Why would a hate speech exception be put into 1A? Is this something that you think is likely?
Would you consider the statement, “There is fundamental difference between a white man and a black man, and that is why they should not learn together, eat together, travel together, or live together.” to be hate speech?
I actually find this line of thinking abhorrent. Essentially what you’re saying is that if you disagree with one aspect of a person or group, you should work toward turning them into a persecuted minority. It’s saying that if you don’t like the sound of churchbells on Sunday morning or the Adhan on Friday evening, your recourse should be to turn Christians and Muslims into a non-protected class.
Personally, I think that a baker that doesn’t want to bake a cake for a ‘mixed-race’ marriage, should be allowed not to bake the cake. If she has some sort of moral reasoning for not wanting to support such an event, why shouldn’t she be able to not support it? If the local DAR wants to have a cake to celebrate Bunker Hill and I think that the American Revolution was a horrible outrage, I should be able to say ‘Take your business elsewhere.’ I look at it the same way I look at conscientious objectors. If you run a widget company and the government wants to buy widgets to bomb Oompa-Loompas and you think that’s a travesty, you should have a free-speech right to say, ‘Go get your widgets elsewhere! My widgets are for making the world a peaceful place, not bombing short, orange people!’
I always find it difficult when you’re using the violence of the government to compel people to do things against their moral objections - regardless of whether their moral objections line up with mine or not. I’m not saying that there are no cases where that intervention is needed, but I require extremely strong reasons for such an intervention. I don’t see strong enough reasons in regards to baking wedding cakes. If you’re going to use the government to destroy someone’s life due to their morality, you’d better be damn sure that you’re unequivocally right to do so. You might be that sure, I’m not.
Americans are forced to tolerate it. The think I find funny is how those who preach tolerances, are so intolerant of those who disagree with them. Tolerance works both ways.
The old “Yur a bigot 'cause you don’t tolerate intolerance” bit-what a surprise.
AKA “Bigotry is a sincerely held belief system, and you’re intolerant of it! You’re the real bigots!”
It’s related to how people who keep wanting to discuss our continuing problem with racism are the real racists for not understanding we’re already past it.
So you want to return to the good ol’ days when blacks needed The Negro Motorist Green Book - Wikipedia
The bolded sentence is the most glaringly obvious mis-step in your post: you appear to think that the law in question is about baking a cake; it isn’t.
If this holds, then this baker can discriminate against any gay couple in any way he wants with respect to his business. He could refuse to serve them, let them use the restroom or even come into his store. And he wouldn’t be the only one who could do this. EVERYONE could refuse to do anything at all for “religious reasons”. A black guy wants to buy a new car? Sorry, my religion forbids me from selling to black people. A white guy wants to buy a hammock? Sorry my religion forbids me from having anything to do with white people. Or handicapped people (“I mean, they were clearly rejected by god, right?”).
Religion cannot be a trump card that everything else must be subservient to.
Not at all, as said above, I draw the line at a person vs an event. If you’re refusing service because of who they are, that’s a good reason to compel them to provide service. If you’re refusing service to a specific happening, then that doesn’t cross the line for me. I think that you should not be able to refuse service to Donald Trump. I do think you should be able to refuse to cater a MAGA rally. They are different things completely.
There have been worse “essentially what you’re saying” summaries before, but this one is up there. That is absolutely nothing like I am saying. If you find it abhorrent, then you need to look into yourself, and determine why you decided to think these things.
How you turn the idea that people should be treated equally into whatever it is with your bells is not just a stretch, but there is a singularity in there somewhere as well.
Okay, so you support all forms of discrimination, not just same sex marriages. Good to know.
I don’t know whether or not a celebration of our american revolution would be protected, I doubt it, but if you were discriminating against them because they are women, (you would make a similar cake for the SARs), that would not be.
That’s a whole different thing. The govt is not a protected class.
In the same breath, you try to claim that being discriminated against and denied service is no big deal, but you also talk about having someone’s life destroyed because they were asked to make the same cake that they would make for anyone else.
How does that work? If a person wants a car, then selling them that car is an event. Them driving away in their brand new car is an event. If you sell a car to a black person, then you are supporting black people’s right to travel, aren’t you? What if you don’t support that?
Well, sure, if you refuse to make wedding cakes, then no one will compel you to make wedding cakes. If you make wedding cakes, but don’t make them for same sex marriages, then it is who they are that is causing you to refuse the service, not what they are going to do with it.
Yes you can. What protected class does he fall into?
Cater, as in go to, set up, attend, and break down? Or cater as in give them a big box of food for them to set up?
The first I would agree with, the second I would not.
I think it is highly likely, in a country where people are saying that hate speech equals violence. This is becoming more prevalent and I definitely see the possibility of it being regulated at such.
Yes I would.
Your obsession with protected class is strange to me. A protected class is simply whatever the government says it is. If they vote tomorrow to make sexual orientation non-protected, then it is. I don’t think that such a vote would suddenly change the morality of an action. I don’t know that I want to argue about the legal implications of something since I’m not an expert. One assumes that the Supreme Court is though and they said that not baking a cake isn’t discriminatory in this particular case. Their decision though has no bearing on the morality of the action.
I don’t support discrimination. I support the right of an individual to refuse to implicitly endorse an event that contradicts their moral code. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable stance to take.
In your last sentence, you are wrong though. The baker is not being ‘asked’ to bake a cake. He’s being ‘compelled’ to bake a cake via the implicit and one presumes later explicit threat of violence from the government. One assumes that if he refuses, he will have some property confiscated and if he persists in his stance, he will be fined and eventually imprisoned or bankrupted or even imprisoned if he goes on with his baking and refusals long enough. I have no problem with the government saying ‘Please bake this cake, it’s the right thing to do.’ If that’s what this lawsuit is about. then we’re on the same side. It’s completely reasonable for the government to ask him to bake cakes for same-sex marriages. I’m all on board. I personally think that he should bake the cake. I’d ask him to do so myself. Consider this a public request to the baker to please bake that cake. “It only makes you look bad to refuse and one supposes they are nice people that would really enjoy your cake.” My problem is when it turns to compulsion.
What if Donald Trump wants to hire me to cater a MAGA rally? :dubious:
OR: MY hypothetical religion doesn’t draw a distinction between the person and the event; what now?
Again, you seem to be thinking that the law in question AND the decision regarding this case will only affect this baker and this one cake being baked or not; that’s wrong.
Aye; it’s hateful even if you say it nicely.
I would say there needs to be a fundamental difference in the events that you are supporting. For instance, I would claim that there is a fundamental difference between a Hillary Clinton rally and a Donald Trump rally. Is there a fundamental difference between selling a white person a donut and a black person a donut? I’m not sure there is. I do think that there is a fundamental difference between a same-sex marriage and an opposite-sex marriage. You may not, but I do.
Incorrect. It’s the event that he’s refusing to serve, not the individuals. If they wanted to buy a cookie, presumably he would sell them a cookie. If they wanted to buy a cake for one of their birthdays, presumably he would do so. He’s not saying, ‘I don’t serve same-sex couples.’ He’s saying, “I don’t cater same-sex weddings.” There’s a difference.
I think that in both cases, it constitutes an implicit endorsement. If you go to the MAGA rally and see that there are big trays of Chik Fil A there, I think that people could construe that Chik Fil A is supporting the rally. Regardless though, if you think that something that people are doing is horrible, you should have a right to not support them in their doings. If people are holding a burning of Jewish books, I should be able to say, “You’re not buying the matches at my store.”
If Donald Trump wants to hire me to cater a MAGA rally, I would say that I have a right to refuse.
If a hypothetical religion bans all contact with infidels, then for me, that constitutes a strong enough reason to compel them to engage in transactions.
Of course. Asswipe is not a protected class.
Earlier you agreed with the other misguided posters here when you said “there is a difference between tolerance and support”. Sometimes there is and sometimes there isn’t, and your question here is a perfect example of failure to understand the distinctions around when such differences exist and when they do not.
I’m not a big fan of religious institutions but I recognize and support their right to hold and practice whatever beliefs they want, crazy though they may be. What a particular church or religion elects to do has absolutely nothing to do with the fundamentally important issue here, which was well stated by the Supreme Court of Canada nearly 20 years ago in a landmark ruling that paved the way for the liberalization of marriage laws and spousal rights. By way of background, it involved the escalation of a case brought by a same-sex couple (M v H, 1999) living common law, when they were denied their rights as spouses under the Section 29 definition of a “spouse” in the Ontario Family Law Act (FLA), which they alleged was in violation of section 15(1) of the Constitution which guarantees that every individual is equal under the law and “and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability”.
They won their case at the Ontario Superior Court, at which point the predictable happened. The province at the time was being run by a right-wing bigoted troglodyte, and his government appealed the decision to the Ontario Court of Appeals, which upheld it, and then to the Supreme Court of Canada, which also upheld it, with these words:
… the nature of the interest protected by s. 29 of the FLA is fundamental. The exclusion of same-sex partners from the benefits of s. 29 promotes the view that M., and individuals in same-sex relationships generally, are less worthy of recognition and protection. It implies that they are judged to be incapable of forming intimate relationships of economic interdependence as compared to opposite-sex couples, without regard to their actual circumstances. Such exclusion perpetuates the disadvantages suffered by individuals in same‑sex relationships and contributes to the erasure of their existence.
It was not a ruling about SSM as such, though it paved the way for it. It was a far-sighted ruling ahead of most countries, an assertion that the recognition of a spousal relationship is a fundamental social institution, that such recognition regardless of gender provides not only mundane financial advantages but a basic inclusiveness in society, without which such a couple is relegated to the status of rejection as second-class citizens not worthy of the same rights as everyone else. The analogy with racism is palpable.
And that’s why refusing to do something trivial like wearing the same team jersey as everyone else is an overt act of bigotry. No one much cares what churches do and no one is going to dictate their religious practices. The important aspect here is our secular laws, civil rights, and the recognition of appropriate spousal rights whether through civil marriages or some other means.
Some people are, I suppose. Do you really think that enough are to change a constitutional amendment? I really think that 2A has less firm support than 1A. Shooting people actually is violence.
Then saying that there is a fundamental difference between hetero marriages and SS marriages, and that the should be treated differently would also be, would it not?
There you go again, imputing things to me that make no sense. I have no obsession with protected classes, other than that they do exist and are the law. I mentioned them, is all, that’s not an obsession.
You do realize that SCOTUS did not make the decision that you seem to think that they made. They did not say that the baker didn’t have to make a cake for a SSM, only that the decision of the lower courts did not give the baker enough due process.
And they most certainly did not say that refusing to make the cake was not discriminatory, the very definition of discrimination is that you treat some people differently than other. The most you can say is that they decided that this case of discrimination was not illegal.
You don’t support discrimination, you support people having the right to discriminate. There is a distinction there, but it’s not as great as you may like.
I was not wrong. I did use the word “ask”, and you made an entire paragraph treatise on the word while avoiding my point that you consider serving your customers to be a much greater imposition than being refused service. Yes, he is being asked, very nicely. He has a choice. He can refuse, and go to court over it. He can refuse and close up shop. He can refuse and fight for his right to be a bigot all he wants.
What is not being asked is whether the person being refused service would like to be discriminated against today.
There are those who have just as strong a feeling that selling a black person a donut is fundamentally different than selling a white person one as you feel there is between a couple that is of opposite sex, and couple that is of the same sex. Since they are just as admamant as you are that there are fundamental differences between the customers, they can use your exact reasoning to discriminate against people based on their race.
It is the individuals, as he would provide the same service to the same event if the individuals were different. The difference is only that he incorrectly thinks that by making that distinction, he is not viewed as a bigot. People have been coming up with semantic reasons and excuses for discrimination since we created language. He may be fooling himself. He may be fooling other bigots into thinking that people don’t see them for what they are, but he’s not fooling anyone else.
Really? You think that selling something to a MAGA rally is an endorsement of it? If I drive a ford to a MAGA rally, is ford endorsing it? If I pick up some Arby’s on the way, and eat that while at the rally, you would think that Arby’s is endorsing it? If I drink out of a Solo cup, do you think that the Solo Cup Company is endorsing it?
If there were big trays of Chik Fil A, and they said, “Provided for free because Chik Fil A supports MAGA”, then you can reasonably assume that they endorse it. Outside of that, it’s just a transaction.
Probably, like I said, trump is not a protected class.
Now, that’s an odd stance. You would compel private individuals to engage in transactions if their religion bans contact with infidels? That’s some serious govt over reach right there. I would certainly not do anything like that.
IMO this a very good post, wolfpup.