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> With the new case, “we are witness yet again to the unrelenting anti-LGBTQ > crusade being waged by self-described Christian fundamentalist legal groups

> With the new case, “we are witness yet again to the unrelenting anti-LGBTQ > crusade being waged by self-described Christian fundamentalist legal groups > aiming to chip away at the hard-won gains of LGBTQ people by carving out swaths > of territory where discrimination can flourish,” said Jennifer C. Pizer, a > senior counsel at Lambda. It's hard for me to understand how someone doesn't see conservative Christians are on the defensive in these cases. LGBT groups are getting massive support from governments, NGOs, corporations, etc. Acceptance is being promoted in virtually every media and you are generally considered an evil person for holding views about homosexuality that would have been normal 30 years ago. Conservative Christians on the other hand are just praying their livelihood won't be the target of activists today.

xxpor 5y ago
If you don't think the conservative side doesn't have the same or more behind it, I really don't know what to tell you at this point. Who's funding the federalist? Who's funding FedSoc? They're just not as public about it.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Do you genuinely believe that conservative christians right now are on the offensive, and LGBT groups are on the defensive?
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > Do you genuinely believe that conservative christians right now are on the offensive I'm not American so i might be mistaken, but can the recent changes in abortion laws across a section of US states be explained in any other way?
    - rayiner 5y ago
      Yes—Roe protects abortion through the end of the second trimester, which is out of sync with what 70% of the public believes: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-majority-want-to-keep-abortion-legal-but-they-also-want-restrictions https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-majority-want-... Mississippi’s 15-week ban, for example, would make the timing there somewhat more liberal than France or Denmark. It would also be consistent with the 70% of the public that thinks abortion should be legal, but only in the first trimester. Conservatives are very much in a defensive crouch on Roe.
  - detaro 5y ago
    Yes? Look at the various anti-trans laws or rules being passed, that's very much a fundamental defensive fight for LGBT. Some big companies making nice statements doesn't buy you very much if your healthcare gets killed.
  - KerrAvon 5y ago
    Do you genuinely believe the opposite? Just because more LGBT people are visible now doesn’t mean they’re winning some kind of fictional PR war.
  - KerrAvon 5y ago
  - fassssst 5y ago
    They certainly are because of the Supreme Court makeup.
- rayiner 5y ago
  I love the mythical status liberals have elevated FedSoc to in their minds. FedSoc has about $20 million in revenue. SPLC alone had $130 million. The ACLU had $300 million. We’re outgunned 20:1 in numbers and in financing compared to liberal causes. 90% of people at any major law firm are significantly to the left of your average American, and lawyers are active donors.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait. FedSoc and ACLU have entirely different missions. FedSoc's liberal competitor is, as you know, the ACS. You didn't cite them because they're smaller than FedSoc, and you wanted the comparison more convenient to your argument. I'm also not alarmed by FedSoc (or ALEC or any of this stuff), but come on, make serious arguments.
    - rayiner 5y ago
      Yes and no. ACS is similar to FedSoc in that it just does thought leadership and not impact litigation. But you can’t discount that organizations like ACLU also do thought leadership in addition to impact litigation. ACS is so small in part because people who champion e.g. liberal views of immigration law can go into immigration specific organizations. In practice the entity opposite FedSoc on particular issues isn’t ACS, but those other organizations. If you go to a typical law school campus, there will be student chapters of dozens of liberal (or de facto liberal) organizations, while on the other side there will be Fed Soc, CLS, and maybe the St. Thomas Moore Society. There will also be numerous legal clinics, which are de facto liberal impact litigation shops.
      - tptacek 5y ago
        But there are dozens of conservative public interest law non-profits, too, many with tens of millions of dollars in funding. We pay attention to FedSoc not because of its advocacy, but because it's a pipeline for conservative judges, like the ACS is for liberal judges. You've narrowed one side of the field but kept the other broad to set up a bogus comparison. Again: I think the hyperventilation over FedSoc is silly, and FedSoc is doing a thing that "should" be done (I'm not a conservative).
aeturnum 5y ago
I think Christians have the right to hold whatever judgements they like about people, as we all do. However, that doesn't mean that they should be able to discriminate in the professional services they provide. In fact, these same laws protect the Christians who wish to deny services to gay people from having services denied to them. I'm not sure I agree that LGBT folks are getting "massive support" from governments more than other groups do (for instance, churches have a very effective tax carve out which I support), but there certainly has been a push for LGBT people to be recognized as humans who have the right to exist like anyone else. Again, we can all view homosexuality (and other queer identities) in whatever way we want - but this case and the questions before civic society in general are about the provision of services. The standard we should all follow is that people are free to believe what they want (and suffer the social consequences of being known to hold those beliefs) but still be free to access the commercial services that are available to the general public without fear of being exiled for their beliefs or identity. Edit: FWIW, I generally support the finding of Masterpiece Cakeshop, which is that the work of people doing 'creative' work is speech-y and they cannot be compelled to do creative work for a cause they oppose. However, it says that you cannot refuse service to protected classes if your creativity is not called on (i.e. Masterpiece Cakeshop does not have to design a cake, but does have to bake a cake if the design is provided). I would support a similar standard here and I expect Smith to lose unless she can argue that a commercial website for gay people requires some kind of creative act specifically about the sexuality of her clients.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  > However, that doesn't mean that they should be able to discriminate in the professional services they provide. Why not? It's a genuine question I'd like to get to the bottom of. I have no interest in discriminating against people professionally and wouldn't even be able to be friends with those who do, but that's personal. Why shouldn't someone be able to if that's what they want to do?
  - aeturnum 5y ago
    Simply, denying someone a service because you dislike them is a harm. It's less stark than some harms, but it's clearly along a line that ends in direct violence. If someone is starving and has money to pay for your food, but you refuse to sell to him, you share some responsibility for his death. Obviously, we allow people to cause harms under certain circumstances. Self defense is one, situations where we have competing rights is another. The standard we've come to is that, in order to be allowed to offer services and goods in the US, you also need to agree to obey our laws, which includes the protection of certain 'protected classes' - which are generally seen as qualities a human has that are not entirely voluntary (sex, sexual orientation [in some places], race, national origin, disability, age, citizenship status and religion). Other qualities are not protected. You are allowed, for instance, to deny service to anyone who doesn't like Seinfeld, or to ugly people, or any other non-protected class. At the end of the day, I don't think its in our interest to allow commercial activity with no rules. Everyone benefits from having some elements of their identity that cannot lead to them being denied services. It's true that sometimes you have to suck it up - but that's a drawback we all share as well.
Fezzik 5y ago
Go back 100 years, replace ‘LGBT groups’ with ‘civil rights activists’ (who had much less support) and ‘homosexuality’ with ‘African Americans’ and you will (hopefully) realize how barbaric that thought process is. The same argument was also made about the suffrage movement. You are, in fact, an evil person if you think someone is inferior and should be denied services or rights because of their sexuality (or race, or gender). We should not slow the march of progress towards equality because the same damn people can’t figure this stuff out century after century. Edit: grammar

xxpor 5y ago

If you don't think the conservative side doesn't have the same or more behind it, I really don't know what to tell you at this point. Who's funding the federalist? Who's funding FedSoc? They're just not as public about it.

bpodgursky 5y ago
Do you genuinely believe that conservative christians right now are on the offensive, and LGBT groups are on the defensive?
- sofixa 5y ago
  > Do you genuinely believe that conservative christians right now are on the offensive I'm not American so i might be mistaken, but can the recent changes in abortion laws across a section of US states be explained in any other way?
  - rayiner 5y ago
    Yes—Roe protects abortion through the end of the second trimester, which is out of sync with what 70% of the public believes: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-majority-want-to-keep-abortion-legal-but-they-also-want-restrictions https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-majority-want-... Mississippi’s 15-week ban, for example, would make the timing there somewhat more liberal than France or Denmark. It would also be consistent with the 70% of the public that thinks abortion should be legal, but only in the first trimester. Conservatives are very much in a defensive crouch on Roe.
- detaro 5y ago
  Yes? Look at the various anti-trans laws or rules being passed, that's very much a fundamental defensive fight for LGBT. Some big companies making nice statements doesn't buy you very much if your healthcare gets killed.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  Do you genuinely believe the opposite? Just because more LGBT people are visible now doesn’t mean they’re winning some kind of fictional PR war.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
- fassssst 5y ago
  They certainly are because of the Supreme Court makeup.
rayiner 5y ago
I love the mythical status liberals have elevated FedSoc to in their minds. FedSoc has about $20 million in revenue. SPLC alone had $130 million. The ACLU had $300 million. We’re outgunned 20:1 in numbers and in financing compared to liberal causes. 90% of people at any major law firm are significantly to the left of your average American, and lawyers are active donors.
- tptacek 5y ago
  Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait. FedSoc and ACLU have entirely different missions. FedSoc's liberal competitor is, as you know, the ACS. You didn't cite them because they're smaller than FedSoc, and you wanted the comparison more convenient to your argument. I'm also not alarmed by FedSoc (or ALEC or any of this stuff), but come on, make serious arguments.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    Yes and no. ACS is similar to FedSoc in that it just does thought leadership and not impact litigation. But you can’t discount that organizations like ACLU also do thought leadership in addition to impact litigation. ACS is so small in part because people who champion e.g. liberal views of immigration law can go into immigration specific organizations. In practice the entity opposite FedSoc on particular issues isn’t ACS, but those other organizations. If you go to a typical law school campus, there will be student chapters of dozens of liberal (or de facto liberal) organizations, while on the other side there will be Fed Soc, CLS, and maybe the St. Thomas Moore Society. There will also be numerous legal clinics, which are de facto liberal impact litigation shops.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      But there are dozens of conservative public interest law non-profits, too, many with tens of millions of dollars in funding. We pay attention to FedSoc not because of its advocacy, but because it's a pipeline for conservative judges, like the ACS is for liberal judges. You've narrowed one side of the field but kept the other broad to set up a bogus comparison. Again: I think the hyperventilation over FedSoc is silly, and FedSoc is doing a thing that "should" be done (I'm not a conservative).

aeturnum 5y ago

I think Christians have the right to hold whatever judgements they like about people, as we all do. However, that doesn't mean that they should be able to discriminate in the professional services they provide. In fact, these same laws protect the Christians who wish to deny services to gay people from having services denied to them. I'm not sure I agree that LGBT folks are getting "massive support" from governments more than other groups do (for instance, churches have a very effective tax carve out which I support), but there certainly has been a push for LGBT people to be recognized as humans who have the right to exist like anyone else. Again, we can all view homosexuality (and other queer identities) in whatever way we want - but this case and the questions before civic society in general are about the provision of services. The standard we should all follow is that people are free to believe what they want (and suffer the social consequences of being known to hold those beliefs) but still be free to access the commercial services that are available to the general public without fear of being exiled for their beliefs or identity. Edit: FWIW, I generally support the finding of Masterpiece Cakeshop, which is that the work of people doing 'creative' work is speech-y and they cannot be compelled to do creative work for a cause they oppose. However, it says that you cannot refuse service to protected classes if your creativity is not called on (i.e. Masterpiece Cakeshop does not have to design a cake, but does have to bake a cake if the design is provided). I would support a similar standard here and I expect Smith to lose unless she can argue that a commercial website for gay people requires some kind of creative act specifically about the sexuality of her clients.

betwixthewires 5y ago
> However, that doesn't mean that they should be able to discriminate in the professional services they provide. Why not? It's a genuine question I'd like to get to the bottom of. I have no interest in discriminating against people professionally and wouldn't even be able to be friends with those who do, but that's personal. Why shouldn't someone be able to if that's what they want to do?
- aeturnum 5y ago
  Simply, denying someone a service because you dislike them is a harm. It's less stark than some harms, but it's clearly along a line that ends in direct violence. If someone is starving and has money to pay for your food, but you refuse to sell to him, you share some responsibility for his death. Obviously, we allow people to cause harms under certain circumstances. Self defense is one, situations where we have competing rights is another. The standard we've come to is that, in order to be allowed to offer services and goods in the US, you also need to agree to obey our laws, which includes the protection of certain 'protected classes' - which are generally seen as qualities a human has that are not entirely voluntary (sex, sexual orientation [in some places], race, national origin, disability, age, citizenship status and religion). Other qualities are not protected. You are allowed, for instance, to deny service to anyone who doesn't like Seinfeld, or to ugly people, or any other non-protected class. At the end of the day, I don't think its in our interest to allow commercial activity with no rules. Everyone benefits from having some elements of their identity that cannot lead to them being denied services. It's true that sometimes you have to suck it up - but that's a drawback we all share as well.

Fezzik 5y ago

Go back 100 years, replace ‘LGBT groups’ with ‘civil rights activists’ (who had much less support) and ‘homosexuality’ with ‘African Americans’ and you will (hopefully) realize how barbaric that thought process is. The same argument was also made about the suffrage movement. You are, in fact, an evil person if you think someone is inferior and should be denied services or rights because of their sexuality (or race, or gender). We should not slow the march of progress towards equality because the same damn people can’t figure this stuff out century after century. Edit: grammar