Oregon Baker Faces State Investigation After Refusing to Make Homosexual Couple’s Wedding Cake‏

I think that if I had been in this baker's position and forced to do something I didn't want to do, I would have made the cake but included in it something unpleasant -- e.g. something  that would have given them all the sh*ts.  Some fruit is quite good for that.  I guess I am more an Old Testament type than a New Testament type

An Oregon man may have broken the law and is facing a state investigation after refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding, KATU reports.  KGW has details on the story:

    It started on Jan. 17 when a mother and daughter showed up at Sweet Cakes by Melissa looking for the perfect wedding cake.

    “My first question is what’s the wedding date,” said owner Aaron Klein.  “My next question is bride and groom’s name … the girl giggled a little bit and said it’s two brides.”

    Klein apologized to the women and told them he and his wife do not make cakes for same-sex marriages.  Klein said the women were disgusted and walked out.

    “I believe that marriage is a religious institution ordained by God,” said Klein.  “A man should leave his mother and father and cling to his wife … that to me is the beginning of marriage.” ...

    “I’d rather have my kids see their dad stand up for what he believes in then to see him bow down because one person complained.”

One of the women filed a complaint on January 28– also saying Klein referred to them as “abominations unto the Lord”– and now the Oregon Attorney General’s civil enforcement officers are investigating the claim.

But Klein says he never used harsh language and has no problem with homosexuals; he just doesn’t want to be a part of their marriage.

“I honestly did not mean to hurt anybody, didn’t mean to make anybody upset, [it’s] just something I believe in very strongly,” he told KATU.

When asked whether he’d be willing to lose his business over the matter, Klein said: “If I have to be to, I guess, be penalized for my beliefs, then I guess, well, that’ll be what it is.”

The case now presents a unique legal dilemma, according to reports, since Oregon law forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation, and the U.S. Constitution protects Klein’s freedom of religion.

Klein has two weeks to file his official account what happened before the attorney general’s office decides how to proceed.

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Christian symbolism wrong but homosexual symbolism fine?

British Christians can be punished for wearing a cross but flying a homosexual flag is OK?

Police and councils are flying a rainbow flag outside their bases to show support for the gay community.

The flag is flying outside Leicestershire Police headquarters in Enderby, County Hall in Glenfield and Leicester Town Hall to mark the national launch of Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender, (LGBT), History Month.

Leicestershire's Assistant Chief Constable Steph Morgan, who speaks on LGBT issues for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: "Flying the rainbow flag together in this way is a symbol of our joint commitment to the LGBT community locally and is part of ongoing work with our local authority partners to create a just and fair society for all.

"As national LGBT strategic policing lead, I was pleased to see 10 police forces, including Leicestershire Police, featured in the Stonewall 100 Index of gay-friendly employers in January 2013.

LGBT History Month is a great opportunity to become aware of the challenges LGBT people face everyday, and to recognise their valuable contribution to wider society."

Councillor Nick Rushton, leader of Leicestershire County Council, said: "We are delighted to be joining our colleagues at Leicestershire Police and Leicester City Council in raising the flag to mark the start of LGBT History month.

"LGBT people have overcome huge challenges throughout history, both here in Leicestershire, and across the world.

"This month is about remembering the contribution of those people and celebrating the diversity of our city and county."

Councillor Manjula Sood, assistant mayor of Leicester, said: "The city council is committed to celebrating Leicester's diversity, and flying the rainbow flags is a very visual way of acknowledging LGBT history month and the contribution made by the LGBT community to our city."

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This Equality obsession is mad, bad and very dangerous

The great doctrine of our time is pursued at all costs – but it reduces our freedoms

Last week, I appeared on the panel of the BBC’s Any Questions? in Guildford. We were asked whether we thought women should be allowed to take part in full front-line combat roles in the Armed Services. I said I didn’t think that it would be an advance in human civilisation if women abandoned their traditional association with peace and started killing people as men do.

This did not please the questioner, an intelligent student from the politics department of Surrey University, or her supporters sitting with her. They thought that the only question was the ability of the woman – if she was fit to fight, fight she should, and no one should stop her.

Afterwards, I reflected on the oddity of the situation. It did not seem that the student and her colleagues were particularly interested in military matters in themselves. They also did not seem the sort of people who, in other circumstances, would be at all keen on people killing people. I could imagine them protesting against militarism. Yet here they were, pushing for a woman’s right to kill.

Why? Because of Equality, of course. It gets you into strange situations.

I put a capital e on Equality because, more than we recognise, it has become the public doctrine of our time. If you believe in big-E Equality, you are not merely saying, as most would, that people should try to make life fairer for all. You are making Equality the all-conquering principle of social organisation and human life. It is like a religion but, unlike actual religions in the West today, it is backed by the full force of law. Since 2009, when Labour’s Equality Act consolidated all previous bits of legislation, there have been seven strands of Equality, the creed’s equivalent of the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church. They are: race, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender, gender reassignment and religion/belief itself. In this seven, the last is the odd one out: I’ll come back to it. Through these seven channels, the grace of Equality must be poured.

When David Cameron set out on his quest for gay marriage (and exactly when he did is a matter of some interest, since he denied any plans for gay marriage three days before the last general election), he probably saw this as a simple matter of being nicer to homosexuals and making the Tories seem less unpleasant. But now that the Government has moved to actual law, and will debate the Bill in Parliament on Tuesday, he is well and truly trapped by Equality.

In recent months, officials drafting the Bill have struggled to fulfil Equality’s aim of making same-sex marriage identical to marriage as the world has known it for most of human history. They have come across an insuperable barrier. It reminds me of the moment when, in trendy Islington in the 1980s, I was summoned by the health authority for a cervical smear. Some things just cannot be done.

The drafters have belatedly realised that, since there is no procreative act which defines homosexual behaviour, there can be no consummation, or non-consummation, and no adultery. These will not, therefore, be grounds for gay divorce. If your gay husband offers you no nookie, or if he avails himself of large amounts of nookie elsewhere (or both), he gives you no legal cause to divorce him.

So what they have ended up offering, strangely enough, is a law of marriage with no sexual element whatever. This has never happened before (although there have been plenty of sexless marriages). There is nothing in Mr Cameron’s new law to say that same-sex marriages must be between homosexuals. If I were a bachelor, I could marry a straight male friend just to get whatever tax advantages, travel deals and insurance discounts might be going.

Incestuous marriage remains forbidden, but I don’t see why, in Mr Cameron’s vision of same-sex marriage, a mother could not marry her daughter or a sister her sister or a father his son. No sexual act is expected of them and even if – distressing thought – it did take place, it could have no genetic consequences. Why should such pairs not just agree that they fancy the married couple’s exemption from inheritance tax, and hurry down the aisle? How long before a same-sex, keep-it-in-the-family couple tries to make a fight of it, and wins a case against the British Government at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)?

This is the real point about Equality. Because it is now considered both a sacred and a legal principle, it is heaven on earth for lawyers, if for no one else. Just as the Jewish Beth Din, or rabbinical court, has endless work precisely interpreting exactly how the Torah applies to real life, so our own courts are starting to do the same with their Torah, Equality.

This in turn means that Mr Cameron’s promises, however sincere, that religious objections to same-sex marriage will be protected by the Bill cannot be fulfilled. Although religion is one of the seven “strands” of Equality, it is only one, no more important in Equality’s great scheme of things than gender reassignment. And so, although, under the new law, an Anglican priest remains free to marry only people of the opposite sex, if he is also chaplain of a hospital, the hospital will probably be entitled to dismiss him because his “homophobic” views about marriage break their “public sector equality duty” which the Equality Act lays down. On similar principles, a church might not be allowed to hire a public hall because of its views on marriage and a Christian, Jewish or Muslim teacher could be dismissed for refusing to teach that marriage was what Equality said it was.

None of these results is certain. Where would the legal fun be if it were? But what is certain is that such things will be legally contested, that they will be expensive, exhausting and dangerous, and that, by taking the matter to the ECHR, complainants will be able to go to a place where Mr Cameron’s promises are void.

If you stand back to look at how Equality works, you notice three things.

One is that it undermines freedom. It specialises in attacking ways of living which people have developed for themselves, often using the law and even the police to do so.

The second is that it undermines institutions. The bulwarks of a free society are not atomised individuals, but businesses, families, schools, clubs, churches, charities, sports teams – the Big Society we seem recently to have stopped hearing about. Equality is the government’s instrument for nationalising them.

The third is that Equality makes everyone (except lawyers and other activists) very unhappy. No one knows where she or he (you see!) stands, what law he might inadvertently be breaking, what “inappropriate” remark he might have made. And those who invoke Equality to advance their collective cause, far from being pleased by what they have won, are in a semi-permanent state of rage about any remaining imperfection. They are trained to identify grievance, so naturally they are aggrieved.

There is one additional point. The doctrine of Equality is mad. Like extreme post-Reformation Protestantism, it perverts a good inclination and turns it into a lunatic theocracy. Some of the Anabaptists who swept through Germany in the 16th century enforced Christ’s teaching that one must be as little children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven by running about naked and babbling like babies. It is surprising that their modern equivalents will be found on the Conservative front bench next week.

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Muslim demonstrators face resistance in Australia

The organizers are doing their best to prevent conflict but the expectation of Muslim aggression is well-founded.  Just look back at last Anzac day in Sydney

Anti-Muslim groups are urging Australian "patriots" to gather at public meetings by the controversial Dutch MP Geert Wilders, ready for trouble and a no-holds barred fight.

Tensions have been mounting over the impending visit of the far right-wing politician who has been accused of Islamophobia and racism.

One group, Australian New Nation, has been encouraging followers to react to any threat or sign of violence from Muslim protesters who might attend.

On its website, the group has posted an audio from "Radio Free Australia, the voice of white revolution in Australia" warning them to "expect an Islamic rent-a-crowd outside screaming and foaming at the mouth like the evil bastards they are".

"We encourage all patriots to exercise their legal right of self defence if any ragheads try to prevent them accessing the venue, or threaten, or use violence against their person once they try to strike the first blow, everything that follows is self defence on your part," it said.

The vitriolic broadcast, which lasts almost 10 minutes, goes on to say, "go … and be prepared to defend yourself and if they take a swing at you, they push at you, they spit on you, don't hold back. You have a legal right of self defence do what should be done to this rag-head camel f--- … Islamic filth who have no place in civilised society."

Muslim leaders have been encouraging their community to ignore Mr Wilders's visit and not to draw attention to his views by protesting.

The president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Hafez Kassem, questioned what the authorities were doing about the "provocation by rednecks".  "Surely they must be monitoring this," he said.

Keysar Trad from the Islamic Friendship Association said while Muslims should have every right to protest peacefully, it would only draw attention to Mr Wilders. Mr Trad recommended the community ignore the event.

Social media sites protesting against Mr Wilders's visits to Sydney, Melbourne and Perth have also been the target of hate messages.

Stepan Kerkyasharian, the head of the Community Relations Commission of NSW, said he had not had any complaints so far about Mr Wilders's visit, but it was clear the Muslim community was concerned about the outcome of his tour.

Mr Kerkyasharian said it was important other groups that may have their own agenda do not try to use his visit as an opportunity to vent their own venom.  "We do not want anyone looking for an opportunity such as a visit from someone from overseas to try and undermine our cohesive, co-existence," he said.

The Federal Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, last year said he would not use his ministerial powers to stop Mr Wilders from visiting Australia on a speaking tour.

The tour has been organised by the Q Society of Australia.  A spokeswoman said this week that there had been steady ticket sales online, ahead of a radio advertising campaign which starts next week.

The venues of the meetings are being kept secret until 48 hours before the event and will be revealed only to registered ticket-holders.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS,  DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL  and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine).   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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