I think it's important to recognize that the position is not inherently contradictory or hypocritical, like many people were insinuating in the beginning. It makes a big difference if the idea, itself, is contradictory, or whether people who claim to espouse the idea act in a contradictory manner. If a person claims to believe a certain thing, but acts in such a way as to contradict that belief, then they may in fact be lying. Their hypocrisy tells you a lot more about the person than the idea.
Are there some people on the right who would act hypocritically given the chance? Yes, I'm sure there are, but I genuinely don't think it's a large segment. I've seen a lot of people on the right defend this restaurant's legal right to do what they did.
2 non-crit's aren't usually too terrible, you have at least a SMALL amount of room, however some times they're really stupid things. I'm willing to bet nearly every company is similar to what I've experienced and warns employee's weeks in advance that the dark shadow of state health inspectors are looming over them. After the tension passes, everyone goes back to being relaxed.
To get 15, it's like pulling the pin on a grenade, and then holding it there wondering why it didn't explode yet. You're warned before you even pull the pin that it'll explode. You did it anyways.
Something tells me that the reality is actually much, much worse. That is 15 violations doing their best work.
In my opinion it only becomes hypocrisy if you can cite a specific instance where someone endorses an idea then changes their mind when it happens to them. If I said that I support business being able to refuse service based on strongly held beliefs, religious or otherwise, then said that a restaurant kicking out Sanders was bad, I'm not strictly being hypocritical because I wasn't saying that businesses should refuse service to a particular person, or people who hold a particular trait.
I think the problem is that many people, in this thread specifically, just no longer see this viewpoint as being a genuinely held one by most Republicans, so the natural indication is to assume hypocrisy, because there have been virtually no voices on the right saying that business owners should have this privilege but shouldn't exercise it.
Well, I'm not sure how to argue against that. I simply disagree. I've heard many right wing voices calling for both situations to be given the same rights of refusal, and my personal experience with the many conservatives I know has followed suit.
How does one, in this specific instance, gauge what view most republicans hold on this matter, outside of polling? Surely individual people raising their voices are still considered anecdotal cases? "many" is a vague term that does not necessarily relate to the concept of a majority, as the word "most" does - but that word too must be backed with statistical data.
It is faulty to assume what position most people hold without statistical evidence, and it is equally faulty to assume what position an individual holds based on group data. Why must arguments start on the basis of such assumptions?
That's why I said it's hard to argue against such claims. All I can really offer is my own anecdotal evidence. Even far right wing voices like Ben Shapiro have defended the right of the restaurant to refuse service to Sanders.
This is why I'm saying it's not hypocritical, just funny. Sgman being technically correct isn't going to stop me from laughing at the pearl clutching and hand wringing from people who never considered the fact that they might run into a liberal small business owner while trying to grab a bite to eat between defending their bosses innumerable scandals.
I'm not saying that those right wing voices think both situations be given the same rights, I'm saying that the majority of those right wing voices thinks its okay
It's a generalization, so I can't call it hypocrisy, but it's something I genuinely believe to be true because I have thus far seen zero evidence to the contrary. I've yet to see a Republican explain why businesses should have the right to do something while disagreeing with the morality about it. At least when the left (again, as a generalization) says that businesses shouldn't have these rights, they extend that criticism to instances where people on their own "side", as it were, shouldn't have kicked them out. You can see arguments from well intentioned liberals in this very thread, in fact.
It just seems strange to me to disagree with an assumption about the state of the majority based on anecdotal evidence with another such assumption, based on equally anecdotal evidence. (Unless I misunderstand you, somehow, and it isn't what you're trying to do).
I would definitely still have to mostly disagree on what Sgman is saying. I could see the argument being made if it was a church, even if I think it would be a bullshit decision, but for a business it shouldn't even be a consideration. They're not being forced to acknowledge anything.
I can't say whether I disagree with you in particular or not though because what you're saying in the first paragraph didn't seem to be what Sgman was arguing earlier, I think.
If anyone wants to hear my full opinion on this though: I think it's hypocritical of the people complaining because many of them are the same people who view it as fine to refuse service to someone over inherent traits they have zero control over. As BDA pointed out in his post, if anything that means it's less of an issue because she actively chooses to be that way. Though I think members of this administration (or ICE people) going to foreign-themed restaurants after their xenophobic actions and policies lately is incredibly hypocritical of those individuals in particular to begin with. They have no right to say they don't want a people here then benefit from their culture like that. (Yeah, it's just a meal but that's still a benefit on a very basic level.)
I'm not quite seeing your criticism. An anecdotal response is perfectly legitimate as a response to an anecdotal argument. It's matching the level of evidence given.
I'm not quite sure what you mean. The general position seems to be that it's OK to refuse service because you are being asked to participate in something you don't agree with, but that it's not OK to completely refuse service to people because you disagree with them. So the baker wouldn't have been in the right to completely deny all service to gay people (and it would have been a shut and close case of illegal discrimination), but it's OK for him to not want to participate in a gay wedding ceremony. In the same way, it isn't OK for a restaurant to completely deny all service to people they politically disagree with, but it would have been fine for her to refuse to cater an event for something she disagrees with.
You know, having done a re-reading of what I said and what he argued earlier in the thread it is entirely possible I misunderstood what he might have meant (that republicans going against this aren't hypocritical), as opposed to the idea that democrats who cheer on this yet went against the whole gay marriage cake might technically have been, depending on what the facts for the reasoning for the refusal in that case were. My bad.
My argument is that the conservative position is not inherently hypocritical in this instance because claiming that businesses ought to have the right to refuse service does not mean you must morally support every instance of a business refusing service.
If I understood you correctly, you make a counter-claim on the state of what the majority of the republicans believe on the basis of anecdotal evidence, as opposed to merely not accepting the opposing claims on the state of the beliefs of the majority due to them lacking a concrete basis - in effect, doing the same thing, basing a strong belief solely on anecdotal evidence.
Did I misinterpret your words?
If that one was his argument then I'm definitely in full disagreement with that argument. (It might be helpful if he clarified it at this point actually, since one or more of us seem to be misreading something somewhere along the line.) He'd be right on only an extremely technical level because a lot of the people defending this business owner who decried the baker example you gave aren't doing it because they necessarily agree with the decision but are simply enforcing integrity on the people who have an issue with this but not the other one. Personally I'm of the opinion that both situations were kinda shit but that the baker one was shittier by far while this one is hilarious. And my opinion in my previous post is merely me enforcing what the people who defended the bakery in that previous case are implying is okay.
I'm simply trying to show that my personal experience seems to clash with his personal experience, showing that there isn't a common experience that we can work off of. If that difference of experience is the key to our disagreement, then there may be no way to resolve it.
I'd definitely disagree with that then. The two situations are different, that much is true. But the bakery situation is significantly worse from my point of view because that was a situation based upon discriminating against someone for traits they have no control over whereas Sanders chooses to be the way she is. From my view that may not be necessarily hypocritical but it's the easiest way to describe it at least. Either way it certainly feels inconsistent. Now if someone were to argue that both situations were fine then while I'd disagree with them I could at least respect that since it would feel consistent.
How can you say that the baker discriminated based on the couple's trait of being gay when the baker had happily served them in the past, and said he would continue to do so?
From what I've heard, the right has been saying that both instances ought to be legal.
I'm glad you brought up Shapiro because it's good to be as specific as possible if we are going throw around pretty heavy words like "hypocrite", and I find his position (laid out in this video, not sure if it is the one you are referencing) to be thoroughly hypocritical, and the opinion that most people here are applying to the right as a whole. Handily, he expresses this seemingly contradictory stance pretty early on by separating "religious exceptions" and disagreeing with political viewpoints. He goes a step further and says that this isn't "standing up for your morals by kicking someone out of your restuarant because you disagree with them politically". Conveniently, this seems like fairly mainstream Republican, social conservative beliefs, where there seems to exist two tiers of opinions, and that kicking someone out because you don't agree with them morally is only okay when there is some solid scriptural or cultural backing to it. I acknowledge and respect the fact that he says they have the absolute right to do what they did but the hypocrisy isn't form a legal perspective, it's from a moral one, and he doesn't feel like refusing to service someone who represents and seemingly believes herself in some fairly morally reprehensible things is as legitimate as refusing service to someone who believes (in his view) morally reprehensible things.
It's tangential to this conversation but I couldn't help but smile at him saying that you should serve everyone who walks into your business as the right and moral thing to do then immedietly follow that up by saying that he wouldn't service gay weddings or take pictures of gay people. Presumably, serving two dudes at a table with fried chicken is fine, but taking a picture of two dudes in an embrace is just crossing the line.
I was actually referencing an article he wrote, but I'll take a listen and response in the morning. I really do need to get to bed.
While I agree that situation was clearly worse, it does seem to me that this discrimination is not a direct result of being against a thing they have no control over, but an indirect result of that thing they have no control over leading them to wish to do something (a gay marriage) they do have control over and goes against the tightly held beliefs of the owner of the bakery.
This wish to just do the basic act of getting married that is available to straights is of course entirely natural and their right to wish for, but the only reason this action might be deemed acceptable on some level is the existence of other bakeries which would not refuse to service them on such a disagreement of beliefs. I would agree that such an action would be irredeemable in the absence of other options.
It's not just about having to morally support every instance of a business refusing service though, it's how you frame that refusal. Again, sticking to specifics here because I don't want to say that every right-wing person believes XYZ, Ben Shapiro thinks that refusing service based on moral reasons is perfectly fine. It's just that he frames this in the traditional Republican way of "firmly held religious beliefs", a higher strata of morals that liberals simply aren't privy to.
I don't recall all the exact details off the top of my head and don't have a link handy so my details might be a little bit off but the base issue was still them being gay. It was just in regards to gay marriage in particular if I recall correctly. Even if the baker would still serve them in other regards it's still refusing them service over them being gay, even if it's slightly more nuanced than that.
Well it's definitely not all of them at least, though that's not unexpected. But anyone who's arguing that both should be legal is fine in my book even if I disagree with them. They're at least keeping their beliefs consistent which I can respect.
If bakers don't have to serve gay couples with a nice wedding cake then restaurants don't have to serve liars.
It's not a one-way street.
People like Ben Shapiro would readily agree. My personal problem is that he would classify the former as a "firmly held religious belief" and something that is worth fighting for, while the latter would be relegated to a cynical political decision that is an active detriment to society.
When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.
also that's just called organzing a protest. If you don't like the public shaming you, maybe tell conservatives to be civil.
Bravo to Maxine Waters. I agree with everything she said. Trump and his co-conspirators do not deserve a minute of public peace until they renounce the lies, brutality, and criminality of the Trump administration and resign in disgrace. Protest them everywhere. Give them no respite from the outrage of the people who actually care about what's happening to our country.
Mind you, I'm not condoning violence -- just presence, visibility, and noise. Figured that was an important distinction, because I know your gut reaction will be to start arguing about the definition of "protest." Semantics is and always has been your preferred fallback.
Peeps don't choose to be black or gay or gender dysphoric or disabled - It is therefore wrong to discriminate against them.
Trump n co choose to be liars and bigots - it's therefore ok to discriminate against them.
Simplistic view perhaps but seems to be a fairly good rule to follow.
A caveat to this is religion and ethnicity. Often people use religion as an excuse to discriminate against an ethnicity then disingenuously use "It's not racism if its a religion" as a defence. Those people are dicks.
Doesn’t it...? Seems hypocritical to not
Even then, religious beliefs should never trump human rights.
A reminder also that Steve King retweeted a nazi sympathiser
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/us/politics/steve-king-collett-nazi.html
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.