I grew up as a boy in the Midwest (Ohio) and went to high school in South Carolina, right at the point where the public schools were integrated, and have lived in the South ever since. The Midwest urban area I grew up in as a child was much more segregated than was the SC city, but strictly by personal choice, not by public law. The separate school systems were done away with because these were government facilities, and the separate systems did not make a lot of sense in Southern states that were very poor in those days.

Now many discrimination laws have been passed to address and try to do away with the Northern discrimination type, which was voluntary social mores rather than government laws and regulations. This is trickier, because private choices, such as who to serve with a private business, cannot be attacked by changing government laws. And when you attack social mores, then you begin interfering with everyone’s freedom of association. The social mores are harder to break; in most of the South, blacks were badly discriminated against, by law, but were considered part of the community (they belonged within the social structure). In the Midwest, blacks were not so blatantly discriminated against , expecially by law, but the general feeling was they didn’t belong within the prevailing social structure (ghettoized into separate communities).

In my lifetime, the positive changes that have been made in race relations have come more from changes in attitudes, which is ultimately the only way you finally break the Northern de facto discrimination pattern. My children have completely different attitudes toward race than I have, and I have far different attitudes regarding race, ethnic origin, religion and even sexual orientation than did my father, who had a far different attitude than did my grandparents (western KY, very Confederate/Southern small town).

Changing attitudes takes a long time, and a lot of work, but is ultimately the only way we progress on discrimination issues. In the case of the gay couple raising such a ruckus and threatening legal action against a private business, their action may be legally sound, depending on the jurisdiction, but is probably detrimental to the cause of increasing their acceptance. The civil rights leaders that Lashawn and other conservative black bloggers write about (Rev. Jackson, Al Sharpton, Andrew Young) are still fighting the old de jure system, even though it and Bull Connor have been dead a long time. This is their Achilles heel, and why they are loing influence with younger generations. And when it becomes okay to discriminate against or deride some groups (Christians, Jews, Southern Rednecks) through discrimination laws, while not being allowed to do the same for other groups (African Americans, Hispanics, Gay couples, women), then we missed the whole point of the Civil Rights movement somewhere along the line.

The balance needs to be made between Freedom of Association, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech, while making sure that everyone has equal rights before the law. I agree with Lashawn that the best thing as regards private businesses is the Free Market; the business owner must be allowed to have choice over whom they provide services to, balanced against staying in business and the freedom of the consumer to vote with their money. When government gets involved, except in the very specific case of de jure type segregation, the whole issue will get screwed up totally.

Thanks Lashawn. Wade Hampton HS, 1971, Greenville, SC.

Please. Just take the money and do the yardwork. It’s silly to reject business based on the lifestyle of your customer when that lifestyle has nothing whatsoever to do with the transaction in question.

The couple should, of course, have the right to refuse service to anyone. But doing so in this circumstance says they lack the judgement to know what fights are worth picking. This ain’t one of ‘em. I’m sorry, but I don’t see the logic in this choice.

I’m going to offer an opinion that many people may not understand on this topic. Please don’t let your eyes glaze over.

From a strictly-legal standpoint, I think the way precedent works in this country, if one cannot refuse to serve a [ethnic minority], one is stuck with the problem of being legally unable to refuse service anyone. If the bar-keep has to serve anyone who is not drunk, and must refuse to serve someone who is drunk, the legal box is pretty well defined.

But the real question for Christians is “is this the way we live the Gospel of Jesus Christ?” You know: I’ll bet that the place where this landscaper gets the gas for his car is run by someone who is divorced and remarried; I’ll bet he bought his truck, someone there was committing adultery; I’ll bet one of the kids in the church they attend has shoplifted, and a couple of the adults have cheated on their taxes. I’ll bet they know someone who has had an abortion. I’ll bet at least one police officer on their local force has taken the Lord’s name in vain.

All that said, are they going to refuse to interact with all these people? Why — to stay “separated from sin”? What does that mean? See — the in NT, Christians were well known for not doing these things but they were also well known for loving those who did. That doesn’t mean that they allowed and coddled those who were pagans in a pagan society, but it means doing what you do for God’s glory.

For example, it makes sense to me that a Christian would want to express the wrath of God to someone who was doing some immoral act. But we express the wrath of God not by employing it against sinner but by declaring that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Does God not want to reach homosexuals? What about liars? What about those who are greedy and think other people do not deserve what they have earned? If God wants to reach sinners, we have to encounter the sinners. And the sinners — they’re not just people who live in the rain forest or people who live in Africa or people who are Muslims in Near-Asia.

These people who are calling in death threats to Christians who think refusing to do business is God’s will — these are sinners who need Christ! And if we don’t find a way to deliver the Gospel to them and bring repentance and baptism and discipleship to them, we will have been exactly like the Pharisees who searched the whole Earth for one convert and then made him into ten times the hypocrite we are ourselves.

The Gospel is not a Gospel which tells us to live in a bunker: it is Good News which has the power to save — even the Homosexual who needs landscaping, and even the Christian separatist who refuses to do it.

God bless you and keep you.

“At least that’s what I always thought Jesus stood for…”

History has shown that religious people re-interpet and re-focus bits of what they call their Holy books. The focuses change depending at least partly upon the political/social climate.

Listening to so-called Conservative Christian pay-per-pun propagandists from the Bible Belt and beyond is enough to make even the dullest agnostic at least stop and think…”huh”?

I try to remember that the condescending, de-personifying, snobbish, self-righteous, bigoted, sneering hate-speeches heard today (at both extremes of so-called left and right) do not respectively characterize either ‘conservatism’. Christianity or ‘liberalism’ respectively. They just demonstrate brutish and selfish thought processes.

Remember, one prominent so-called Christian only recently stated that to be liberal is to be ‘godless.’

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2006/072806BECKENDORF.shtml

It’s just the modern version of witch-hunting, yet even more profitable than it was for Matthew Hopkins way back when.

Camels, eyes and needles

But as a Christian, I think that choosing not to do business with “sinners” would mean that you could only do business with your own self-righteous self. Christ did not refuse to be around those who lived in sin. Since that was not his example, I will not emulate it. Paul said, “I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.”

People lost in this world are by their very nature lost in sin, we are to love them to Christ, not condemn them to their sin.

I guess. It’s just sad that anyone would spend any energy fighting against other human beings, instead of spending that same time being kind and reaching out. At least that’s what I always thought Jesus stood for…

Regarding March Hare’s questions:

*Should Catholic hospitals be forced to provide elective abortions to all patients who want them?

No, because it violates their faith.

*Should a landlord be allowed to discriminate based on the marital status of a couple?

Yes, because it violates their faith.

Here’s a few of my questions.

* Should a business owner be forced to duplicate two pro-homosexual videos by a lesbian activist? http://www.lc.org/libertyalert/2006/la050206.htm

* Should a newspaper or magazine be required to run every proposed ad? (They don’t.)

* As a web developer should I be required to create pornographic, witchcraft, white supremacy, pro-embryonic stem cell, NAMBLA or anti-Christian web sites (I’m sure there are many other examples)?

* When am I allowed to say no, because of my faith?

You’re right. This is totally different from a business.

And there are numerous fraternal groups exclusively for individual white ethnicities.

And this:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,224398,00.html

What’s ironic here is that the Christian couple deal with homosexuals every day of their lives without knowing it. Suppliers, friends, mailmen, cops, store clerks, employees….gays are everywhere. Whatever right? So while the private company has the right to refuse service to the gay couple, the gay couple has rights as well. They have the right to mobilize the gay community and boycott the company, follow their trucks around and make sure they aren’t hiring illegal aliens, call on the business clients of the landscapers and let them know they will be boycotted, publish a list of their clients and ask for boycotts and hire a new landscaping company and give them as much gay business as possible. All perfectly legal. I hope they fight back on this but I also hope they fight back honestly and legally. May the best team win!

It’s all down to personal choice. If a person wants to expend 1000% more energy fighting the Gay Menace than the Heterosexual Menace, then that is their prerogative.

Emer O’Shea knew something was wrong the minute she picked up her daughter from Franklin Elementary School. The third-grader was normally very perky upon seeing her mother and new baby sister, but this time she glanced at her mother without indicatin…