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[Neonivek]

It's the whole "can a baker refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple because they're gay" thing, but in a different context.

I cannot remember if that is allowed in the USA... I think if it is a private business they are allowed.

[MrRoboto75]

Usually gay people don't die if they are denied a wedding cake.

[Neonivek]

In Canada I think you are allowed to deny service to anyone for any reasons (well... any personal reason ) so long as it is a private business... or rather a business where you personally chose your clients or something along those lines.

But I can't really say for certain because I have no idea the difference between a private and public business.

[NullForceOmega]

That is a reasonable distinction, but it really doesn't amount to a 'ban' when framed that way (yes there are many, many ways to argue the semantics of that, but they don't matter), and honestly, that just opens up a number of other issues. 

For instance: "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone", if a store has such a policy then you must be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that individual discrimination actually occurred in order for your law to be upheld.

I'm not saying that the behavior isn't wrong, because it is and needs to stop, but you don't change it by making laws, you do so by educating people, and generally it takes a couple decades to sink in.

Caroline:  Stop making assumptions about what I'm saying, if you can't remain calm then don't post.  I am not saying "it's okay 'cause they're small"  I'm saying that the public at large doesn't see it and thus doesn't give a damn about it.  I support equality completely and abhor the kind of behavior you seem to think I'm supporting.

[NullForceOmega]

True for a civil suit, but that leads to the question of how the law would need to be implemented to make it actually serve its intended function.

[NullForceOmega]

And this is where the Band-Aid portion comes in, because we are talking about a very complex set of variables that are very probably working at cross-purposes, it becomes exponentially harder to make a law that serves the purpose adequately, and in all likelihood we would actively be making things more complex and harder to sort out by doing so.

[Starver]

Besides, to be honest, I don't see this as much as a band-aid? Like, it specifically addresses the problem of discrimination in healthcare (yes, against multiple groups, including LGBT people) by banning it. How else are you supposed to solve it otherwise, go out and personally convince each doctor not to do it?

As the person who introduced this analogy, can I just say that I spoke of it as a band-aid because it forces (or used to) people to act (more) non-discrimatory than they might have acted, but it does nothing to remove the general reluctance behind the otherwise unacted non-discrimation/acted discrimination it reverses.

A splint would be getting people to realise that they (be they biased doctors or, more likely, biased administrators/governors of an institution who are pressuring decent doctors with threats of losing tenure or worse annual assessments) to realise their 'thoughtcrime' for what it is and rescind discriminatory policies (whether written down or not) to just get on with their jobs with nary a thought of going against this now unnecessary fragment of Compliance Code...

But that I have to phrase it as a 'thoughtcrime' shows you how easy I think it'd be to just get everyone involved to agree that there is no issue to avoid, because no-one would even consider heading towards that particular minefield.(I might as well ask everyone to have a unified laisez-faire attitude towards abortion (which I still think is the primary cause behind this revocation, like the legislative attacks on Planned Parenthood!) or legalised euthanasia (far contentious even well into the Libertarian camp), or even universal free-at-the-point-of-delivery healthcare (not gonna happen anytime soon), because I know that there are heartfelt views that I would not support but could not even start to consider how to evaporate the 'wrong' versions of the views away to leave everyone only thinking the 'right' way. Whichever way round 'wrong' and 'right' are, naturally...)


8 new replies (never mind the number of posts that had happened but I hadn't read before I short-term-necroed this particular replied-to message)...  Hot topic...

[sluissa]

I'm fairly certain there's lots of precedent for this happening, which is exactly why the law Trump reversed was put in place.

I'm going to immediately put on my skeptical glasses for that simply based on who is writing that and who organized the surveys involved. They obviously have a large monetary stake in making things seem as bad as they can.

"This paper on epilepsy is from the epilepsy foundation, so I should be extra suspicious cause obviously they have a stake in it".
These are civil rights and social justice organizations, how exactly do you expect them to have a "large monetary stake" in this?

It's a donation based organization that survives solely through making an issue as scary as possible and screaming as loud about it as anyone will tolerate in order to get funding and keep themselves operating. They have a monetary stake in keeping their particular issue scary and threatening even to the point of twisting logic and reality to suit their message. It's the exact same reason I don't trust any climate change studies done by fossil fuel companies.

[NullForceOmega]

I agree about the abortion consideration Starver, when you get down to it that is one of the things this presidency will be unequivocally bad about, Trump is in office mostly because he is anti-abortion (no, really, if you look at the data the biggest block of votes for Trump were about this), and he means to deliver on that plank of his platform.

Re-read it Caroline, I said everyone, not anyone.  there is a very important distinction there that has everything to do with 'tyranny of the majority'.  Clarification: this 'everyone' is being applied in its groupthink meaning, not its absolute meaning.

[martinuzz]

Over here, shop owners can technically deny anyone access to their store, for no particular reason.
But. They may not discriminate.
So if you catch them on tape saying "gays are not welcome here", or "I don't sell to black people", then you can report them to the police and they'll face discrimination charges.
But if they tell you "I don't like your face, get out of my shop", they're in their full right. There's no law protecting 'people with dislikable faces'.

[Neonivek]

Does that mean we should distrust their information on cancer?

Unfortunately... this is OOOOOOH soo commonly the case for any "Do gooder" organization.

[NullForceOmega]

Scientifically verifiable results are usually trustworthy (usually, they can be twisted into meaninglessness too, especially statistics), but social things are always about perspective, so the cancer information is 'probably' good, while the social data 'might be' good, but either set could also be anti-vaccer.

[Ricky]

So this is completely off the current topic and has probably been discussed before, but it is relevant to the AmeriPol thread:

Why doesn't  america adopt a mandatory voting rule? Voting isnt a privelege, its a right, yadda yadda... But what would be the downside of mandating all eligible voters to vote in elections?

My foggy mind recollects that roughly 50%? of eligible voters voted during the 2016 presidential election with the vote split ALMOST 50/50, which means trump won the electoral college on roughly 25% of the american vote.

So what would be the downside of mandatory voting, besides being super boring and hard to enforce? perhaps it might have the negative effect of negligent voters just marking down random candidates.

There are probably some deep seeded issues with mandatory voting, but i'm not seeing it.

[NullForceOmega]

Logistics.  350~ million US citizens across one of the largest nations on the planet.  Very literally almost impossible to enforce.  Also the possibility of the requisite national ID system being found unconstitutional.  Lots and lots of reasons it isn't viable currently.

[martinuzz]

If that were implemented right now, it would just be an excuse to round up and jail all poor people that can't afford voter ID, next elections.

Judge: "What do you have to say in your defense?"
Defendant: "I couldn't afford voter ID, or transportation costs to the voting booth"
Judge "You criminal scum! That's 40 years in a Texas prison for you!"

or

Judge "What's your defense"
Defendant: "I'm blind and have no legs, and special transportation funding died along with Obamacare"
Judge "Off with their heads!"