She'll lose.

The couple is selfish for speaking out and the Attorney General is foolish for attempting to pursue a single business to enforce anti-discrimination laws. Clearly this will have a grave impact on our fight for equality because now they'll be able to point to this as proof of persecution and states that attempt to legalize equality after the AG's lawsuit was announced will turn harshly away from marriage equality, destroying any chance we ever had of winning for years to come.

@ 2 What a load of crap, you can't discriminate period. Its not ok to do on race, its not ok to do for sexual orientation. And marriage equality will continue to roll on.

@3) No, no. I'm pretty sure he's right: The price of fighting for equality is giving up equality forever.

@ 4 Even if it is hard to tell sarcasm over the internet

Red pencils are for losers. Red PEN, my friend, that is the annotation of annihilation.

@5: That guy's argument was my most favoritest argument ever.

DON'T ENFORCE THE LAWS OR WE'RE DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED.

@7) You ever used a ball-point pen on your monitor? I'll betcha not. My screen is covered in red pencil wax and dabs of Wite-Out.

I like spraypaint.

Would anything ve more sad than a religion which actually required its followers to be hateful, homophobic bigots? Jesus is rolling over in his grave.

Isn't it selfish for the prosecutor to go after one shoplifter when there are others that escape prosecution. I mean, hey, he's just one guy who was so unlucky as to be caught. Why pick on him?

I hope the plaintiff and whoever is funding her attorneys spend lots and lots and lots and lots on their stupid lawsuit.

More importantly, I hope the people who donate money to these organizations start seeing the wrongheadedness and futility of it. Loser losers with loser philosophies pursuing loser agendas with loser ethics. Instead of throwing your money down ratholes, losers, why don't you spend it doing something nice for somebody? Donate to UNICEF so little kids in poor countries can get food or clean water or to a local clinic in your own town so someone can see a doctor. Funding a lawsuit in favor of bigotry in the name of religion? This is your priority? What would Jesus say?

@11 & @13, reminds me of this:

http://www.anglonautes.com/voc_race_main…

Schrank (The Independent on Sunday 04.12.2005)

If she's not willing to serve the public in its entirety, shut her down. Why does she get to break the law based on her religious beliefs?

Well, this was entirely predictable, and it's just as spurious as one might expect.

We did this to ourselves, though, creating this apparent contradiction in the law, by privatizing every damn thing. If the basic necessities of life weren't dependent on private transactions, people like this might actually have a case, but so long as food, transportation, and the like are all commodities, the market cannot bear personal discrimination.

In the scheme of things, this type of discrimination seems more egregious to me - http://www.wehoville.com/2013/05/15/9-fo…
Meanwhile, with regard to things that are not remotely necessities, and widely and readily available from other sources, such as flowers, I think cases like this will most likely result in our courts concluding that the balancing of the interests at stake come out on the side of protecting individual constitutional rights to self-association. But I guess we'll see.
I know I'll certainly resist anyone ever trying to impose a client on me that I choose not to represent.

@5 when the biggest threat to my equality is a florist who won't make me a bouquet for my partner, I'll know the fight for my civil rights is won.

At one time, I discounted the religious liberty arguments against gay marriage made by conservatives because I thought no-one could possibly be such a douche as to make a federal (or even state) case out of something so trivial. Sensible florists like more business. Sensible couples like patronizing businesses that will happily work for them.

I obviously underestimated the douchiness of both sides.

I really fucking hate everybody involved in this case and wish they would all DIAF.

She, and her lawyers, are nuts.

Nobody is telling her what she should believe. She is free to believe any religious dogma she likes. The law only states that if her business is open to the public, then she must serve all without discrimination. That in no way impinges on her right to her religious beliefs.

@2: " the Attorney General is foolish for attempting to pursue a single business to enforce anti-discrimination laws. "

Tell us whatever other businesses are violating the law so the Attorney General can go after them as well. Otherwise, what an incredibly stupid gripe.

@21: Zealots believe they are above the law? My goodness!

Her shop has an area dedicated to Fedex shipping. I'm surprised there isn't a way to pressure Fedex into terminating this partnership.

Her shop is also a fedex shipping location. Has a decent amount of the store dedicated to this. I'm surprised fedex hasn't been pressured to terminate this partnership.

Would it be okay to fedex gay wedding invitations from her store or would she block that as well?

Apologies for the multiple posts. :3

The vast majority of residences in the City of Richland are located North of the Yakima river. If one has a corporate account or is pre paid (and have access to the correct mailers), there are several drop boxes in Richland where one can drop envelopes/small packages.

Otherwise, Arlene's is the only shipping location North of the river and one would need to travel much further in order to avoid supporting Arlene's to fedex something. Alternatively, there is a UPS store a few miles North of Arlene's.

Seems fedex would lose out on business from people not willing to support bigots.

Would love to see fedex rescind this partnership with Arlene's.

My religion and the Bible tells me that white folk and n****rs shouldn't get married so I'm going to refuse to serve *those* kind of couples. Isn't that basically their argument?

Miscegenation was an abomination to their parents, it's the same for them.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist…

^^^

This owns.

@17

Shorter version-

If we give up most of our liberties, we can save one tiny corner of personal freedom.

Good idea! You go first and the sane among us will see how that goes, m'kay BB?

Otherwise- two things.

First, the idiotic comparison to inter-racial marriage is just that, idiotic. My wife had no choice in the color of her skin, nor did I. Under common justice we as a country decided that penalizing someone for something over which they had no choice is unacceptable. Faggots and dykes choose the sole thing that they're claiming differentiates them, their aberrant sexual choices. In common justice we should accord them the right to be deviant perverts with other consenting adults. But claiming protection from the consequences of those choices is the act of a petulant toddler, not a mature adult.

Second, show me one area of life in which fags and dykes are substantially punished for their deviancy. Jobs? Nah. Statistically fags and dykes do as well as their sexually healthy peers. Ability to buy or rent a home? Again, nope. Even the best neighborhoods often have a faggot or dyke in them. Can a faggot or dyke travel, eat out, obtain medical care? Well, yes, with no restrictions based on the sick pervs they are in any of those classes.

So a couple pervert faggots can't buy flowers from this one florist for their pretend wedding. Big deal. Grow up and get over it fags and dykes and their pansy assed supporters.

@29: Does it ever get tired being a hatemonger, well after gay marriage is legal in the state?

I can't wait for you to lie to your (potential) grandchildren about how you always supported gay marriage and it was always those "other people" who couldn't stand them.

As a reminder, you're a complete failure and your movement of bigotry is dying.

@31

There is no such thing as gay marriage, whatever my or any other state says. Marriage is, marriage always has been, and marriage always will be between a man and a woman. No faux legal definition will make decent people ever think otherwise. Washington could legally redefine gravity, but it won't change anything about how the thing works.

Nor will I ever, ever apologize for being on the right side of this debate with a bunch of immature fags and dykes unwilling to accept the consequences of their lifestyle choices like grown ups.

We don't really care how you define marriage, because it's completely irrelevant to how the rest of us live. Your god is full of hate, your life is sad and pathetic, and others' happiness makes you miserable.

Thank God for your misery with the way society is moving.

@34

I'm healthy. My family is close, both immediate and extended. I have good friends here and abroad. I've seen great art and architecture and read good books (and some bad too just for the fun of it.) I have enough money to be comfortable but not so much that it burdens me.

Misery? Sorry to disappoint you, but you're off the mark there. No surprise really, given your track record....

Know what misery is? It's knowing reality works one way, and trying to force it to work another. Having sex with the same gender for instance, or trying to force others to bear the consequences of your lifestyle choices.

30-a bigoted negro? there is nothing sadder...

@35: Why should I care what the Westboro Baptist Church thinks of me?

30-a bigoted negro? that's the saddest thing I've ever heard

@36: I doubt she exists.

Internet trolls find it easy to make up situations where they have some sort of "power win".

I can't be a horrible bigot, look at my Canadian, er black wife! I mean, don't look at her, but look at me typing out how things are different, because they are!

SB, you're the same person you would be in the sixties. That is not a compliment.

Also, I always appreciate your insistence that "my wife had no choice in the color of her skin" as if there's something actually wrong with being black.

You can't even successfully fake not being a racist shitheel.

Also, SB, creating an account calling a black woman "a negro", just to have someone to argue against is pretty pathetic.

That, or it's internet troll versus internet troll in a battle to who gives a fuck.

@39 and 40

Hey faggot?

I'm not a bigot just because a faggot says I am. You could call me a blue giraffe and it wouldn't necessarily make it true. Or didn't you know even that?

Not only can't you figure out something as basic as how healthy sexuality works, but you can't read either.

What I wrote was that neither she or I had a choice in skin color. What I've written before is that judging someone based on what they had no choice in is silly and unjust, a mark of an inferior mind.

@41

So now you're arguing with someone who actually agrees with you? (And not with me, so why I'd be bothered to write that and bothered to create an account to do so puzzles me.)

What was that about misery again?

@42: "I'm not a bigot just because a faggot says I am"

And now you're grasping why you're wasting time here. We don't visit you at Stormfront, but you sure have nothing to do but delve into a hive of faggotry and set up shop.

@44

Don't know (or care really) what Stormfront is.

You folks amuse me. It's like a talking with a vulgar perverse child, really, only without the innocent charm. But to see grown men and women talk the errant nonsense you do is just funny, in a pathetic kind of way.

It also makes me realize that decency, love of country, love of family and so on really are the province of the center and right in this country. That helps when I begin to worry about the path my nation is on, to realize that you halfwits will sabotage your own goals eventually through some hard edged reality you just didn't happen to like and therefore ignored.

It's been said, and is true, that all that's necessary for the triumph of evil (you folks) is for good men to do nothing. I'd add that evil really has no substance, no ability to do anything but destroy and tear down. We who know how the things were built in the first place can always rebuild after you petty children have had your tantrums.

Thanks anyway for the re-assurance that those who want to destroy everything that makes this nation great really aren't important.

If you were secure with yourself, you wouldn't have to "prove" it to people who don't care whether you exist or not.

God, more bullshit comments from Seattleblues - the prick we all know, who thinks his intelligence level is that of a Phd, but really is nothing more than a dumbassed clown. Gotta love those buzz phrases 'my country, perverse, faggot, dyke, blah, blah, blah.' Seriously, how fucking ignorant does one human have to be to think they speak for a whole nation? Pretty fucking ignorant, in my book.

We're not laughing with you SB, we're laughing at you. But, like most self righteous pricks, you'll never figure it out.

You've lost. Get over it. We're certainly over you.

There's always "that person" who acted out to get a rise out of everybody else on the playground and bathe in all the negative attention. It's sad that some people (definitely both genders and anything in between) continue on into well past their forties having to be the "star" and pretending they're some sort of brilliant puppetmaster. If any of them were so happy, they wouldn't so desperately need the negative attention from everyone around them.

@47

Look to any date prior to the attack on marriage and family and decency that is faggot or dyke so called marriage and you will see perfect civility.

But if someone wishes to behave as a barbarian, the only way to treat them is as a barbarian. Fags and dykes brought and bring incivility on themselves by attacking our societies core structures. I even meet you more than halfway never responding to vulgarity with vulgarity. I assume right up until someone proves unworthy of respect and courtesy that in fact they are so worthy.

But fags and dykes and their sleazy apologists have proven not to be worth or respect, or courtesy, of even basic dignity. So I treat them as they demand.

@50 - More proof that you have shit for brains; you simply don't know when to shut up.

@50: No one with a happy home talks like that.

I have yet to have a refutation to the clear fact that fags and dykes suffer from no lack of equality. Access to housing, jobs, medical care and commerce is at par with less perverted fellow citizens. Sure some folks don't care to do business with those attacking family and decency, but you can always buy your flowers from someone who cares a bit less.

Really, that's the core of your argument? They won't bake me a cake or set up flower arrangements for my so called marriage? Really?

And then you have the sheer effrontery to compare your cakelessness to segregated buses or lunch counters. What breath-taking gall. Either you have a challenged relationship with reality, or you're simply liars. Well, being liberals, both is as likely.

I see fags and dykes all the time whining about how UNFAAAIIIRR life is, but when asked what they mean, all I hear is deafening silence. Hmm. How about put up or shut the whining up?

@54: Gay men are not allowed to donate blood, for one. Gay couples who are legally married are often not allowed to adopt children. And when landlords like you discriminate based on sexual orientation, you are violating the law in 21 states, and your religious convictions can go to hell as far as Uncle Sam is concerned. So yes, gays and lesbians do face significant discrimination; luckily, most of it is now illegal is the less backwards parts of this great nation. Don't feel left out, though, because any law that protects queer or trans persons from discrimination grants the same protections to straight cis persons. Everybody wins!

I'd really like to address (AGAIN, since when I've tried to previously you've mysteriously disappeared) two of your major talking points here: sexual orientation versus romantic situation, and your conception of "healthy sexuality". You have a grudging modicum of respect for my methods of debate, and I have a pathological hunger to educate the ignorant (even if they're ideologically-lithified people on the internet). Shall we have this discussion, then?

@55

Gay men can't donate blood for sound medical reasons if in fact that's true. I give blood often and have yet to be asked if I'm gay, though I am always asked about whether I've had anal sex or injected drugs, again for sound medical reasons. They aren't accusing me of being a fag or junkie. They're making sure that a transfusion is safe for the eventual patient. Blood banks don't care about sexual choices provided they don't potentially injure others. Had I spent time in parts of Africa or Asia I couldn't either because of the risk of certain infectious diseases. This isn't due to racism but risks.

I will rent my houses to whomever I choose. It really isn't the business of anyone else. When you buy a rental, you can do the same. Until then, mind your own damn business.

Being a parent, I'm very uncomfortable with using children as a political tool to test whether gays and lesbians parent as well as heterosexually inclined people. What I know is that modelling healthy adult roles as a father, husband, son to my parents and so on is among my most serious obligations in life. How is a boy supposed to know to lovingly and respectfully treat his girlfriends and eventual wives? A girl deserves a dad who shows her that she deserves to be treated with those qualities. Those with unhealthy sexual behavior choices simply can't do this.

Show me the homosexual gene, not some correlative hormonal imbalance or what have you, and we'll talk. Even then, I have genetic inclination to heart disease. Doesn't excuse me trying to live a healthy lifestyle in spite of that. Would you refuse to treat a person with a genetic defect since they were 'born that way?' Of course not.

There is no such beastie as sexual orientation. It's an abstraction. There are people inclined to sexual acts ranging from healthy heterosexual to varying levels of perversions of natural sexual behavior. But there are no 'gay' people or 'straight' people. It's just that gay and lesbian people seem to think that when behavior bears consequences it's unfair.

Now, I have no doubt that some unfortunate individuals have an inclination to sexual activity with the same gender. Inclination isn't justification, nor is it cause for celebration or condemnation necessarily. It isn't proof of some rightness or wrongness in the behavior to which one is inclined. It's a card dealt which one plays as the rest of their hand and the rules of the game dictate.

@ 56, if you're not open and up front about to whom you will rent, you're a coward. It's not "taking a stand" if the only people you tell about it are those who don't know your identity.

"Being a parent"

Ah your imaginary children as well.

@56: Seattleblues, would you be in favor of allowing businesses to discriminate against black people? If not, you belie your claim that transactions are none of the government's business. If so, you're just generally a horrible person.

Now as to parenting, all the evidence we have indicates that the gender of parents doesn't matter, but the number does. The fact of the matter is that men and women have the same rights and responsibilities in today's society, and mom or dad alike can teach you the same life skills. Your notion that men need to be taught how to treat women properly while women need to be taught that they deserve proper treatment hasn't aged gracefully in the past fifty years, by the way.

Now your search for the gay gene, while admirable in its vivacity, is entirely misguided. Despite what you may have seen on the television, not everything is determined by genetics. Handedness, fingerprints, and even to a degree personality are all determined in early development, and yet there is no gene determining any of those.
Let me be clear and concise in my explanation. SOME PARTS OF THE BRAINS OF GAYS ARE DIFFERENT FROM THE BRAINS OF STRAIGHTS. GAY MEN'S BRAINS ARE LIKE THOSE OF STRAIGHT WOMEN, AND LESBIANS' BRAINS ARE LIKE THOSE OF STRAIGHT MEN. WHEN RESEARCHERS CHANGED THE BRAINS OF RATS THIS WAY, THE RATS BECAME BISEXUAL.
Is there any part of this summary you dispute? Because sexual orientation IS real, no matter how much you want it not to be.

Now that we agree that sexual orientation is real, we can move on to gay romance. Assuming that some people are, in fact, gay, we can reasonably assume that kissing people of their own gender is an integral part of their identity. I mean, you wouldn't be a real (straight) man if you never had the chance to kiss a woman, right? Now, the Supreme Court of the United States understands this. From Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, 506 US 263 - Supreme Court 1993

Some activities may be such an irrational object of disfavor that, if they are targeted, and if they also happen to be engaged in exclusively or predominantly by a particular class of people, an intent to disfavor that class can readily be presumed. A tax on wearing yarmulkes is a tax on Jews.

Do you agree with the Court's postulate? And if so, do you agree that same-sex relationships are intrinsic to homosexuality?

"Show me the homosexual gene..."

I'll show you the homosexual gene when you show me the heterosexual gene. Oh, there is none? Imagine that.

People that use the 'gene' argument only show their level of stupidity and ignorance by thinking they know me better than I know myself. Classic Dunning-Kruger effect - They're too ignorant to realize just how ignorant they truly are. The knuckleheads read some bullshit posted on a conservative website and suddenly they believe they hold a PhD in Human Behavior and Sexuality and have all the answers.

@VL

Personally, yes I would allow an ignorant racist to ruin his or her business by refusing to serve black people, provided essential services are maintained. If I owned the only apartment building in a small town I could see compelling local (NOT federal or state) jurisdiction in forcing me to make units available regardless of my opinions. Otherwise, how I manage my business is just that, my business.

And you don't, because you can't, refute my core point. Fags and dykes are equal citizens. Right now. What they want is the right to set legal and social terms for everyone else. That isn't a fight for equality, but the irritating temper tantrum of a petulant toddler.

However, as I've written often before and once in this thread, faggots and dykes are in no way comparable to protected classes so the question isn't relevant.

Skin color, gender and so on aren't chosen. We as a society have decided that common justice is served by protecting people from discrimination unjustly based on non chosen characteristics. Faggots and dykes choose the sole thing that supposedly differentiates them from their fellow, perverted sexual behavior.

Now there are classes of choice specifically Constitutionally protected. You bring one up in the bottom of your post. And I do agree with the majority of the ruling, since it goes to a protected right, that of free expression of religion. The choice to express a faith or a journalistic bias, or to publicly air grievances against the government are protected. Fags and dykes choose an expression not specifically protected, and must accept the consequences of that choice like adults.

As to parenting, men and women now and always have different roles. Yes, women should be treated at parity in the home or business. Yes men should realize times are changing and the way in which they treat other men and women is changing too. But at heart young boys and young girls need healthy role modeling by opposite sex parents, whether the date is 1013 or 2013. And as I wrote, I'm not happy with using children as experimental pawns in the whiny "It's not FAAAIIIIRRRR" games fags and dykes are playing.

As to sexual so called orientation you're just using different terms to say the same thing. If a person has schizophrenia, we don't say 'born that way' and go on. We treat them for the disfunction. If a person wants to have unnatural sex with other consenting adults we do and should respect their right not to be treated for their disorder. But asking that it be treated as some kind of mark of superiority is a bridge too far for me.

@61

What you and the rest of the 'Fags and dykes are citizens with more rights than others' brigade are doing is blackmail, pure and simple. Well intended people are fooled by spurious claims to justice and fairness and tolerance and so on, but you don't really care about any of those. You are spoiled children unable to deal with reality and the consequences of your own chosen behavior. You're throwing a national temper tantrum. And it's time the grown ups began to ignore you until you're willing to act like adults.

SB, it hurts my widdle feewings when you ignore me. (Or rather, it demonstrates your inability to answer because I've cut you to the core.)

Did you tell your lesbian tenants that their lesbianism was the reason you weren't going to renew their lease? That would have been brave. If not, what DID you tell them? I hope you didn't have to bear false witness.

@61: I'd like to remind you of what the Supreme Court said in 1993. If wearing yarmulkes was illegal for all citizens, would you agree that everyone had equal rights? The point of the quotation is not that religious groups are to be protected, but rather that some ACTIONS are inseparable from IDENTITIES. This puts the lie to your claim that it's only gay relationships, not gays themselves, that are discriminated against.

And it hurts a little when you continue to claim that queers choose their identity. Did you not read the explanation I just gave you for the tenth time? Do you want to read the studies demonstrating that sexual orientation is real? Or can you just not bear to admit to yourself that sexual orientation is real?

Now certainly sexual orientation is not explicitly protected in the Constitution, but the Equal Protection Clause implicitly protects it as a category. Since you think being gay is a disability, might I remind you of the legal protections accorded to persons with actual disabilities? Nowhere in the Constitution is status of physical disability explicitly protected, but just try refusing to make reasonable accommodation for someone in a wheelchair!

I'd really like to see you make one argument against homosexuality that isn't equally valid when applied against left-handedness. They're both atypical, innate but not genetic, long regarded as sinful, and are in no way maladaptive.

If you believed so strongly that children need a mother and a father to be properly raised, you'd want to stop single parents from raising children. Wouldn't two mothers be better than one mother and no father? Or two fathers better than only one? I can understand your uncertainty about the quality of gay parenting, but WE HAVE EVIDENCE ON THIS NOW. The data show that the gender of parents is IRRELEVANT, and that the number of parents is what really matters. What separates you from me is that I change my opinions to fit the facts instead of ignoring everything that doesn't fit my preconceived notions.

As usual, you claim that we're trying to give gays special rights that straights wouldn't get, or somehow make them superior to us straight people. As usual, you have no examples or evidence to back this up.

Now finally, you're not one to talk about people having "unnatural sex", since you've probably done quite a bit of unnatural stuff yourself. Have you ever engaged in receptive fellatio, cunnilingus, digital intercourse, or osculation? (I bet that you're doing that last one in your wedding pictures.) All entirely against the natural functions of the body, and all good heterosexual fun.

@65: forget it Jake, it's Chinatown. The only thing you could do to expand his mind is cram it through a wood-chipper.

I just assume (rightly) that everything that comes out of his mouth is bluster and bullshit. If any of it was true, he'd be being a good father/husband and not spending all this time telling a bunch of "faggots and dykes" that they need to be as miserable as him.

I quit arguing with SeattleBlues when he started calling us faggots and dykes.

Someone going that far is not pleasant to interact with.

@68 I'm kind of surprised the moderators allow hate speech. Comments do occasionally get pulled and these should be. Not for the fact claims, which are easily disproved, but for the hateful language.

She can no more refuse to do business because their beliefs differ from her own than she could refuse to provide flowers for a Catholic wedding, bar mitzvah, or Mormon baptism. Religious discrimination by a business is federally illegal.

@69: I don't think they really hire any fulltime moderators for the forums.

"Not for the fact claims, which are easily disproved, but for the hateful language."

And this is really the point. It's not that Blues is stupid, it's not that he's a hatemonger, it's that someone who lies as much as he does is not interested in actual discussion.

Oh SB, SB. Kick and fuss and use vile slurs. You're done. You've lost. Marriage equality is a fact in this state, and day by day, becoming the law in more and more states, and more and more countries around the world. The nice part of me feels sorry for you, but the not so nice part of me really kind of hopes you get busted for breaking the law by discriminating against gays and lesbians and in the ensuing legal battle lose everything you own. Except your delusion of righteousness and tin foil hat. I hope you get to keep those. Because that would be funny.

I hope someone's already made the point that businesses depend on federal and state infrastructure to sell their goods and services and therefore don't get to pick and choose their clientele. There's a reason why a "whites-only" establishment would be unthinkable today, and it's not because of the free market.

@Everywhere-Seattleblues-continues-to-peddle-his-psuedo-intellectual-drivel:

The "consequence" of not being able to marry the person with whom you can actually tolerate ongoing sexual relations and cooperative cohabitation is not a natural consequence. It is a fabricated consequence; what's more, with marriage being a civic contract, it is a socially engineered consequence, denial of access to an engineered legal and socio-economic advantage granted to households no more procreative (the elderly, the medically infertile, those willfully using contraception to avoid pregnancy; in fact, fewer than half of all marriages at any given time involve progeny, a number that can only partially be accounted for by couples who simply haven't squeezed out womb-rats yet).

Thus the objection to this inequality is not reflective of an unwillingness to accept natural or even logical consequences, but an objection to a fabricated inequity no less arbitrary than any other form of segregation.

Faggots and dykes choose the sole thing that they're claiming differentiates them, their aberrant sexual choices.

The alternatives to those choices being celibacy or romantic engagement to an individual for whom one is biologically incapable of harboring erotic desire.

Second, show me one area of life in which fags and dykes are substantially punished for their deviancy. Jobs? Nah. Statistically fags and dykes do as well as their sexually healthy peers.

Largely because they are disproportionately represented in high-paying jobs like technology or high-prestige jobs like the arts and academia. Statistically, homosexuals seem to have higher than average IQs, but I think that's a sampling bias; the smarter you are, the less danger there is in coming out. Still, it seems to me that any statistic (not that you offered any) suggesting that "fags and dykes" are "doing fine" will tend to be skewed, as an average, by those who are doing considerably better than fine, and ignoring those experiencing real discrimination.

Ability to buy or rent a home? Again, nope. Even the best neighborhoods often have a faggot or dyke in them.

Indeed, even without controlling for anti-gay violence, the very best neighborhoods in Western industrialized nations are those with a greater number of homosexuals.

There is no such thing as gay marriage, whatever my or any other state says. Marriage is, marriage always has been, and marriage always will be between a man and a woman. No faux legal definition will make decent people ever think otherwise.

Except that marriage doesn't exist except by engineered definition. The way the state defines it has already stood at odds with the way churches, families, and communities define it. Civic marriage, then, has always been the state's to define, the state's to sanctify.

Your marriage may always be between a woman and the man who has shocked and abused her into fearing to leave for a better life; may we breathe a sigh of relief that we don't all live such a life.

Washington could legally redefine gravity, but it won't change anything about how the thing works.

One could argue that the theoretical nature of our understanding of gravity makes it a collective subjective construct, but it's still distinct from marriage in that sense. Marriage is more like art; it only exists at all by virtue of how we discuss and recognize it.

It's knowing reality works one way, and trying to force it to work another. Having sex with the same gender for instance, or trying to force others to bear the consequences of your lifestyle choices.

But reality doesn't work "one way" when it comes to human sexuality. The female orgasm, for instance, can be achieved through procreative coitus in less than 25% of women; in that sense, all female orgasm lies outside the purpose ascribed to "normal" sexuality.

What I wrote was that neither she or I had a choice in skin color. What I've written before is that judging someone based on what they had no choice in is silly and unjust, a mark of an inferior mind.

Yet you feel comfortable judging someone for acting on a (by all clinical appearances immutable) proclivity with a willing partner of legal agency rather than engaging in celibacy or loveless and/or sexless marriage (the only alternatives). I don't see that as very far removed.

Gay men can't donate blood for sound medical reasons if in fact that's true. I give blood often and have yet to be asked if I'm gay, though I am always asked about whether I've had anal sex or injected drugs, again for sound medical reasons.

The controversy over the blood donation ban on those who have or have had anal sex is that it's too far reaching. It basically asks whether you're a man who's had sex with another man since the '70s.

I will rent my houses to whomever I choose. It really isn't the business of anyone else. When you buy a rental, you can do the same.

I'd like to think I'd be a bigger man than to deny rental to, say, a Christian. And if I weren't a bigger man, I'm not sure I morally object to a law forcing me to be so, and suggesting that my ideological differences with a prospective renter--who otherwise demonstrated the qualities of being a good tenant--are inadequate basis to deny a lease.

What I know is that modelling healthy adult roles as a father, husband, son to my parents and so on is among my most serious obligations in life. How is a boy supposed to know to lovingly and respectfully treat his girlfriends and eventual wives?

I doubt he'd learn it from you.

A girl deserves a dad who shows her that she deserves to be treated with those qualities. Those with unhealthy sexual behavior choices simply can't do this.

I fail to see (because you and your ilk have failed to illustrate or demonstrate) how knowing how to treat a loved one with respect and dignity would be influenced in any way by the gender of either party.

Skin color, gender and so on aren't chosen. We as a society have decided that common justice is served by protecting people from discrimination unjustly based on non chosen characteristics. Faggots and dykes choose the sole thing that supposedly differentiates them from their fellow, perverted sexual behavior.

Sexual behavior is distinct from sexual orientation; the percentages alone bear that out. At least 10%, and by some metrics 25%, of individuals have had at least one homosexual experience; this is a far higher percentage than of those who engage primarily or exclusively in homosexual behavior, or those who lack significant heterosexual attraction.

Now there are classes of choice specifically Constitutionally protected. You bring one up in the bottom of your post. And I do agree with the majority of the ruling, since it goes to a protected right, that of free expression of religion. The choice to express a faith or a journalistic bias, or to publicly air grievances against the government are protected. Fags and dykes choose an expression not specifically protected, and must accept the consequences of that choice like adults.

I disagree. Because even religions without any hard and fast sexual proscriptions (say, Buddhism or Taoism) comment on sexuality, and how one wields it, as a field fraught with moral conundra, I would suggest that sexual expression is implicitly protected as a form of religious expression.

As to sexual so called orientation you're just using different terms to say the same thing. If a person has schizophrenia, we don't say 'born that way' and go on.

We can point to the ways in which schizophrenia has consequences that aren't legally engineered.

But asking that it be treated as some kind of mark of superiority is a bridge too far for me.

In what ways are homosexuals or their supporters asking for "superior" treatment?

I also love the whole "show me the homosexual gene" bit (I refuse to call it an "argument"). I can't show you the "left-handed" gene, either, but I nearly lose an eye whenever I get a wild hair and try to use chopsticks with my right hand. Yeah, I could "choose" to use my right hand, and I'd probably get better at using it over time, but I would still be using the less adept of two possible hands.

Very little in this world is wholly nature or wholly nurture.