Anti-discrimination laws cover both selling goods, and providing services. If your business is selling your skills as a painter, you have to offer them to everybody.
You know what else is unelected and unaccountable?
The free market.
This is just completely false, and I challenge you to support it at all.
It’s true, I’ve never been in a position where I had to choose between my career, and discriminating against someone because of an inborn trait.
There’s a reason for that.
And this is why the free market doesn’t work to address discrimination in a nutshell.
Disrupting religious ceremonies (aside from, say, ritual murder) is obviously morally wrong, and I’m pretty confident that only a tiny minority of pro-LGBT activists would do this (in fact, I’m not even aware of any such incidents – do you have examples?).
But that still doesn’t justify any bigoted beliefs. Again, if you think the law should not allow gay couples to marry, then that belief is on you; and if you advocate and vote in such a manner, then you are advocating and voting for harming people who are doing nothing that deserves such harm, and that can’t be blamed on anyone but you and others who advocate and act for such harm.
I’m specifically looking to avoid having the Supreme Court decide what is and isn’t art. Once the court says, “This cake is art,” it opens the door for them deciding what else is art - or isn’t art. They’ve used that distinction in the past to justify banning unpopular speech, I’d prefer not to start down that road again today.
As for the authority to tell other people if their beliefs are valid or not, try being an atheist in this country for any span of time. You’ll be shocked how many people think they have the authority to tell other people if their beliefs are legitimate. They even hand out special hats for people who are really good at it.
Jesus, chill the fuck out. Nobody’s stopping you from saying anything. Nobody’s stopping this baker from shouting his bigotry from the rooftops - as you might note from the fact that this turd has been in the news incessantly for the last few months, with dozens of stooges on TV mouthing support for his position. You can say whatever you want, but if you’re engaged in commercial activity, you have to abide by commercial laws - and one of those laws is you don’t get to discriminate against people because of certain characteristics. If you can’t abide by that restriction, you can protect yourself by not entering into that profession.
Oh, true that. It was true when conservative Christians pushed legislation to ban gays from teaching in public schools. It was true when conservative Christians wrote laws preventing gays from adopting. It was true when conservative Christians passed ban after ban on gay marriage, when it was already illegal at the federal level, to send a message to people like me, through the apparatus of the state, that we aren’t wanted. Queer identity in general has been shaped in large part by decades of overwhelming and incessant hostility from the Christian right. They shoveled all this bullshit hate legislation at us for decades, and now they’re hollering over a law that says they have to bake fucking cake. This is why I have so little patience for people on the right complaining about “identity politics.” Conservatives never had a problem with identity politics until they started losing, now they want to pretend like it’s something the left invented just to be a dick to them.
I think you would need to say something along the lines of “people must provide a service to people who have certain characteristics and it’s okay to not provide service to all others for whatever reason.” That seems to be what you’re implying by your emphasis on race, religion, gender, or sexuality.
Or, perhaps you really believe what you originally said (“…you are required to offer it to all members of the public…”) but are uncomfortable saying Marc Jacobs is wrong and the government should compel him to provide service to Melania Trump should she so desire.
You have the right to refuse service except for certain exceptions: Race, religion etc. Sometimes orientation, depending on the jurisdiction. (IIRC)
Marc Jacobs cannot refuse Meliana Trump service because he hates Slovenians. But he can refuse her service if he simply does not want to serve her, as an individual.
I think you’re having trouble following posts with quotes. Miller said
It seems pretty clear that Miller says “you are required to offer it to all members of the public” and I simply provided an example of potential service refusal (I don’t believe Melania Trump has asked him for anything but Marc Jacobs felt the need to be proactive about it). Miller has since backpedalled and said he meant members of the public who have certain characteristics. I have requested clarification from him on what he really means by this.
So in the Colorado baker case, the smart move would be to just say no? Does the service provider need to provide an explanation of refusal that can pass government muster?
So, what you did was take a phrase out of a part of a sentence, and then complain that without the rest of the sentence, that phrase said something else?
If that is what confused you, then you should try reading the sentence in the context it was written, rather than removing it from that context, then pretending that you can’t understand what it means.
Well, yeah, that would be the smart move. That is how apartments and other housing developments have discriminated against blacks for generations, in fact. They simply say “no”, and make up a reason, lie they are already full or busy or whatnot, and then the black person has no grounds upon which to show that they were discriminated against due to their race.
Sometimes, such bigots get caught, as they create a pattern, and sometimes there are even sting operations to show that they tell the white guy that there are free apartments, while denying the black guy.
Point is, if you are a bigot, there are plenty of ways to be a bigot and hide it for the most part. If you are a stupid or proud (or both) bigot, then you are going to make it much more obvious that you are discriminating, and then there may be more severe consequences.
Fortunately, bigots do tend to be pretty stupid, while thinking that they are being clever, so it is actually not that hard to recognize them.
The prudent move for the baker would have been to say something along the lines of “We are too busy to serve you.” Then someone would have to show a pattern of discrimination, which is hard. But the baker was explicit about his motives.
You did remove “regardless of their race, religion, gender, or sexuality.” from the sentence, which alters its meaning, and that seemed to cause you confusion. That means, specifically, that those are things that you may not take into consideration while deciding whether or not you will take their business.
If Miller had said what you think he should have said, he would have been wrong. Your rephrasing is highly inaccurate, and does not reflect either the law as it stands, nor the law as it is wished to be by even the most devout social justice warrior.
If Miller had said, “if you are offering a service to the public, you are required to offer it to all members of the public[.]”, and that was the entirety of the sentence, then you would have a legitimate beef. But he didn’t and you don’t.
I think it’s been adequately demonstrated that whatever “principle” you think you’re advocating for is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of social institutions in a civilized world, just like you’ve redefined being “forced” to do something to mean anything at all that arises from being connected to said institution.
This is just willfully ignoring 90% of the examples I cited which are corporate initiatives that have nothing to do with volunteers, and willfully forgetting your own claims that companies and other institutions have no business engaging in social issues advocacy because that creates terrible problems for employees that don’t agree with them. For instance you said:
Having to answer questions on areas I’m either not interested in or don’t support just creates a distraction, a controversy or unnecessary drama even if it is just to explain that I don’t want to answer political questions. https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21003552&postcount=96
Because I work for that organization. I represent them and they represent me. If they choose to promote some political view that has no relation to what their purpose is, then it causes conflict. https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21010969&postcount=209
According to your bizarre logic, this is creating all sorts of problems:
What is a baseball player supposed to say about the fact that his team marched in the NYC Gay Pride parade to show solidarity with that cause? He might accidentally out himself as a homophobic bigot!
What is a hockey player supposed to say about the fact that he and all his team members were “forced” to wear pink ribbon emblems on their helmets? He might accidentally out himself as a misogynistic bigot!
What is an IBM employee supposed to say about the fact that his company designed a rainbow version of the corporate logo for display at LGBT events as a show of solidarity, and that the company has a perfect score as a gay-friendly employer? He might accidentally out himself as an LGBT bigot!
No, it just makes you someone who refuses to accept or doesn’t understand how the world works. Virtually every major sports team in the civilized world is involved in social issues advocacy of one kind or another, and rightly so, and so are the more forward-thinking major corporations. You just don’t understand it and don’t like it, for whatever reason.
I’m interested in the reason for the phrasing. The phrasing seems to imply there’s a duty for conduct when you have a business (“if you are offering a service to the public, you are required to offer it to all members of the public”). But there really isn’t. You can refuse service to anyone provided they don’t have one of the characteristics (whatever they are).
I think the phrasing is purposeful. It seems more palatable if we say “you’re in business, do your business” rather than “you’re in business, but here are sets of people that have protections and you need to be cognizant of these protections when you’re doing your business.”
You seem to still be misunderstanding here. You may refuse to do business with anyone, provided you are not refusing to do business because of their membership in a protected class.
I can refuse to do business with a black lesbian because she bounced a check on me, but I cannot refuse to do business with her due to the fact that she is black, female, and in some jurisdictions, homosexaul.
You would be allowed to refuse to do business with me because I bounced a check, but you could not refuse to do business with me because I am white, male, and in some jurisdictions, straight.
It’s more like, “You’re in business, do your business, and you may not refuse to do business with people based on these characteristics.”
Okay, I see what your beef is. But I’m not even concerned with that (“things that you may not take into consideration while deciding whether or not you will take their business”).
I’m interested in the artful way people present this (serving the public). It seems to me that it’s often stated in way to obscure the fact that there really are people who must receive special consideration during the decision-making process.
And I’m sorry, you’re just wrong in regards to the parsing of
I don’t know for what reason you would be under that mistaken impression. It is not that there are people that must receive special consideration, in fact, it is the opposite, it is that you may not consider that there are groups of people who must receive special consideration when you decide to decline their business.
That’s odd, as I am not the one making that claim. I am specifically saying that they are different, with different meanings. It was you that took the first part of the sentence out of context, and made the claim that taking it out of context didn’t change the meaning who would be thinking that they are the same.
Really? You think that there’s linguistic “art” happening here to perpetrate some sort of deception?
The purpose of these legal distinctions is to help promote social equality by protecting traditional targets of chronic unfair discrimination. Do you feel that protected groups shouldn’t exist in law? Personally, I feel that it would be nice if we lived in a world where protected groups didn’t need to exist in law. But we don’t. We live in a world where there has been chronic bigotry and discrimination directed at certain specific groups for a very long time, and so they get specific protections to try to achieve a more equitable balance of rights for the greater good of everyone. Perhaps you see this as a problem. Most of us don’t.
If there’s any “art” going on here, it’s some of the amazing arguments that are crawling out of the woodwork to try to justify why businesses should be allowed to refuse service to blacks or gays, or why sports teams and corporations shouldn’t get involved in promoting social causes and human rights issues.
