Doug64 wrote:It can be, the Westboro church is a perfect example. But not always, or even I suspect most of the time.
As much as I would love an easy target for this discussion, I think we can agree that the WBC is a special case and does not represent most Christians, and it does not even represent most Christians opposed to same sex marriage.
I was thinking about the Christian Identity movement.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_IdentityExcept that I don't know of a single religion that forbids people to serve Blacks, so it isn't a matter of conscience.
http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/1-i ... tion#52522One in 10 Americans believe small business owners should be free to refuse to serve or do business with African-Americans on religious grounds, according to a new poll.
A survey released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute finds that strong majorities of Americans reject the idea that businesses should be legally allowed to refuse to serve either African-American, Jewish, gays and lesbians, or atheists, but a small portion of the country still believes you should be able to.
Among the four groups, the survey found the least support for refusing service to African-Americans, but the most for discriminating against gay or lesbian individuals.
Asked if it should be legal to refuse to do business with members of the LGBT community on religious grounds, 16% said yes and 80% said no. Similarly, 15% said it should be legal to refuse service to atheists, with 81% saying it shouldn’t be. The polling found slightly less support for religious beliefs being sufficient to allow a small business owner to refuse to business with Jewish people, 12% said yes and 85% said no. And when it came to African-Americans, 10% said they supported the legal right to refuse service and 87% said they did not. PRRI conducted the survey of more than 1,000 adults via telephone, including cell phone users, and results have a margin of error of 3.1%.
While the practice is far less common, many churches used religious arguments for denying equality to blacks.
The LDS church banned blacks from holding several offices, including priesthood, until 1978. To their credit, they repudiated this in 1978 and explicitly denounced racism and their previous policy in 2013.
Slaveholders used religious arguments, as did segregationists.
All this to say that sincerely held religious convictions have been used as justifications for discrimination in the past, and they are still being used that way today.
Check out Kennedy's opinion.
Can you please provide a link to a searchable version of this? Thank you.