Pence signed it: Add Indiana to the list of states with "religious freedom" laws

[cinyc]

We needn't structure our laws around a few nutters here and there, who for whatever reason, incorrectly believe that a wedding, by definition, has to be a religious ceremony. That's just a flatly absurd suggestion.

Please explain why anyone should be compelled, under penalty of law, to participate in someone else's wedding ceremony, religious, civil or whatever.

[cinyc]

Again, we seem to be relitigating the Civil Rights Act of 1964. No one is insisting "anyone," this is about vendors who provide services to couples that are not religious in nature outside of people's tortured rationales.

We are not relitigating the Civil Rights Act.  We are relitigating Hobby Lobby, which held that closely held businesses are just as entitled to freedom of religion as individuals under the federal version of RFRA.  Whether the thing that the government is forcing a business to do is religious in nature is irrelevant.  Providing birth control in itself isn't religious in nature.  But forcing someone who believes birth control is a sin to buy birth control for its workers violates the federal RFRA statute.  Indiana is just creating a state version of the same statute, updated to reflect Hobby Lobby - a federal law which was signed into law by Democratic President Clinton, that evil "conservative" bigot.

Should gay bakeries be required to create cakes with messages supporting marriage as only being between a man and a woman?  Should Jewish bakers be required to create swastika cakes for their neo-nazi clients?  Of course not, because that's offensive to them.  Well, gay marriage is just as offensive to some religious people.  Why should they be coerced under penalty of law to support your "progressive" secular beliefs when you're not compelled under penalty of law to support their religious beliefs?  After all, you're just a "vendor" providing services.

[cinyc]

No one is compelled to do anything, but if you go into a certain business, there are rules you must follow.  Not being discriminatory is one of them (or well in this case should be).  If you want to be discriminatory in your personal life have at it.  If you can't put your hate aside to not be discriminatory in business, well no one is forcing you or compelling you to go into the business.

The notion that you have to check your religious beliefs at the door when you go into business is so pre-Hobby Lobby.  And if a gay baker can't just put his "hate" aside and not discriminate against religious people wanting a pro-traditional marriage cake, well, no one is forcing or compelling him to go into business, right?  Should black restaurants be forced to cater the next Klan rally, too?

[cinyc]

Most likely, swastika cakes are not a service that any bakeries (Jewish or otherwise) offer to anybody. The issue here is a minority getting the same service already offered to everybody else.  Are you being this obtuse on purpose?

Some bakeries will put whatever you want on a cake, no questions asked.  Why shouldn't gays or Jewish bakers be held to the same standards?  The issue is forcing someone to do something they find offensive, ratifying, under penalty of law, something they don't believe in.  

And when a gay bakery, who writes messages on cakes, (rightfully) refuses to put a pro-tradtional marriage message on a cake, why isn't that issue a minority - religious people who think gay marriage is a sin - getting the same service already offered to everybody else, too?  Are some minority groups more special than others?