I agree with you that @Velocity’s argument doesn’t bolster his case. And thanks for your clear pithy explanation in the paragraph I didn’t quote. That totally nails the nub of the whole thread.
But I believe his argument does give us an insight into his mindset. Which IMO amounts to something about like this:
Everyone is a cafeteria follower of the law. And justifies that to themselves so they believe they are OK, not evil, by cafeteria-ing. That’s just human nature. Many (every?) religious person is also a cafeteria follower of their faith’s tenets. And justifies that to themselves so they believe they are OK, not evil, by cafeteria-ing. That’s also just human nature.
Because they are able to justify to themselves that they are OK with following bigoted tenets, they themselves aren’t the bigot; the tenet is. That means they lack the philosophical equivalent of the legal idea of mens rea for their bad acts. So it’s OK for them to do it. It’s not their fault. It’s only a bad act if they did it deliberately with no extenuating causes. Faith is an unassailable extenuating cause.
And escaping fault for their bad acts is the goal of the strawman the OP had set up. QED.
On the other hand, there are still people alive today who had a hand in translating the Bible.
And some people who baldly state “The Bible says ______” don’t seem to understand is that what they’re really seeing is what some translator says the Bible says.
Very Long Post warning. This has been buzzing around in my head and I’m going to get it out. Or at least whatever of it will go into at least semicoherent form.
That is the underlying and the main problem.
Nearly every human being believes, strongly and sincerely, that there are some things that are Right and some things that are Just Wrong.
The problem of human society is that we don’t agree as to which behaviors are in which category.
There are some bits of agreement, of course. Every human society has rules about sex. They’re not all the same rules; but there will be rules. Every human society has rules about killing other humans. They’re not all the same rules; but there will be rules. Every human society has rules about who is and who isn’t entitled to take/keep/use various things. They’re not all the same rules; but there will be rules. Because otherwise it’s next to impossible for us to live with each other.
It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with religion, though religious people will put it in a religious format. The sincerity and depth of the belief has nothing to do with whether the belief’s in a religious format or not. I have a deep and sincere belief that it’s wrong to torture cats. I don’t think God said so. If in fact an omnipotent creator God exists, then that God created and continues to sustain a universe in which torturing cats can happen, has happened, and continues to happen; and so probably thinks it’s all right. I still sincerely believe that it’s wrong.
The problem isn’t a problem of religion, except to the extent that people use religion as an excuse for it. The problem is that, as Thudlow_Boink says, there are serious and sincere disagreements over what’s ethical behavior – but people who hold those disagreements have to live together, on the same planet, in the same country, in the same towns, often in the same families and households.
Trying to make everybody believe the same thing doesn’t work. Religions/belief systems schism, attempts at forcing one religion/system lead to wars, everybody on all sides winds up worse off – and agreement still doesn’t occur.
Attempting to ignore the whole thing wouldn’t work – because some people’s sincere beliefs include the belief that they have to make other people violate their own sincere beliefs; and also because some people’s sincere beliefs do direct and obvious damage to others.
So how do we get out of this one and survive as a species?
I think maybe there’s something of an out in this direction:
Nearly every human being also believes that there are some things in neither category, that are OK either to do or not to do.
And many people put some of the things others think are Utterly Wrong or The Only Right Way into that category.
Some people even think some things that are Utterly Wrong or The Only Right Way for themselves are OK Either Way for other people. Example: strictly observant Jews and turning on lights on the Sabbath.
If people whose religious or other beliefs (doesn’t matter whether they’re religious or not) say that homosexual behavior is Just Wrong can be gotten to put that into the category of Just Wrong for Us, OK Either Way for Others: that gets the problem down to manageable levels for that particular behavior. And I note that some (though not all) religious Christians are able to pull this trick for abortion; and nearly everybody who keeps Sabbath seems to be able, these days, to pull it off for breaking the Sabbath. The bakery may itself close on the Sabbath; but I never heard of one refusing to sell to somebody who intends to eat the baked goods at, say, a business meeting on the Sabbath.
Religions will schism, of course, as some members of any particular religion who strongly and sincerely believe both in their right to have (or just accept) homosexual behavior and in other tenets of the particular religion split off. But religions do schism; if there’s no difference that seems obvious to most, some members will find something to split over anyway.
That really leaves us with the question of things that do obvious harm to those who believe differently. And the problem there, of course, is that not everyone agrees on what’s ‘obvious harm’. I agree that 13 year olds can’t meaningfully consent to sex, let alone to marriage; but the exact age of consent by its essence has to be arbitrary. However, the society as a whole has to come to some conclusion there; if there’s more than a few dozen people it doesn’t work to go with ‘this particular 15 year old is an adult, that particular 18 year old isn’t yet, and this particular combination of mis-matched ages and a teenaged bride is really skeevy, but that one is Ariel and Will Durant.’
– to try to bring this whole long shebang back to the OP: none of this is dependent on whether the reason for the sincere belief is religious.
How would they know about adulteration? I can imagine if someone came to them to bake a cake with a man and a woman in some sort of sexual position, or if the customer told the baker that this was a cake to celebrate his cheating anniversary that they would also have a problem with that, ya think?
If it’s so important to the baker, he or she could at least ask to make sure the soon-to-be married couple are living separately and have not been previously married. Seems like the minimum the baker could do to satisfy a vengeful God who hates gay people.
For a baker who takes a case all the way to the Supreme Court? Maybe ask the couple to swear or affirm that they have not engaged in pre-marital sex.
Is that what happened with the gay couple, the baker quizzed him/her until he found they were gay? Or did the couple offer up in formation, or did the baker actually see or hear them say that there needed to be two grooms or two brides, atop the cake.
In any event, the baker shouldn’t need to moonlight as a PI to figure things out (vengeful god and all that) My point is that if it isn’t front and center, they will not know.
But to highlight it, would or would not the baker have a problem selling a cake if they were told that this cake was for adultery.
I have no idea if the baker would make a cake “for adultery”, whatever that means. I’m pretty sure, but I don’t know, that the baker would have no problem selling cakes to people who have been divorced (Jesus actually had something to say about that, but not about gay people) or who have had pre-marital sex (fornicators!). I mean, if you’re making wedding cakes for anyone over 25 or 30, you can be pretty sure they’ve either fornicated or have been divorced, right?
As to the two grooms thing, I guess you don’t know this, but the cake design was a standard one, not anything specific to gay people or gay marriage. It just happened to be for a gay wedding. There was no design issue, it was the event that was the problem. Anyway, that specific case seems off-topic to this thread and was done to death in other threads anyway.
As to this part:
I agree! As long as the design isn’t offensive to the baker (I won’t make rainbow cakes or Nazi cakes for anyone!), they shouldn’t care what it’s used for.
I agree with you. I was just disagreeing with the hyperbolic statements that were being thrown around about your extrapolation about
" I find it unlikely the baker would give a crap about making a cake for people who had sex outside of marriage, or people who were divorced and are getting remarried, or people who wore clothing with mixed fabrics, etc."
It seems like it would have come out if the baker refused to make cakes for people getting married over the age of thirty.
This is the point of this thread – the baker, or other religious person, is using religion to justify bigotry. If that person ignores other parts of his or her religion (such as Jesus’s words against divorce, proscriptions against fornication, etc.), then it’s clear that it’s the bigotry that’s taking priority.
I heard what you were arguing. I just think that you saying you know the cause is wrong. You simply do not have the information to say that you know. For the record, neither do I.
We’re not talking about a specific case in this thread. It’s a general case about people who claim their bigotry is due to their religion. I’m saying that people choose their bigotry first, and then find the religious justification, and that’s evidenced by divorced people and fornicators having no problems getting served in restaurants, getting cakes for events like their marriages, moving wherever they want, and so on and so forth.
If there were lots of bigotry against fornicators, divorcees, people who work on the Sabbath, people who take the Lord’s name in vain, and so on, maybe you’d have a point.
The Bible doesn’t say anything about cakes. It doesn’t say it’s wrong to sell cakes to certain people. The idea that refusing to sell cakes to any particular group is about anything other than bigotry is not credible. Maybe a baker doesn’t want to write certain messages or decorations they disagree with, and maybe that’s not based on bigotry. But just selling a regular cake to some, but not others? Very clear cut bigotry.
And what about making a custom wedding cake to order? I think that counts as an expression of support or celebration. Maybe we should make a separate topic, or I’m sure one already exists from the aftermath of Masterpiece Cake Shop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
I disagree with this. I think a baker should be allowed to not make White Power, Nazi, Rainbow, BLM, or any specific design that the baker doesn’t want to, as long as the baker refuses to make it for anyone.