YES YOU CAN.

What you can't do is discriminate against a constitutionally or federally protected class. That's a list of things including race but not including sexual orientation.

Pediatricians can, and have, refused to see the children of gay couples. That's disgusting, but not illegal.

You want it to be illegal? That's fine. Get a state or federal law passed adding gayitude to the list of things businesses can't discriminate against. Start by not shouting misinformation on the Internet. Because while you're doing that, your opponents have organized in dozens of states and are passing laws opposite to what you want.

But if you want to stay on the Internet, why don't you tell me why you think my earlier analysis about the impact of these laws you don't like is wrong, assuming you think I'm wrong? Learning to make a coherent argument will help you in your political campaign later.

You must be new here, because his view is essentially a textbook statement of the standard Libertarian position on this issue.

Also, reading comprehension fail.

You:

Him:

You again:

Your bubbliness might be hurting you here, but not in the way you think. You might want to try to consider positions you don't really understand a little more before having a knee-jerk reaction like this. Thinking something shouldn't be illegal isn't the same as thinking it's morally okay. I don't agree with DarkOx on this, either, but he's not a monster. He just disagrees with us on something.

And that's why YOUR side of the argument loses. These laws won't result in "No gays allowed" signs, because, unlike with race, you can't just look at someone and tell if he's gay. All these laws will result in are things like some bakeries run by very religious individuals not make cakes for same-sex marriages. Which is perfectly fine, because other bakeries will, so no one gets hurt.

Do you really think it's alright to force a deeply religious baker to make a cake for a gay wedding if the baker is devoutly religious and thinks he's helping the people to sin? Yes, the baker is wrong-headed and should change his mind, but people aren't perfect, attitudes take a long time, sometimes a generation or two, to change. You'd be causing the baker significant emotional distress. Probably, the baker would shut down and get a different job. And what you get in return for harming that baker is that gay couples wanting to marry don't have to type in "gay friendly bakery near Memphis, TN" once in their lives.

This isn't like racial segregation. There are superficial similarities, but this isn't going to end with gay-only schools and gay-only hospitals and gay-only restaurants. Such a system would be impossible to enforce, and very few people really would want to do that anyway: gays have already been tolerated in Western society for a very long time, since before slavery was eliminated even.

This isn't about hate. It's about religious freedom. You just think the people who will exercising their religious freedom are stupid and wrong, so you don't want them to be able to exercise it. They are wrong, and likely stupid for some value of stupid. So are the people exercising their freedom of speech to deny the Holocaust. But you don't lose your freedom of speech for being stupid and wrong, and you don't lose your freedom of religion, either.

lol. Why bother avoiding accusations of sexism? You're an anonymous coward on Slashdot. What are you afraid they're going to do to you?

Anyway, the right way to treat people who are too easily offended is to brush them off, not acquiesce to their neurosis. If enough people call them on their bullshit, they'll grow a thicker skin and stop being so easily offended, and that's better for everyone in the long run.

I'm sure most women wouldn't object to not being called mobsters, but if you're really concerned about it, use they and get the number agreement wrong. Using "she" is just distracting.

Also, it's not sexist. Defaulting to one gender, usually male, is how most languages deal with the issue. It's just understood that the gender is indeterminate. For instance, Spanish uses "ellos" for a group of mixed gender people, while "ellas" is referred to a group of only women. No one gets confused by this.

Both major parties in the US are anti-slavery today, as well as most minor parties.

Yes, and the customers or state would still foot the bill, because the insurance premium raises the cost of doing business for all banks, making the interest rate spread offered to customers higher and a bank in trouble more likely to fail, due to the increased difficulty of making profits when the cost of business is higher.

Stealing from someone where insurance will cover it just means you're stealing from a lot of people instead of just one.

Dude, not all mobsters are female. Use "he" or (cringe) "they".

To be fair, it's hard to pretend not to be black, but it's usually pretty easy to pretend not to be gay. You don't even have to pretend; you just have to not bring up your sexual orientation.

So a business wanting to discriminate against gays would have to have some sort of policy that you have to make out with the cashier to prove you're straight, or something. That might prove very popular with some customers, but they'd probably have trouble hiring cashiers.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

Getting better every day. Used in several popular offline GPSes like Navmii already. Only a matter of time before it either takes over or at least drastically depresses prices.

Yeah I don't think so. Otherwise, there would be no way to drive on that road at all without breaking the law. I think that would violate due process. Also common sense.

Your driving instructor isn't wrong about safety, though.

Yes, people talking about suicide want "attention". But this usually isn't the same kind of attention spoiled children want. People talking about suicide often mean it, or at least think they do, and talking about suicide is one of their last attempts to grasp at whatever straws they think might support them as they fall.

Don't trivialize the pain that can and does make people end their own lives.

To all Slashdotters, take note:
- Never support licensing for programmers.
- NEVER support licensing for programmers.
- NEVER SUPPORT LICENSING FOR PROGRAMMERS!

If there's anything that can make you a raving libertarian, it's professional licensing. Did you know the US state bars can refuse to license a lawyer who passed all tests and has no criminal record because (paraphrasing) "he's a jerk"? Seriously. Not an exaggeration. I can't find the case right now (slow Internet), but that has happened. Look up how broad the requirement of "good moral character" can be. Don't want that bull feces in YOUR profession? Oppose licensure. Always.

Friends are irrelevant. In C and C++, you have the ability to set pointers to arbitrary values, cast them to whatever you want, and then use them to overwrite arbitrary memory. Friends matter for minimizing code complexity, but, as Stroustrup said, C++'s object model is intended to prevent accidents, not fraud. If you have evil code with access to an object, whether or not the code is friends with the object's class is entirely irrelevant.

Christ ...we meet again. Are you like a Qubes developer or something because it's either that or you're REALLY a fanboy.

Is this what you're talking about: http://blog.invisiblethings.or...

It's an impressive idea, although it depends on the TPM which is not designed to be safe against physical attacks. There's no reason the implementation of that should only work with QubesOS, either, although the developers appear to be the same.