Homosexual Rights in the Star Trek Universe

Okay, now make those examples about institutions and bakers declining black people, women or disabled. Sueing is a waste of time and money, just let "free market" handle everything and discrimination goes away...

 

We're not talking about skin color, and gender has nothing to do with it. The ADA takes care of disabled access to public buildings and private businesses.

Nice try, though.

The courts are full of BS lawsuits, people trying to trump the rights of others. How about we live and let live, and stop trying to force through the courts our views on those who we can't convince through polite conversation?

How about a little IDIC instead of taking my olive branch and poking me with it?

 

Yes, we are talking sexual orientation. Which, just like race, gender and disability, is not a choice. Treating people differently because of their race, gender, disability or sexual orientation is discrimination.

Trump the right to discriminate people? We need to live and let live those who DO NOT want to let live others? This is funny, you are basically saying we need to tolerate the intolerant.

 

Making discrimination go away will never be accomplished through legislation. A business refusing to sell to any group would be bad for business, but it should not be illegal, nor subject that business to litigation.

Now, if people discover that business's policies and choose to take their patronage elsewhere, that would their choice.

If Starbucks refuses to sell me coffee because I carry a concealed weapon, I go elsewhere (or just don't tell them).

 

As a gay man, I appreciate your evolution.
There has never been an attempt to give gay people special rights, only equality and protection from discrimination.

This whole debate over religious people barring gay people from business isn't just about wedding services. As a gay man living in a small town, if the few small businesses in my town decided to bar me for being gay, I could have trouble getting gas, medical care, groceries, prescriptions,etc. People in a large city could afford to just not take their business to a homophobic business, but in a small town, choices are limited, and there's usually going to be more homophobia in a small town too - I live in rural Oklahoma where our elected officials speak freely and frequently against gay people, one of our congresspersons said gays were more dangerous to America than terrorists. I can't afford to trust my state officials to protect my rights. A few hours away a restaraunt made national news because the owner has turned out customers for being gay, and other minorities - one customer in a wheelchair was denied service because he might make the other customers "uncomfortable". This isn't just about wedding cakes.

The religious objection in business can be a slippery slope. What if medical providers and emergency workers didn't want to perform emergency services on a gay person? That has happened before that I know of, a few years ago there was a story of EMT workers refusing to give life saving care to a trans woman in a car accident, and she died.

It's no more right to deny service to someone on the basis of orientation than it is to do so for race or gender.

 

Likely it would be a condition of their employment and something that they would have been questioned about when being interviewed for the job position. Such a person would never be hire by a public fire department, nor the vast majority of medical organizations.

A friend of mine is a nurse and she had to answer questions on this very matter for all three of her nursing jobs (I called her). It isn't just a matter of gay people, it's genders, social classes, religions, professions.

If you're Muslim and a patient who handles pork meat comes in, you will have previously agreed to treat them, or you wouldn't have been hired in the first place.

Now at a small private run clinic, this might be different.

 

I'd hope that anyone in a medical profession would be committed to the value of saving lives and healing the sick and injured regardless of any prejudice, but there have been instances where this hasn't been the case. I'd hate to think an LGBT person would die because the person they depended on for life saving emergency care thought they had a right to refuse service based on their religious objections to that person's orientation or any other excuse. It's happened before, and these religious objection laws would be a slippery slope that could well lead to things like this happening.

If nothing else, these kind of things could be used to drive a person from a small community where they wouldn't have a lot of alternatives if they were shut out of their small town's resources. A small town with one grocery store, one gas station, one general practioner doctor, etc, could pretty easily make their town unusable to anyone they thought was LGBT, if they wished.

 

If a bakery doesn't want to put two grooms on the top of a wedding cake, I'll open up a bakery that will and steal all their business.

I'd say there's a difference between deciding not to offer specific services and deciding to deny the services you offer to specific individuals. And despite what the conservative activist supreme court says, companies can't invoke freedom of religion in order to exempt themselves from the law. You can choose the services you offer but you can't pick and choose what customers you offer them to, and you can't force your beliefs on your employees because freedom of religion does not apply to what corporations offer for employee benefits.

 

I think this thread has Fonzied.

 

Well, we have at least gotten a bit off track talking about modern day LGBT issues instead of homosexual rights in Star Trek.

I do really enjoy seeing how LGBT characters and issues are dealt with alien races and cultures. We get a vague impression at least that Bajorans and Trills are very accepting from the way Kira and Dax react in the Reassociation with Dax and Kahn, and the gender issues of the Ferengi make them seem like they'd be homophobic as well as misogynistic.
The novels have shown us open and accepted Klingons males married to each other. Andorians are pressured to marry in four gendered marriages necessary to reproduce, and it seems that an Andorian who would only be with one - or even just two - other people would be as socially unaccepted as someone who chose not to have children for any other reason. But what about older Andorians past their fertile period?

I do wonder how the Federation, free of prejudice, deals with issues like the Andorians. I suppose as long as the issues were on a societal level and not sanctioned legally it wouldn't be such an issue.


When watching/reading science fiction, I think it's pretty common to imagine what our lives would be like in that world, but as a gay man, I often don't know where and how I'd belong in those worlds, so I do appreciate that the Trek novels at least have explored LGBT characters.

 

That's if you believe in any such figure. Since I don't, I see equal rights for all as a basic credence for human decency.

In a Trek context, I would see such acceptance and inclusion for all as being the corner stone for all Federation members. Other galactic powers would, of course, have their own stance on same-sex partners. Until such time as Trek drags itself out of its repressed mind set on such things and actually starts to explore them then we'll never know--though given the direction its heading (all style, with hot actors and big explosions, and little in the way of substance) then its doubtful we'll get much in the way of intelligent and intensive Trek in the immediate future.

 

the only problem is a marriage was solely created as a union between a man and a woman as husband and wife. that is the definition of marriage. no one has the right to change the definition of marriage any more than they have the right to change what was written in our Constitution.

 

At best the next movie might barely mention a minor gay character in passing. To truly explore our new gay character we need a new TV/cable series. Something that will let us do a nice in depth get to know ya over the course of say a hundred and fifty plus episodes.

During a previous discussion on this subject, a poster told me that it wasn't necessary for me to see myself in the show to enjoy the world being presented. I don't know that that is completely true, I mean I do enjoy the show despite the absence of a Christian hispanic bi-sexual transsexual character, but would my enjoyment increase substantially with the inclusion of someone with a few traits from my little demographic?

I did like the brief appearances of Ensign Gomez, because she looked like someone who could be right out of my own family. If she had also been "un-straight" I might have like her appearances that much more.

With the supreme court decision in place it isn't a exemption to the law, it's now is the law.

Actually you can control what health services you as a business offer your employees, if those services violate the morals of the owners.

One example, the Hobby-Lobby business covers sixteen different types of birth control that prevent pregnancies, but not four types that destroy fertilized eggs.

 

What people call "gay rights" is just the rights that are currently reserved for heterosexuals only. We're not trying to get anything straights don't already take for granted.

Marriage evolves all the time. Women are no longer, in Western culture anyways, sold by their fathers to their husbands. Divorce is much more common. Polygamy in the Bible means that marriage wasn't always between just one man and one woman. Besides, "We've always done it this way" is no reason to deny equal rights to gays. Slavery was once a time honored tradition, and it has Biblical support too. Things change, and often for the better.

 

Since marriage isn't defined in the US Constitution, that's certainly false. And anyway, the US Constitution does allow itself to be amended, thereby changing what is written in it.

What's happening across the country is a trend that both state and federal courts are recognizing that there is no legal basis for denying homosexual couples the numerous civil benefits of marriage. Among those numerous civil benefits is the use of the term legally married.

 

I was drawing similarities not saying it was in our constitution. what i meant was that you can not change the definition of marriage. the people that created marriage around 1250–1300 CE said it was an institution of a man and a woman. the male and female beings as husband and wife. The word marriage also goes as far as the Jewish tradition in the BC calender where it was the union of a man and woman.

those are the only people that have a right to change the definition.

Its the same for our Constitution. the founding fathers are the only ones that have a right to change what was written.

so yes, no one can change the definition of marriage anymore so than they can change the definition of our Constitution.

marriage is for no one to redefine because unless you are the original author

 

Just use the term matrimony then, if redefining marriage is somehow improper.

 

That's false, because the Constitution can be added to, by the process of amendment, as spelled out in the Constitution itself. Amendments can alter the force of text already in the Constitution. I said that already.

I don't believe that General Trek is the forum for this particular cluster of topics. I've stated my position, and I'm sticking to it. If you'd like to create a thread in a more appropriate forum of the board, perhaps I'll have something to add there. For now in this thread, though, I'm done.

 

I don't understand why you can't change the definition of marriage.

In case people don't pay attention to language, it's forever evolving. Words change meanings all the time. Usage, syntax, definitions, it's not literally written in stone. This is why nobody talks like Shakespeare unless they're acting in one of his plays or they're a super pretentious neckbeard.

Hey, you want to know what language didn't even exist back then?

edit: My bad, I didn't realize you said CE. I assumed you'd said BC because I'm still half asleep and not really paying attention to things. But marriage predates recorded history. It was not invented in the thirteenth century. And a tidbit in case you don't want to click the link:

And even if that weren't relevant, people back then also believed that the sun rode across the sky on a chariot, so I think we can pretty much assume that ancient people weren't infallible.

 

Really? Please quote the original document that set down that definition. I've always wanted to read it, but unfortunately, my library doesn't seem to have a copy.

Would a copy of that original defining document be stored in the Enterprise's memory banks?