Featured Is Andy Stanley right or wrong?

I bet John the Baptist wouldn't stay quiet on the matter!

 

There is a huge difference between, say, baking cookies for your porn star neighbor (serving someone you don’t see eye to eye with) and driving your porn star neighbor to the set. There’s a big difference between helping your heroin addict office secretary get an appointment with a rehab counselor and driving your heroin addict office secretary to a meeting with her dealer.

Christians must always act with compassion, generosity and charity toward non-Christians - there’s no debate about that. The debate centers on whether charity involves facilitating your neighbor’s sin. I don’t see where baking a wedding cake for a gay couple is serving them in the context of “the essence of Christianity”. Pastor Stanley needs to rethink that one.

 

In Kansas right now, without this law, a bakery can refuse to do so. I'm amazed that people are making this fuss about the state I live in, when I know for a fact the law wasn't needed, and the reasoning behind it was faulty. Stanley's right, particularly given that -- for about the sixth time now -- the law isn't needed!!

 

And what they are doing is heading off what has been so inevitable in many other states.

 

Of course there is. We discriminate every day. You're irresponsible if you don't.

 

The emboldened portion should have also included the words "person ... based on the group, class, or category to which that person ... belongs, rather than on individual merit." The reason being, it is that portion of the definition that renders the law as questionably legal. The state and federal laws allowing exclusion of service "to anyone" is specifically worded so that the refusal of such service does not entail identifying the reasoning behind the exclusion. Specifically naming gays as being the target of the law made the law unconstitutional, and short-circuited the legal intent of the exclusionary laws currently on the books that already allow such exclusion. Had it passed the Kansas Senate and been signed by Gov. Brownback (highly unlikely), it would have been struck down, with good reason.

It is not against the law for a Baptist church to call a Catholic priest as pastor, though it would never happen. While it is against the law for a man to go into a women's restroom for the purpose of voyeurism or sexual assault, the accidental entry of a man into a women's restroom is commonly forgiven without ramifications. To codify in law the deliberate and specific discrimination of any group (the law did not mention Christians as the primary beneficiaries of this "right") against another group (gays, who were mentioned specifically) is 1) unChristlike, 2) a violation of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and 3) unnecessary, given the reservation of the right to refuse service to anyone under both state and federal law.

Christ hung out with the drunks, prostitutes and insurrectionists of His time. None of those would be acceptable types for us to "hang out with" today, but if we are to be Christlike, we are to minister to the less-than-acceptable. The error of the courts in other jurisdictions is the decision rendered, not the state of the law governing the actions of those who refused service to gays. I reiterate strenuously, we do not need this law in Kansas .In the case of the Kansas proposal, specific discrimination would have been codified in law, in exactly the same fashion by which the "Jim Crow" laws codified discrimination against blacks.

 

Neutral.

Yep. Of course there is good discrimination. You've heard of someone positively described as having discriminating taste. As Christians we are to exercise discernment i.e. make distinctions. See Hebrews 5:14 for example:"But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil." (NIV)

 

He was directing it toward you. But upon reflection Mike censors himself once in a while.

 

Off-hand, I'd credit it to paranoid tendencies. :laugh:

 

You are really into your profession of psycho-babble:laugh:;aren't you?

 

The key thing is that baking a wedding cake for a gay “wedding” *participates* in a fraud and purports to “recognize” the thing-that-isn’t. It also *participates* in something the bible condemns as sin. Most Christians of integrity recognize that that’s just not right.

'Don't bring Jesus into this'??? It's time to stand up for Jesus!

 

I'm sure it was. His latest tactic is to chime in and respond to everything I say with something brilliant and thought provoking like "sure you do".

 

Post reported.............

 

Post reported..................

 

Post reported..............

 

OK. Be sure to let us know how that works out for you.

 

Will do as I also reported the unnecessary instigation. How you remain on this board defies reason.

 

How does baking a cake or making a floral arrangement make one a co-conspiritor(sp?) in the ceremony? I am asking this to further the discussion. Bakers and floralists provide services where the couples were expecting, shacking up together, broke up one or both marriages before they were to be married, lived "swinging" lifestyles, etc.

Look, I am not patting them on the back and saying "attaboy" for those who bake cakes/ provides floral arrangements for a gay "ceremony"(refuse to call it a marriage), nor am I kicking them in the pants. To me, it appears to be a business transaction. If they feel uncomfortable doing it, by all means, don't do it.

Personally, I probably would decline, but I not a baker or floralist.

 

The idea is that because, the wedding cake represents prosperity for the couple and the husband's responsibility to provide for the wife, to provide such a symbol is sending the message that it is a legitimate wedding and, thus, giving I am asking this to further the discussion. Bakers and floralists provide services where the couples were expecting, shacking up together, broke up one or tacit approval to the marriage.

True, but in those cases, the couple is presumably trying to do the right thing by marrying and leaving the things you mentioned behind.

In this case, you have two homosexuals trying to redefine marriage and keep on engaging in a sinful lifestyle.