Just say No

Being able to say "No it's against my religion" is part of the First Amendment.

Should a vegan restaurant be required to serve meat?

Should a Muslim fashion mall kiosk be required to stock lascivious outfits for non-Muslims?

Should a Wiccan bookstore be required to stock "I found Jesus" books?

 
Should a MAGA political merch store be required to distribute pamphlets advocating mutilating children?

The "Bake that cake or else. . ." nonsense will continue. They are not "real" customers--the issue (pizza, flowers, bakery, web designer) is shopped until a small conservative Christian entrepreneur who can't afford the legal costs is found. Then all the coffers are opened with the money left over from the marriage campaign. This is not about fairness, it's about destroying the Constitution.

Supreme Court sides with Colorado web designer in blow to LGBTQ protections : NPR

What has happened to church weddings?

A Catholic priest called the Dennis Prager (who is Jewish) Show today to respond to a question about “marriage is a sacrament” in the Catholic church.  He said he’d been at his parish of about 400 families for 20 years, and weddings in the church had gone down by two thirds! Some people are not getting married, and some are choosing other venues.  Prager expressed his shock, but the priest continued, that the young people he counseled over 20 years had changed.  Whereas, 20 years ago they were “cultural Catholics,” and now they were “choice Catholics.”  And he mentioned 3 couples in his parish—one he married a few weeks ago, one right after Thanksgiving, and one whose wedding was coming up.  He said all three couples were in mass this past Sunday.  Prager agreed with the concept.  He said formerly there were cultural Jews, and now they are Jews by choice if they attend services.

Are church weddings going out of style?

When my parents and grandparents got married (1934 and 1901), home weddings with a few friends and family were common in our (Anabaptist) tradition. No white wedding dress, just something nice that could be reused. Even in the 1940s one of my aunts, Dorothy, was married at our house (first wedding I attended). By the 50s and 60s, most people I knew were married in churches, although a niece had her wedding in 1984 in the same yard where my parents said their vows. Now it's public spaces like parks, fancy city buildings, elegant old mansions, old barns, or destinations like resorts, and I've even heard that funeral homes have been used.

What's a baker, florist, candlestick maker to do?

 Recently, "the state" squeezed every penny, including donations, from a Christian couple and destroyed their livelihood because they wouldn't bake a cake for a lesbian couple's wedding.  They would serve them as customers every other way, just not that. Story.

They were ordered to “cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published, circulated, issued or displayed, any communication, notice, advertisement or sign of any kind to the effect that any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, services or privileges of a place of public accommodation will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination will be made against, any person on account of sexual orientation.”
“Within Oregon’s public accommodations law is the basic principle of human decency that every person, regardless of their sexual orientation, has the freedom to fully participate in society,” the ruling states. “The ability to enter public places, to shop and dine, to move about unfettered by bigotry.”

Divorce cakes are quite popular. Just google images. Many Christians do not believe divorce is God's will. Gay couples get divorces.  Can a baker be required to bake one for Harry and George if he would not do it for Mary and George?




Can a Quaker pacifist bakery owner refuse to decorate a cake with guns by turning down a big job for the NRA? The military?
 

  
What about a West Virginia Democrat's celebration in memory of an Exalted Cyclops of the KKK who represented him in Congress? Is that OK to turn down? (There was such a story posted on the Internet which apparently was a hoax).
 
Does a female baker have to create pornographic images on cupcakes for male clients? Or yoga positions for the exercise club? Many of those pink breast cancer images were just porn, in my opinion.


These are all activities by Americans expressing their free speech; what about the religious and speech and assembly rights of the baker?

The “gotcha” question—get ready for it

Rubio's already answered the "gotcha" question the media will pose for all Republicans.  It's not on ISIS, EPA regulations, monetary policies, the deficit, Iran’s threat, Israel or did his dog ride outside the car.  It will be this one.  And he said, Yes.  Other candidates could mention 2008 and Obama's lie about supporting traditional marriage in order to get electeed and how he was outed just in time for the 2012 election so he lied again and said he evolved. If evolving is good enough for the president's supporters, then it should be good enough for Republicans replying to the Democratic media that they are evolving on the issue. Now that there are "throuples" wanting recognition of their marriages, perhaps it could be rephrased into something more trendy.

http://www.newsmax.com/US/Marco-Rubio-would-attend-wedding/2015/04/15/

We’ve already been through this some years ago in our family, and they’ve already split.

The cost of a big wedding may not be worth it

The more you spend on the engagement ring and the wedding, the more likely you are to get a divorce according to this research: " ‘A Diamond is Forever’ and Other Fairy Tales: The Relationship between Wedding Expenses and Marriage Duration" Andrew M. Francis and Hugo M. Mialon. (September 15, 2014). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2501480 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2501480

We've been married over 54 years. Our wedding was low budget. I borrowed my sister's wedding dress; I didn't even have a shower. My husband's parents bought him a new suit. It was punch and cake in the church basement. I'm guessing weddings are really for brides and their mothers; men probably don't give a hoot. The important thing about a wedding is to be surrounded by friends and family, and skip the park or beach and find a church! And even that doesn't always take. If you can't get along before the wedding, a few words by a pastor won't change anything.

http://www.theknot.com/Vendors/Longaberger-Golf-Club-Event-Center/Profile/CAR/054/542850/profile?sid=FeilhLC0c4HJxNUWNuxbEw

http://www.eventective.com/USA/Ohio/Heath/68040/The-Dawes-Arboretum.html

http://www.jamesallen.com/engagement-rings/

http://www.whiteflash.com/engagement-rings/designer-rings.aspx

An Irish wedding with a huge surprise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYKwqj5QViQ#t=295

 

"Those most important words, I do ya, Hallelujah."

Happy Anniversary, Jean and Steve

Last year I picked up at a yard sale an autographed copy of "The Wonderful World of Cooking," a collection of recipes arranged by growing season by Edward Harris Heth (1956) for $1.00. Inside was an invoice from Tom Jacks Florists of Milwaukee, for Jean Winzenburg and Steve Treacy, and the date in the front of the book, from the Florist, was August 26, 1961. I don't know if Jean and Steve made it 49 years, but if they did, my best to you, because I'm certainly enjoying the book. I blogged about the tasty contents here.

Today I found additional information at another blog about the author--almost wish I hadn't. Both Heth and his partner Bill committed suicide in the 1960s.

[She] found a feature article on the life and times of Ed Heth, "Wisconsin's Finest Food Writer." Heth was born in 1909 in Wisconsin, the only child of a dissolute gambler. He led a glamorous writing life in New York until poor health forced him home in the 40s. He settled down into a country house on a hill, living amongst the friends and neighbors who populate The Wonderful World. His partner through it all was a ceramicist named Bill Chancey. The two lived together openly, surely making them the first gay couple in the tiny town of Wales, Wisconsin to do so. The town embraced the pair, the article quoting one woman's take on the situation: "I remember people saying they were very interesting people and Wales always felt very honored to have them in the community."

If all this sounds too good to be true for rural, pre-Stonewall America, well, turns out it was. In 1960 Heth and Chancey's house burnt down to the ground after a lightning strike. They began work on a new house, but a year later as it neared completion, Bill Chancey was found in his car with the engine on and the garage door closed. Heth tried to keep writing, even starting work on a novel, but in 1963 he fatally overdosed on painkillers. The two men are buried side by side on a sunny slope in Wisconsin's Welsh Hills. But The Wonderful World of Cooking — long out of print — is alive and vibrant, an incredible document of a man's love for his home and the food it gives him. Link. Photo from that blog--mine doesn't have a cover.