Flowers for Jesus?

So, this florist in Washington state is getting sued AGAIN for refusing to sell flowers for a gay wedding. This brings up many questions regarding the boundaries of religious exercise and its impact on other people.

When Ingersoll entered Stutzman’s store in March to buy flowers for his upcoming wedding to Freed, Stutzman told him she could not serve him “because of (her) relationship with Jesus Christ,” according to the lawsuit filed last week by the attorney general.

But what if I decided I couldn’t sell product Y to Stutzman BECAUSE of her “relationship with Jesus Christ”? If I decided that her religion (or method of practicing it) offended my religious beliefs? I’d be willing to bet money that she’d be crying “discrimination” and “intolerance” at the top of her lungs for DAYS. So what makes it ok for her to do the same?

We have non-discrimination laws to make very clear the limits on how beliefs like this can be expressed. You can believe same-sex marriage is wrong as much as you want, and you can refuse to go to weddings. BUT this stops when your beliefs infringe on someone else’s rights.

Also, does she check for adulterers? People getting married twice? People who had sex before the wedding? (I believe all of these people are supposed to be stoned, not get nice flower arrangements) Seems rather arbitrary, what she decides is against her religion.

Some randomness

Hopefully I’ll be getting a new computer setup soon – I end up not ever doing anything online because it’s such a hassle getting my cranky laptop to do anything…

ABC’s ‘This Week’ with Cardinal Timothy Dolan (that link goes to the first page, which has the video of Dolan’s interview. Here is the link to the portion of the transcript with his interview) is such a lovely person. “We want you to be happy, but only if you do it our way. We’re not against you, just against any way you might be able to be happy.” But the thing that bothers me most is that, regardless of what they think religiously, why should that matter to the rest of the nation? Why should we have laws based on what YOUR religion says is what god wants? There are plenty of other religions that think god wants gays to be able to marry. And there are plenty of people who don’t believe in god at all. So why does YOUR god get to decide for all the rest of us?

An article from the Christian Science Monitor on the shifting opinions about gay marriage. Some quotes are encouraging – on the right, someone pointed out that this is the government getting involved in a religious matter and the government shouldn’t be stopping a couple from getting married. Also, Rush Limbaugh thinks there’s a “gay mafia”. Every time I think about that very much, I start to giggle.

A photo of the day from CSM from March 30 shows that young men doing stupid things (often in motor vehicles) is universal.

Amazon apparently just acquired GoodReads. This makes me sad. I have the two separate for a reason.

And an increase in deaths from the abuse of painkillers is going to make life even more miserable for people with chronic pain. Right now I’m in a position of not being able to do anything about pain due to fibromyalgia (I’m on something to help, but there aren’t any painkillers I can take that don’t cause rebound migraines – so when it gets too bad, I take ibuprofen and then suffer the headache the next day in a miserable cycle), and it sucks. It would suck even more if I knew there was something that could help me but I couldn’t get it because of overkill in response to the abuse of painkillers.

And this managed to simultaneously amuse me and piss me the hell off. I will absolutely agree that women in college are less often looking for their MRS degree. Plenty of people meet the person they marry in college, since they’re meeting and spending time with people of like interests, pulled from a larger population than they were exposed to in college. But this idea that the mother brings up (admittedly she’s crazy, but bringing up something that I’ve definitely seen other places):

Men regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated. It’s amazing how forgiving men can be about a woman’s lack of erudition, if she is exceptionally pretty. Smart women can’t (shouldn’t) marry men who aren’t at least their intellectual equal.

Issue 1: why is there a double standard? Why is it ok for men, but not women? Issue 2: why do we care about education so damn much? My longest relationship (and among the most healthy/stable/not-with-a-crazy-person) was with someone with less education, although certainly not less intelligence. But not only does education not equal intelligence, but there are different types of intelligence. Yes, I’m technically a rocket scientist (had a college orchestra director who used to yell at us for messing things up, since we were all ‘rocket surgeons’ and ought to be able to figure it out), but I can’t cook worth a damn. And thus, I have mad respect for people who can. Are they “more intelligent” because they can figure out how to boil an egg? I guess that’s ok, though, since I’m female and a guy should be ok marrying someone less intelligent…as long as he doesn’t mind a wife who can’t cook…