Dear david f,

>> I wrote how the articles smells to me. … You are taking issue with things I did not write.<<

Apologies for the misunderstanding. I did not want to take issue with you only to expand on what I thought was the gist (that she called “bullying”) of her article, because that is how it "smelled" to me.

Dear George,

We can disagree in good faith or we can disagree by denigrating those who disagree with us by accusing them of bad faith in their tactics.

On the question of rights for homosexuals those against those rights can accuse those who are for those rights as bullies. Those for those rights can accuse those against those rights as bullies. There are those on both sides of the issue who use those tactics. However, a blanket condemnation of one side which accuses all of the other side of using those tactics is wrong. That is what I thought the article did. Rather than discussing the question it denigrated those on the other side of the question.

Laws written to ensure rights can be blunt instruments. In the case of the cake I think it was. It was enforced with a rigidity that I think was oppressive.

I do not think homosexuals should be discriminated in employment where the employment has nothing to do with sexual preference or in having their personal unions recognised by the government. That does not mean to me that a baker should have to bake a cake containing sentiments not to his liking.

Dear David,

<<I do not think homosexuals should be discriminated in employment where the employment has nothing to do with sexual preference>>

I also don't think they should be discriminated as above.

However, disgusting as such practice may be, I don't believe that the state has any right to force itself on private employers, telling them whom they may or may not employ.

Dear Yuyutsu,

I think the state has a right to demand that employers not discriminate on any basis that has nothing to do with the job that workers are employed to do.

Your feeling that homosexual practices are disgusting is not relevant to the discussion.

Dear David,

By "such practice" I referred to the discrimination of employers against homosexuals, rather than to homosexuality, thus my feelings are that discriminating against homosexuals is disgusting.

(for the record, I have no particular feelings about homosexuality, though I pity anyone who over-emphasises their sexuality and considers it the centrepiece of their life, whomever/whatever they happen to be sexually attracted to)

Nevertheless, the fact that a practice is disgusting, or that some people find it disgusting, doesn't allow the state to criminalise it (including homosexuality). Private employers should be able to employ whoever they want, whenever they want and not those they do not want, for whatever reason or even for no reason at all - it's their money which they should be free to spend as they wish.

Of course, if people find an employers' behaviour disgusting, then they should be free to blacklist and boycott their business, but not to bully the employer with the violence of the law.

Dear Yuyutsu,

Thank you for your clarification.