Couple of Tabs to clear.
First from the Bubble Head News Network:
An Ohio woman has sued a Chicago-area sperm bank after she became pregnant with sperm donated by a black man instead of a white man as she’d intended.
Jennifer Cramblett was five months pregnant and happy with her life in April 2012. She and her partner had married months earlier in New York, and within days of their nuptials she had become pregnant with donor sperm at a fertility clinic in Canton.
Cramblett, 36, and her partner, Amanda Zinkon, 29, were so elated that they called Midwest Sperm Bank LLC outside Chicago to reserve sperm from the same donor in the hope that Zinkon would someday also have a child.
But that’s when Cramblett received some disturbing news, says a lawsuit filed Monday against Midwest Sperm Bank in Cook County, Illinois. She learned from an employee at the sperm bank that she had been inseminated with sperm from No. 330, a black donor, and not No. 380, a white donor she and Zinkon, who are white, had chosen.
Now before we get into my reflections, I need to post this part:
Cramblett said she and Zinkon love their 2-year-old daughter, Payton, very much and wouldn’t change anything about her. But they are concerned about raising her in the predominantly white community where they live.
I’m glad they aren’t taking out any of their disappointment on this innocent child. Also I hope they are COMPLETELY wrong. They’re openly gay and married, so it doesn’t take a detective to know that the sperm for the kids had to come outside the marriage. Really the math that a half-black girl (and who knows, she could be half-black like Barack Obama, or Half-Black like Tom Morello or Slash, both of whom I really wasn’t aware of their black heritage from looking at them). Still while there are racist whites out there, society has made it REALLY hard on them, and I can see a sweet little girl changing a lot of minds.
Still this is nothing short of bad services from the sperm bank. They bought a product, and even more, they planned on having their children be full siblings. The bank messed up, and they should pay for not only the bad services rendered, but enough to make sure NOBODY pulls this crap again. You pay big money for sperm, you should get what you pay for!
In the bucolic town of Schaghticoke, NY, Liberty Ridge Farm serves as a setting for family outings and events of all sorts on a family owned farm in the country. They are open to the public for a portion of each year, featuring events ranging from day camps to field trips to a corn maze. And until recently they hosted weddings. That all changed after the owners, Cynthia and Robert Gifford, encountered Melisa Erwin and Jennifer McCarthy, a lesbian couple who approached the Giffords about holding their wedding there. Cynthia Gifford declined, citing her religious beliefs.
I’m all for gay weddings, but this picking and choosing what you can and can’t do with your private property is driving me mad!
So you can’t make a call if a gay wedding ceremony can be held on your property. Same goes with interracial, or say a black wedding. Can’t say “No Jews, not Muslims”. Can you say no to a Satanic cult sacrificing a goat then having an orgy in the blood? Probably yes…but why?
Same goes to private businesses disarming their lawfully armed customers and employees. If this crap is allowed, then why is the other crap?
Lastly, why are the gays so excited about suing people who don’t want to take their money? The law says they have to SERVE them, but there is nothing against the law for CRAPPY service. I can’t sue a restaurant for messing up my order, or having incompetent waitstaff. What’s stopping the baker from mixing in a nice batch of black pepper and curry into your wedding cake. You ordered a “Vanilla Cake”, I guess we screwed up! Sorry! Oh, you want us to bring out the wedding cake for the cutting? Yeah the person who does that is in the bathroom, they’ll be out sometime soon…sorry!
Also if you FORCE bigoted people to behave like non-bigots, what exactly are your accomplishing?
I know when Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage the people who were celebrating the most were #1: The Gays, and #2 the people who did weddings! If somebody says they won’t take your money, FIND SOMEBODY else. this would be a bigger issue if you simply couldn’t, but that just isn’t the case.
This is not, of course, the first time a business has denied services to a Gay couple, and every time certain portions of the internet ring with outrage. And in the comment sections I ask the not-very-innocent question; would we be as bent out of shape if we were talking about a black businessman declining to do business with the Klan?
Somehow, nobody wants to discuss it on that basis.
I am tired of business owners who refuse to do business with gay people being labeled as bigots. Sure, they could be actual bigots, but refusing to support, condone or enable a lifestyle choice you do not agree with is not in and of itself bigotry. Like Schofield said, a black business owner refusing to do business with KKK members is not seen as bigotry. Why? Because everyone sees that there is a fundamental incompatibility with their chosen lifestyles. If the black store owner says “they have a right to their opinion, and I have a right not to do business with them because of it” that is not bigotry. Bigotry is intolerance; “I think all gays should die” is intolerant and therefor bigoted, “I think the gay lifestyle is immoral and I will not support it, but they have a right to act as they choose” is tolerant (but not accepting or condoning) and is therefor not bigotry.
We have accepted an Orwellian definition of the word “bigot,” where if you do not condone and praise a lifestyle choice you must hold hatred and intolerance for the people that practice that lifestyle. That is why we cannot discuss the issues in rational terms. As long as we accept the label that people who refuse to do business with gay people are by default bigots we will never be able to successfully discuss the inconsistencies with that stance, or extrapolate to other less obvious parallels. We have accepted our enemies definition of the word, and have therefor removed all possible avenues of argument against their world view.
I hold a different view: the landowners in this case may be very tolerant people (we have no evidence to support or deny that supposition), in the true sense of the word, but just as I would not allow an anti-freedom rally on my property, even if it were open to rent for other activities, these owners find a moral objection to the planned activities and do not wish to participate. There is nothing inherently bigoted about that, and we should not jump to the conclusion that it is.
You are 100% correct. I will note that the only time I used the word “Bigot” in the above post is in the very broad sense. The left’s idea is if you pass laws against the behavior of bigots, you can eliminate bigotry. ie saying you have to hire qualified black folk for a job, even if you hate black folk will somehow eliminate their hatred. In your comments about these people simply standing by personal principal that same sex marriage is not to be condoned, it will in no way make them condone same sex marriage by forcing them to do business with same-sex unions.
Same goes for my life in Massachusetts. I register my guns, and only buy pre-ban magazines that hold 11 or more rounds, and buy new magazines that hold 10 or less. That doesn’t mean I condone, or tolerate those practices. Hell in my personal life it gave me even more animosity against those laws.
I guess I am just overly sensitive to that. Your second to last paragraph just gave the impression that it was a given that they were bigots, and that there was nothing that could be done about it.
No worries, I can see where the confusion came from.