Indiana Gay Rights Update

[eredien]

The Indianapolis Farmers' Market vendor "Just Cookies" just won't make cookies for gay IU students. Fun fact: the cookie order was eventually placed with the "Flying Cupcake" bakery on, get this, Massachusetts Ave.

I would have volunteered to make them cookies. In fact, here, here's two cookies. Pass them around, folks:









Quote from the article by the local Fox affilate: IUPUI's spokesperson said the school has no formal complaint against the bakery and added embracing diversity means allowing the business owners the right to their opinion and the right to choose how to serve its customers, as long as those customers are not discriminated against.

I think this is an interesting question. When you are running a food-related business and choose not to serve someone because, "We have our values, and you know, some things ... for instance, if someone wants a cookie with an obscenity, well, we're not going to do that," when does choosing not to serve someone because you disagree with who the person is once they have told you become discrimination, and when does that become a business owner simply turning away a customer? Can it, legally, be treated as discrimination? I mean, it seems to me like the customers are being discriminated against by the act of not being served, because they likely would have been served if they had not identified themselves as queer, or had lied and said they wanted the cookies for some other event. Any lawyers want to clear this up?

I wonder how many queer students Just Cookies unknowingly served because they didn't know they were gay; there's evidence they served at least one queer student previously (unknown to them). I bet they won't get many now.

Oh, and Indiana was one of the states to file an amicus brief against same-sex marriage in the prop 8 appeal in CA.

...I can't believe I still want to move back.

Comments

[eredien]

Oh, I didn't realize there was a similar case in the UK pending!

In the US, similar cases with Catholic Charities (which runs Catholic adoption and foster parent services in various places across the US):

In Boston, Catholic Charities stopped offering its adoption and foster parent services in Boston, MA after antidiscrimination laws passed by the state legislature would have required them to consider GLBT couples as adoptive parents.

In Washington, DC the city council ruled that,in order for Catholic Charities to continue as city contractors and receive associated public funding, their foster placement program would have to abide by the new city anti-discrimination policies re queer people. Catholic Charities wasn't willing to allow queer families to adopt or foster children, so they shut those programs down in DC rather than opting to expand their services to include queer people. In a related move, eventually they also stopped offering spousal benefits to all married employees rather than offer benefits to all spouses of married employees, gay and straight. (Washington, DC is not a state, and does not have the same kind of legislative representation in the House & Senate that states do, for complicated and antiquated reasons.)

Mithent, do you know what the Catholic agencies are going to do now that their claim has been refused?

[mithent.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, the case seems to have come to a conclusion now: After being told to reconsider its ruling that Catholic charity could not discriminate against gay prospective parents, regulator reaffirms original decision.

I didn't know there was a similar case in the US; here, it seems they were trying to change their constitution to seek an exemption, initially with some legal success, but the Charity Commission prevented it. The ruling here only came out last month, and it doesn't seem that they've done much about it yet.

It seems rather vindictive that Catholic Charities went as far as withdrawing all spousal benefits to try to get around the law! I read that they transferred at least some of their services to the National Center for Children and Families?

[eredien]

It seems rather vindictive that Catholic Charities went as far as withdrawing all spousal benefits to try to get around the law! I read that they transferred at least some of their services to the National Center for Children and Families?

This is correct; I believe the Nat'l Center for Children and Families is located in Maryland.

I wouldn't actually interpret their actions re: withdrawl of all spousal benefits as "getting around the law," since as an employer they do have the option not to offer spousal health benefits (just like any other employer would; welcome to the current state of US healthcare). However, it is vindictive and mean-spirited, and I think it's fitting that the lack of spousal benefits makes them a less-desireable employer. They'll have a harder time attracting employees to their organization--especially the very straight married employees with children that their organization wants to promote as the godly ideal--and I think that's absolutely right, absoultely poetic justice. In their very zeal to deny rights to LGBTQ people, they've proved exactly our point--that harming queer people harms us all. They sure harmed a lot of people in agitating against some of them, though, and I wish they could see that.

In regard to the UK Catholic Care article you linked to, I was just stunned by the Catholic Care statement (though I hardly know why these things stun me anymore): "The charity is very disappointed with this decision as in the view of the charity this will reduce the number of people recruited as adoptive parents."

I mean, if they'd been able to bar gay people from adopting, they would have reduced the number of adoptive parents recruited deliberately! They believe it's ok to reduce the number of adoptive parents when the church says it's ok to reduce recruitment of those parents, but it's not fair when the state asks them to increase the pool of adopted parents, they refuse to comply, and their refusal to comply might reduce the number of these adoptive parents recruited? It's a hypocritical double-standard, and absurd.

I feel like if they're worried that they might not be able to recruit enough of what they consider to be the "right kind" of people, they should get out there and recruit more.

Why the hell do straight people continue to hold queer people accountable for the failures of their own desires and actions surrounding marriage, reproduction, and family life? Queer people do not exist to act as a counterweight, complement, or ballast to straight people's desires and actions; queer people are not responsible for managing the desires of straight people.

The fact that institutions like the Catholic church insist on portraying straight people and their sexuality as "whole," "life-giving," "natural," and "healthy," but queer people and their sexuality as "incomplete," "sterile," "disordered," and "sick" reminds me of nothing so much as the Aristotelian concept of men as having all the "vital principle" and women as possessing nothing necessary for creation or generation, inert and passive in and of themselves. I really feel like we're living in the very dawn of the age of thought on some of these topics, some days; and then I go read Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick or Kenji Yoshino and realize that people have just realized that these institutions have simply realized that if they don't acknowledge Darwin and Galileo's existence, they won't have to acknowledge or wrestle with their theories either.