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Gen Con Threatens To Leave Indianapolis Over Religious Freedom Bill
Grymalkin writes A controversial religious freedom bill has passed the Indianapolis Senate and is now awaiting Governor Mike Pence's signature to become law. Supporters claim that this bill will protect business owners from excessive government control while opponents argue it is just a veiled attempt to allow those same business owners to deny services to individuals because of their sexual orientation. Now, Gen Con has released a statement saying this bill will influence their decision to keep the convention in Indiana. This announcement has tourism officials worried as Gen Con brings in roughly 50,000 visitors each year, contributing $50 million to the local economy. So far Gen Con's announcement has not swayed the Governor who says he is looking forward to signing the bill into law. Gen Con currently has a contract with the Indy Convention Center through 2020. No word yet as to exactly when the convention would be moved should the bill become law.
Arizona was trying to attract conventions while enacting regressive policies
The conventions went elsewhere and Arizona changed the policies to bring them back
Voting with your pocketbook is a fundamental tenet of the free market
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Indianapolis resident here. Most of us who live here are not as dense as Governor Pence.
Please get the word out and help us to help him realize how much of a financial loss our state could suffer should Indiana become a place where discrimination is the legalized.
For that matter a gay baker shouldn't have to bake a cake for a real marriage.
A "real marriage"? Which marriages are real, and which are fake?
Swap the word "gay" for "black" and try again. The country already learned, rather painfully, that letting businesses refuse to serve whole segments of the population causes one hell of a lot of unrest.
And a white baker should not have to serve a black customer, right?
WRONG!
No one is forcing you to associate with anyone.
But as a BUSINESS, you will provide the same service to everyone regardless of race/creed/religion/etc.
You may not like being "forced" to serve black people.
You may believe that it is an infringement of your "freedom" to be forced to serve black people.
Fuck you.
Isn't it amazing how people who enjoy protection from being discriminated against want to use that same protection to allow them to discriminate against others?
Sorry, but if you think your religion should allow you to discriminate, you should be subject to the same thing.
Oh, what's that, your religion is a magic double standard which exempts you from logic and you are special? Go piss up a rope.
You're just as stupid as the people who want to force Sharia law on the rest of us. Stop pretending otherwise.
Your religion doesn't make you some special little flower who operates under a special set of rules.
"Asshole" is universal, no matter what you believe in.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So, you think that people should be free to discriminate, for any reason? That it's okay so long as it's just private citizens, and not the government?
So by that line of thinking, it would be okay for there to be a town where:
-The local bus company won't serve ($category) people.
-The local taxi company won't serve ($category) people.
-The local restaurant won't seat/serve ($category) people.
-The local real estate agency won't sell homes to ($category) people.
-The local baker won't bake cakes/pies/etc for ($category) people.
Putting it in the context of "religion" doesn't make it any better. Nor does it make it any better regardless of whether ($category) is Black, Gay, Hispanic, Jewish, Muslim, or, yes, even Christian.
Here's an idea. Maybe, if your religion says you can't serve everyone else in society equally, then you shouldn't be choosing to work in a role where the rest of society expects you to treat everyone equally and fairly in public life? If I'm a religious conscientious objector who believes it's wrong to kill people under any circumstances, should I be able to voluntarily join the Army and then be exempt from anything to do with shooting anything or anyone? Of course not.
One would think that if you were to comment on such an obvious omission, that you would have explained it yourself.
Short answer: It's a tabletop gaming convention.
A Christian baker should not have to bake a wedding cake for a gay "marriage"
You know, I get really tired of the way the term "Christian" has been co-opted to mean "member of the bigoted, extremist Christian right".
I'm a Christian. I have been a Christian all my life, and I bet I read the Bible and pray far more often than a lot of these "Christian" blowhards. (Currently doing one of those read-the-Bible-through-in-a-year thingies.) I've been a camp counsellor at a Christian summer camp, I teach Sunday School, I sing in the choir, I occasionally play piano for the worship services, I have helped advise our pastor on sermon topics, and I was at one time the president of my congregation,
And you know what? Gay marriage doesn't bother me one bit, Leviticus notwithstanding. Being gay isn't a choice, so if someone is gay, God must have made him that way. If that's the case, who am I to condemn it?
If they had to accommodate groups they found objectionable.
Lets say 4th Reich games wanted a booth at the convention ? Or Klansman entertainment.
Really ticks me off how the left has completely destroyed the meaning of words like freedom and liberty.
it really ticks me off how the right has characterized the ability to be openly racist, sexist, misogynist, transphobic, and homophobic as "freedom and liberty. absolutely disgusting.
society cannot and will not have actual liberty when businesses and public-facing organizations are permitted to discriminate against people for who they are under the guise of "religious freedom" or "liberty." the very notion is abhorrent to an open democracy, and it amazes how the right uses mental gymnastics to reach the conclusions they have.
When you run a public business, the government gives you nice shiny benefits in exchange for you following certain standards. You can't kick out service dogs, you can't advertise sales on things you don't have, and as a public business, you have to serve the public. That's what your business license says!
When your city says "yes, you can own this land and open a storefront"--they sold that land to you because it's zoned for businesses that sell to everyone. They don't sell land on main street to warehouses, they sell it to companies that bring foot traffic and make that area into a commercial hub. Again--you own (or rent) the land because you agreed to serve the public.
If you're baking cakes out the back door of your house and selling them on Etsy (never mind how that works), fine, the government probably didn't support you, and you didn't promise them you'd participate in the economy they set up. But if you have a storefront, or if you pay taxes as a corporation, then society gave you special consideration and you MUST return the favor by doing what you agreed...serve everyone, regardless of skin color or orientation.
After all, divorce statistics show that most people live happily ever after, right?
Actually, they do. Half of all marriages end in divorce, but more two thirds of all people that get married don't get divorced. How is that possible? Many people get married and divorced repeatedly, and that throws the numbers way off. Second marriages have a 75% chance of divorce.
Owning a business does not imbue the owner(s) with the rights of feudal lords. A keystone principle of American society is that you can't discriminate by refusing to conduct business with others based on ideological differences. A great struggle over civil rights would seem to have settled this, but some throwbacks still want to impose un-American values on others. The Declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution were founded on the principles of the Enlightenment. It is high time our citizenry got enlightened, as well.
Same shit, different decade. Bob Jones University in South Carolina tried this crap in the 50s and 60s, saying their policy of discriminating against blacks and Asians was a divinely ordained part of their religion. According to Bob Jones, the Bible clearly told him that blacks were inferior to whites. This is the same bullshit argument. It will fall in the courts, and it will fail in the marketplace. In the meantime, GenCon, and everyone else should avoid spending money in Indiana.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Allowing people to express their sincere religious belief in how and who they choose to do business with SHOULD be allowed regardless, as a matter of law.
Why 'sincere religious belief' ? Why not any other arbitrary made-up criterion ?
> While a business shouldn't be allowed to not serve a segment of society, a business shouldn't be forced to contribute to something to which they object (on any grounds, but religious grounds for this argument).
Business are not people, so stop speaking of them as though they have Natural Rights like you or I. Businesses are artificial constructs of a society and thus have to follow the rules of that society. Businesses don't get to decide anything, they are allowed to function within a certain set of rules and one of those rules is they don't get to discriminate.
Linux O Muerte!
If you don't want to serve some groups of people for whatever reasons, you aren't open to the public. And then you have to say that first, e.g. by calling you a club or a closed society.