Kim Davis

The Internet is all abuzz with talk of Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on the basis of her religious beliefs. Now she is in prison, and people have ripped her apart. I think they were right to do that, and I joined in the fun along with them.

Basically everything that could be said about what she did has already been said by much stronger minds than mine. I don't really have anything new to say in regards to her actual conduct, though I would like to point out that she was not jailed for her beliefs. She was jailed for, again, her conduct. There is a huge fucking difference, you guys. You can believe whatever arcane bullshit you want about gay folk, but you have not right to dictate how we live our lives. You cannot limit our freedoms.

What I want to focus on here is the treatment of Kim Davis' number of marriage. I know that we only ragged on her because she was a hypocrite. She defended her bigoted actions by bringing up the sanctity of marriage and the importance of the sacrament. She's also been married four times, and those two things don't really mesh. I think it's perfectly fine to talk about her marriages in the context of religious hypocrisy, but the number of partners you've had says nothing about the content of your character.

I think there's also a lot of bullshit surrounding Kim's appearance. I've seen some shit on Twitter that makes it seem as though she is a lesser person for being conventionally unattractive. Not only is this untrue, it is also terrible debate strategy. If you level personal attacks against your opponent, it signals that you cannot compete with them on an intellectual level. Attack the argument, not the arguer.

Just something to think about.

Fuck The Libertarians Episode Five: The Slippery Slope of Religious Freedom

In the wake of many recent events, the American public has initiated a discussion about religious freedom, particularly as the concept relates to business owners and the conduct thereof. That's what I'd like to talk about today.

In Indiana, there was a bill proposed called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which would make it legal for business owners  to refuse service to anyone if serving them violated their 'sincerely held religious beliefs." Proponents of the bill stated that the bill was a response to religious liberty. It was about affording theistic business owners the right to practice their faiths, even during business transactions.

I call bullshit. Let's not kid ourselves here, the RFRA and other bills like it are not about liberty or freedom. It isn't about making Christian business owners feel comfortable. It's a thinly-veiled attempt to push discrimination against the LGBT community, pure and simple. This is a form of modern segregation, and nothing more.

And yet, many people, including those on the left, are in favor of such bills being made into laws. They support the right of private business to choose how they conduct said business, even if it means enforcing discriminatory policy. To them, it isn't a matter of bigotry. It's about workers' rights, apparently.

These people go on to claim that it's okay for bakeries to not serve gay couples, so long as there is a separate bakery where the couple can go to be served. That way, both the bigot and the couple can remain comfortable, having never crossed paths with one another in the first place. That would be fine, except for one small problem. Separate but equal is inherently unequal. We have already had this discussion. We ruled that, under the fourteenth amendment, segregation is unconstitutional. There. This discussion is over.

Wait, no it isn't. So-called pro-freedom individuals will say that we have to empathize with Christian business owners. After all, if you believe that serving a gay couple will result in you burning in Hell for eternity, then isn't it wise to not serve that couple? Again, it's about the feelings of the business owners.

But that's a slippery slope. The irony of me invoking this argument is not lost on me, but I feel it makes sense in this context. If Christian bakers can refuse service to business owners based on their feelings about Hell, what's stopping Christian landlords from doing so? There are many states where it is completely legal to fire someone for being gay. This is again based on the feeling of the business owner. The point is, should laws like these become the norm, you will eventually see gay people being turned away from vital services, such as, again, housing. The RFRA sets a very dangerous precedent.

If the goal of the RFRA is to prevent the eternal torture of a significant subset of the population, then by all means, sign it into law immediately. I might disagree with your views, but I certainly don't condone torture. But here's the problem with that line of reasoning. Nobody fucking knows what happens after we die. Many of us like to pretend we do, but at the end of the day, we have no clue. At a certain point, we're going to have to be pragmatic and make decisions based on the here and now, instead of some hypothetical scenario that, in all likelihood, will probably never come to pass.

Just something to think about.