuate this narrative. Ted Cruise the other day said that he is a Christian first, American second. Think for a second what would have happened if a Muslim or Jewish Senator said the equivalent thing. In the US we sort of accept that we live in a Christian nation because so many justify their politics by claiming to be “good Christians”. I have yet to meet someone with any amount of social or political influence who truly could be described with that label. It’s justification for claiming moral superiority while working to undermine social minorities. No wonder fewer and fewer people identify as Christians with every generation.
And the argument that you have some exception that proves the rule but you can’t name it is bogus. Either you know deep down that it is false and/or propaganda and nobody will buy it or you are making it up and there is no such example.
Christians being targetted is no longer the exception, it's the rule. The fact that they are wack-job Christians out there is the excuse to attack all Christians.
Google for group, country or religion that kills homosexuals today. Now compare those groups to who you criticize.
If all of them are Christian groups, I stand corrected.
If any of them are non-Christian, will you openly name condemn that group/religion/country/race? I doubt it, you will be voted down to oblivion here.
Edit: Just _mentioning_ that someone else besides Christians are attacking homosexuals gets you a downvote.
This is a topic worthy of open discussion, so why can't it?
LGBTQ are being _killed_ in many places around the world, and will continue until the focus is properly adjusted to the real culprits.
It’s no secret that there are groups that follow any given religion that have committed violence against the LGBTQ community. That does not in any way imply that Christians are being targeted. The former is a known and widely accepted fact. The latter is a fiction perpetuated by Fox News to get uneducated conservative voters to fear the Democratic party. The problem with your argument is also that saying “Muslims are killing gays” is not correct, same as saying “white people are committing mass shootings”. Specific sub-sections of those groups are and you can name them specifically. But the idea that all Muslims or all Christian are ready to kill at a moment’s notice is absurd and you know it.
Personally I believe Christianity is an oppressive religion that needs to go away. It does more evil than good in the world, especially in the US and Easter Europe. That does not preclude me from condemning groups like ISIS or Saudi Arabia’s government for their actions.
Yeah, they lied. Again. The moment they start undoing the damage they’ve done by donating at least as much money to pro-LGBTQ groups as they have donated to the hate groups is the moment I will guy their sandwiches. Not sooner.
The company culture derives from the founder's Southern Baptist background so sometimes they take unpopular political stances like opposing same-sex marriage. Some consider this as a moral failing rather than the other side of diversity.
If it wasn't "tainted" by its religious inception, mandatory Sunday closures would make Chick-fil-A the most progressive large service industry company in the United States from a labor welfare perspective. From a utilitarian perspective the human benefit, not to mention the unique example it sets, is incomparable to the company's [largely historical] anti-marriage equality political lobbying, especially considering that the company does not discriminate in its operations or hiring practices. (And AFAIK no credible accusation has ever been made in contradiction of that crucial fact.) It's sadly typical for social issue advocates across the spectrum to cut off their nose to spite their face in this manner.
I mean you take the good with the bad, and it's on a chicken franchise to determine how interesting they think it is to have their progressive Sunday policy framed next to their stance that gay people shouldn't be able to marry.
Has CF ever directly prevented a gay couple from getting married? Has any organization they have donated to ever directly prevented a gay couple from getting married?
Just because an individual or a company is perceived as disagreeing with your personal beliefs doesn't make it 'bad'.
CF happily sells its delicious chicken to everyone irrespective of their sexual orientation.
A static day off in an otherwise rotating schedule increases the quality of life for a retail worker considerably. It also happens to be a day off that many of your friends and family are also likely to have off, rather than often having random days off during the work week. A retail worker might actually be able to maintain a normal social life with a recurring Sunday off.
I fail to see how Sunday closures are progressive at all. If the total amount of time off isn't greater then it doesn't benefit workers more to have Sunday off as opposed to Friday or any other day of the week. From a utilitarian perspective having a restaurant close on the one day that most of their customers have free time to visit is highly inefficient.
If you work shift work then having Tues & Weds off while technically the same as Sat & Sun off (2 days off in a row) it is a tangibly worse "weekend".
You may have 2 days off but your friends and family are likely working during the days and in "nothing too exciting" mode in the evenings.
The benefit of everyone having Sunday off means that (for the most part) the rest of the world also has Sunday off and you get to enjoy time off with your friends and family.
I've worked shift work with only Fridays off before. It was not tangibly worst than having only Sunday off. In fact I would say it was better because dealing with certain government bureaucracies that close down on Sundays was significantly easier. You can't expect the entirety of society to shut down on Sundays so there's always going to be somebody who has to work during that day.
Doing something that doesn't benefit the customers but does benefit your workers (because not all days off are equal) is pretty progressive. It's not necessarily their intent as an organization, but it is the effect.
"If it wasn't "tainted" by its religious inception, mandatory Sunday closures would make Chick-fil-A the most progressive large service industry company in the United States from a labor welfare perspective. "
To imply something is 'tainted' by its religious inception is a kind of bigotry, moreover, it misses the point entirely: it's the very reason the company is ethical, or communitarian in many ways. Of course, even the very nation, or more broadly 'The West' is fundamentally Christian (or better described as mostly 'secular Christian'). Everyone has healthcare in Canada due to the 'Agrarian Left' which is essentially a brand of Christian Democracy. The same goes for the vast majority of Western institutions that were created more than a generation ago, including most Universities etc.. Consider that there might be more complexity concerning social issues in this world such that anyone with a voice mightn't be always playing favour specifically to you or your version of the 'morality'.
