Obama Supports Changing Civil Rights Act

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html

I don't know what to say.

On one hand, I believe, without a doubt, that being homosexual or transgender is no more a choice than the color of your skin or the slant of your eyes.

Unlike your race, you can choose to live a lie in regards to things like religion or sexual/gender orientation. You can make that choice, but you shouldn't feel you have to. I've seen the fruit of that choice. It is not good. With deference to basic common decency, a person should be who they are.

Society should not punish them for that. So long as basic human decency is respected (we do not rape, we do not murder, we do not steal unless we're starving and out of options and then only what is necessary for the sustenance of life and no more, we do not prevent other people from being who they are within the bounds of common decency), society should not punish anyone for being who they are.

An openly gay couple should be able to find a place to live. They should be able to walk down the street in as much safety as anyone else. They should be able to walk into the local convenience store and make a purchase without incident. These things should SIMPLY BE.

It profoundly disgusts me these things are not necessarily so. I'm not OK with that.

For those reasons, I hope the law is changed.

At the same time...

...I've lived in Arkansas (Land of the Little Rock Nine). I grew up in a small, entirely white, rural area in West Virginia. I heard racial epithets used, without much thought, as adjectives all the years of my growing up (though I suspect anyone who actually used them in front of actual non-white people would have been chastised harshly by his or her friends and neighbors for being unkind). Other than a few college students with an I'm-So-Cool-I-Hate-Whitey attitude, I NEVER saw actual Klan type racial hatred until I moved to Arkansas.

Based on that experience, I don't think that attempts to legislate tolerance actually make a more tolerant society. I think they make a less tolerant society, where the metaphoric fires of hate burn all the hotter for having to burn underground. That scares me to death. I have no desire to see the "culture wars" erupt into The Real Thing. I sadly believe that trying to force tolerance by rule of law, as opposed to the long slow difficult painful road of creating change from the ground up even in hardened hearts, pushes us one step closer to culture wars as they are fought in the Middle East.

I do not believe that the ultraconservative religious element should be allowed to tell the rest of us how to live. I do not believe that Shari'a should be the law of the land, regardless of what religion is implementing what iteration of it.

But...

...I would not demand that a Muslim woman remove her hijab.

...I would not demand that a conservative Protestant Christian woman get a job and wear pants.

...I would not demand that a conservative Catholic family use contraception.

...I would not demand that an Orthodox Jewish family (or a Muslim one either) must join my family for ham and beans. If I wanted them to come to dinner, I would serve something else.

...I will not demand that a minister conduct marriage services for a same-sex couple. A marriage in a church is not the same as a marriage in the eyes of the state. A state marriage confers equal legal rights. There are ministers (not all of them of the Universal Life Church, but that'll do if a traditional wedding is what is wanted instead of the austere trip to the local courthouse) who are willing to conduct services for any couple that shows an earnest desire to commit to one another.

...I don't know if I'm OK with demanding that a photographer or caterer or what have you facilitate a same-sex wedding celebration against their moral convictions (regardless of how stupid those convictions are). Even in the armpit of the Bible Belt, you can find SOMEONE who does not have a hateful perspective. Sell a gay couple a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk?? YES. They've been doing it all along without suffering moral torment. I'm not sure that's the same as being forced to celebrate what you believe is sin.

I believe in equality under the law. I also believe in freedom of conscience. I am not sure how to reconcile these things. I am not even sure reconciling these things is possible.

I wonder if this would protect ...

pedophilic sexual orientation
farm-animal sexual orientation
....

and all the other taboo/odd sexual orientations

Probably, he already allows the tribes to do the former in Afghanistan on our military bases.

Obviously not, since most people who are pedophiles/etc are heterosexual.

Bestiality is a fetish, not a sexuality. Pedophiles are rapists who target the very weakest in our society, something very different from either a fetish or a sexuality. Unless you are willing to posit that there is a third sex, called "child" and further posit despite all known proof that our dimorphic human brains can develop in a third direction to be attracted to this posited third sex.

I find it interesting that you choose to focus on two things that are not actually biological sexualities but rather are antisocial behaviors based on ignoring consent of others.

What he is proposing is actually in accord with the decisions of Federal courts since 2008's Schroer v. Library of Congress. The essence of the decision is really simple and difficult to refute: Just as discrimination due to someone changing religion is still discrimination based on religion (which is prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964), discriminating against someone for changing sex is still discrimination based on sex (also prohibited by the CRA). In addition, there is a whole body of decisions that also applies ranging from Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins in 1989 to Glenn v. Brumby et all through Macy v. Holder, which really cemented it all together and prompted the EEOC to change their rules. In other words, what the President is doing is not much more than codifying into Federal law that which has been decided in the courts for quite some time now.

Both appear to be human sexual orientations.

1. "The derivative noun "zoosexuality" is sometimes used by self-identified zoophiles in both support groups and on internet-based discussion forums to designate sexual orientation manifesting as romantic or emotional involvement with, or sexual attraction to, non-human animals".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoophilia#Zoosexuality

2. What is a pedophile?
A pedophile is a person who has a sustained sexual orientation toward children, generally aged 13 or younger, Blanchard says. Not all pedophiles are child molesters (or vice versa).
http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/feat ... pedophilia


They are not that. They are simply sexual orientations.

Providing protection does not permit the pedophile to commit a crime, rather it protects the pedophile from discrimination from another (e.g., being fired from employment because say the employer learns the person is attracted to kids).

Or it would protect a zoophilic from being fired because the employer found out the person is sexually attracted to non-human animals.

The difference between a homosexual and someone committing acts of pedophilia and beastiality is that children and animals can not legally consent to having sex. So much for the right's justification for their homophobia.

Pedophile/Bestiality are sexual orientations, not people who committed a crime.

This is an interesting legal question, because say an employer, e.g., the Boy Scouts, had a discrimination policy against pedophiles, it could be viewed as unconstitutional.

You are using pop culture, internet definitions, not those defined by biologists, doctors or the legal system.

Also, I advise against using Blanchard as a resource, as he part of the the of Bailey-Blanchard-Lawrence trio which is tightly associated with the Clarke Institute group, which in turn is the academic torch carrier for people like Paul McHugh, John Money and Fred Berlin. They have actively tried to not only legitimize child molesters as a "sexual orientation" via self-defined psychology published in journals they chair, but have gone so far as to set up clinics to teach molesters how to evade law enforcement and even protected them in court. Probably why the Vatican hired Paul McHugh back in 2000 just as their molestation problem was catching media attention.

Calling them "sexual orientations" requires positing animals as a human sex in the same category as male and female. What you are doing is using the term in its most colloquial manner. There are no neurological or endocrine structures that *can* orient a person to be attracted to a non-human. There are learned behaviors and categories under which it falls; however they are termed fetishes.

It's the acts that are crimes, again, as children and animals can not consent to sexual activity. It's not the same case as two homosexual individuals who consent to sexual relations.

It would be nice if it would protect those of us who aren't real great with the opposite sex, so we don't have to see people like us constantly made fun of on TV or in movies, and people wouldn't be able to call us losers, etc.

Unfortunately, I doubt that's ever going to happen.

It's so strange to me that folks who oppose civil rights for LGBT people immediately jump to the "slippery slope" argument of "what's next, rights for pedophiles and people into bestiality?" As others have pointed out well here, the ability to give consent is the dividing line: no consent, not legal.

What is ironic and infuriating to me is that many of these same states that fight giving LGBT people rights because of the "slippery slope" or because they supposedly want to protect women and kids are the same states that legally said that a person could rape his or her spouse with force, threats of force, or drugging against that person's consent, until the Supreme Court deemed that spousal exemption for rape is unconstitutional in 1993: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape_(United_States_law). The UK had similar precedents until it was overturned by the House of Lords in 1991.

Even now, many states make prosecution of marital rape more difficult than non-marital rape: shorter time to report, may exclude rape by threats of force or drugging the spouse against his/her will. Sentences may also be less--in my (thank God) ex-home Virginia, a rapist may get away with as little as a therapy program.

So all this talk of protecting the ladies? I CALL BULL___. Conservatives DO NOT CARE A RAT'S HIND-QUARTER about the safety of women, children, or any other person in need of protection. This is all about pushing a particular religious viewpoint, and controlling their view of morality to fit it.

LGBT people having loving, consensual intercourse? Conservatives say BAD!
Men raping their wives and beating them to a pulp? Conservatives say GO FOR IT! They figure she gave consent when she married.

So why are civil rights laws necessary in the first place? Don't we already have laws against violence, discrimination, and other acts? Well, yes, but the original point of the Civil Rights legislation was that building tolerance from the ground up, through the "long slow difficult painful road of creating change from the ground up even in hardened hearts" is simply not achievable. The original Civil Rights federal laws were passed because some states refused to enforce laws against violence when the victim was black. They refused to allow blacks to access services, sometimes forcing them to use inferior places to eat or sleep, or no place at all.

We may attend interfaith dinners with people of other religions or have a diverse group of friends, but elsewhere, people are getting shot for being black, or bludgeoned to death for being LGBT: http://time.com/3999348/transgender-murders-2015/

I personally have been there for friends and loved ones who were beaten, raped, denied medical care, denied justice by sneering policemen, and fired for being what they are. If you are transgendered, there is no time off. This is no glamorous life. THIS IS LIFE AND DEATH.

Sorry folks, if I waited for the Kumbaya's to start, me and mine die waiting.