The transsexuals were hurting his business, so he asked them to please stop, or he would go out of business. But instead, they complained to the government.
An Oregon bar has been ordered by a judge to pay $400,000 for telling a group of transgender customers not to come back to the bar because people were starting to think it was a “tranny bar.”
The Oregon Court of Appeals stood by a ruling Wednesday that Chris Penner, owner of the Portland bar Twilight Room Annex, had illegally discriminated against the transgender customers, Oregon Live reports.
The transgender customers were part of a group called the Rose City T-girls who went to the bar regularly on Friday nights. Penner called them and left messages asking them to stop coming.
“People are not coming in because they just don’t want to be there on a Friday night now,” Penner said in a message. “In the beginning sales were doing fine, but they’ve been on a steady decrease so I have to look at what the problem is, what the reason is and take care of it.”
An Oregon judge found that Penner had violated the Oregon Equality Act of 2007, which bans discrimination against people based on sexual orientation.
Now he has to cough up $400,000.
Two points to make about this. First, note that Oregon is one of the liberal states in this map where such things are happening:
States with non-discrimination laws
These are the states where all the problems are happening with sexual minorities going to the government to compel celebration from businesses. Business owners are having to pay big fines, and/or go to jail. The judges and human rights commissions in these states are siding with the plaintiffs, and against freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and now even freedom of association.
And the Democrats want to push this up to the federal level, so that businesses can be sued in all 50 states. If they had a majority in the House, that’s exactly what they would do.
What’s interesting about this story is that now it’s not just religious people who are going to get impacted by these changes. It’s not just the florists, the bakers, the wedding photographers, the bed-and-breakfast owners. Now it’s bars. And the objection is not religious liberty or conscience. And that’s not surprising… if you looked up north to Canada, it started with the religious people, and then pretty soon bar owners, fitness club owners and other secular business owners were impacted, too.
Former inmate prays with the police officer who arrested him
This story is from the Daily Caller. Let’s take a look and then I’ll link it back to Christianity and parenting.
Excerpt:
Prompted by the slew of attacks on police officers, a former inmate who turned his life around, caused a social media frenzy by praying with the officer who arrested him eight years ago, asking God to protect police from violent criminals.
Texas City patrolman Salvador “Sal” Chapa was attending a barbecue on Saturday when he was approached by Doc Amey, a man he arrested eight years ago for a gun offense. So disturbed by the attacks on police, Amey pulled Chapa to the side of the crowd, where the two joined hands and said a prayer for the officer’s safety, according to ABC13.
Fellow barbecue-goer Kevin Woods was so touched by Amey’s prayer, that he snapped a picture of the pair and shared it on Facebook saying, “We should be seeing more of this in America. There shouldn’t be race involved and this is living proof that color doesn’t matter. This is a prime example. All lives matter ONE NATION UNDER GOD!”
According to the now-viral post, Amey was arrested by Chapa on a gun charge, and received a five year sentence for the crime. While in jail, Amey devoted his time to prayer and getting his life in order. He was released from prison after serving only a year and a half, and has since graduated from Bible college with perfect attendance.
According to Chapa, he and Amey had seen each other in town before, but never talked. Moved by the recent trend of attacks on police officers in America, the reformed criminal was compelled to approach the Chapa who arrested him nearly a decade ago, and ask God to protect the officer from the rampant crimes.
The picture has received nearly 30,000 Facebook shares, including a share by the Texas City Police Department’s official page.
“After seeing the picture getting posted and all, I was overwhelmed but at the same time I was happy it happened. I hope whoever views it looks at police in a different aspect. We’re here to help everybody,” Chapa told ABC13.
I want to be friends with that man. He is a good man!
So I want to make two points, one theological and one about parenting.
First point, Christians who read the Bible carefully will develop a tolerance for God chastising them with suffering, because they know it shapes their character to be more like Christ. This is the process of sanctification, where a Christian is made more like Jesus through the process of encountering the moral law, and learning how to obey it. If a Christian makes a wrong decision, and God lets him suffer, he praises God for teaching him right and wrong. He does not turn away from God, block him out of sight, and then continue to make bad decisions as if nothing had ever happened. Christians, of all people, need to be reading the Bible practically. We need to make ourselves comfortable with being judged, and not be rebellious when it happens. We need to learn to respect God and his moral law, and not make the same mistakes over and over.
Second point, about parenting. I think that there is a lot of hostility on the secular left towards parents who want to discipline their children. This story shows how disciplining is supposed to be done, and what the right response is to being judged and having boundaries placed on you. When a child stays up late and then sleeps right through a test and fails it, the parent should ground the child so that the child associates staying up too late the night before a test with a punishment. Most parents today would be mad at the teacher and the school for bruising the ego of their child. That’s wrong. It’s much better for the child to suffer a trivial punishment now, and not make much bigger mistakes with much bigger punishments later. In computer science, it costs MUCH LESS to fix a defect when it is discovered by the project team in the early requirements elicitation phase than it does to fix it if it’s discovered by customers after the deployment to production phase. Find the mistake early and fix it. The longer you wait, the more it costs to fix it.
Here’s a good passage from the Bible about accepting the suffering God allows you to experience after making a bad decision:
1 And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him,“There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.
2 The rich man had very many flocks and herds,
3 but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him.
4 Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”
5 Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan,“As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die,
6 and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”
7 Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul.
8 And I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more.
9 Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.
10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’
11 Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun.
12 For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.’”
13 David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.
This attitude of being grateful for judgment and boundaries is not popular on the left. The left is all about not judging, and especially about not punishing. They call it compassion – letting people who make mistakes get away with it instead of teaching people who make mistakes a lesson that will make their future decisions better. I often see Christians refuse to judge other Christians when they make mistakes. Instead of warning them, we want to pray that their mistake will “work out”. My advice for people, and especially Christians, is to not run away from being judged and having boundaries placed on you – if they come from someone who is wiser and who loves you and is looking out for you on a long-term basis. Parents are like that, most of the time.
The absolute easiest way to get into a good apologetics conversation with someone is to ask them what makes something right or wrong on their view.
Here’s a paper by Greg Koukl from Stand to Reason, in which he critiques moral relativism. His paper is called “Seven Things You Can’t Do as a Moral Relativist”. First, let’s see the list of seven things.
You can’t make moral judgments about other people’s moral choices
You can’t complain about God allowing evil and suffering
You can’t blame people or praise people for their moral choices
You can’t claim that any situation is unfair or unjust
You can’t improve your morality
You can’t have meaningful discussions about morality
You can’t promote the obligation to be tolerant
You’ll have to read the paper to see how he argues for these, but I wanted to say a brief word about number 1.
Rule #1: Relativists Can’t Accuse Others of Wrong-Doing
Relativism makes it impossible to criticize the behavior of others, because relativism ultimately denies that there is such a thing as wrong- doing. In other words, if you believe that morality is a matter of personal definition, then you can’t ever again judge the actions of others. Relativists can’t even object on moral grounds to racism. After all, what sense can be made of the judgment “apartheid is wrong” when spoken by someone who doesn’t believe in right and wrong? What justification is there to intervene? Certainly not human rights, for there are no such things as rights. Relativism is the ultimate pro-choice position because it accepts every personal choice—even the choice to be racist.
In moral relativism, what you ought to do is totally up to you. Morality is just like a lunch buffet – you pick what you like based on your personal preferences.
I remember one particular discussion I had with a non-Christian co-worker. Both she and her live-in boyfriend were moral relativists. They were fighting because she was angry about his not having (or wanting) a job, and he was angry because when he asked her for space, she immediately ran out and cheated on him.
What’s interesting is that both of these people chose the other in order to escape being judged themselves. I think this happens a lot in relationships today. Both people don’t want to be judged by the other person, but they both want to the other person to treat them well and to honor moral obligations. Isn’t that interesting? I don’t think that you can have something like marriage work when neither person takes moral obligations to the other person seriously.
WINTERY KNIGHT 