May the state prohibit a baker from refusing to make a cake for an interracial wedding if her religious beliefs are incompatible with interracial marriage? If so, how is that distinguishable from a same-sex wedding with regard to the First Amendment?
No analogy is perfect. If there’s a continuum where on one side is writing poems, and on the other side is taking a pre-written poem and printing it out, then somewhere in between them you have things like:
-I have some rough ideas for a poem, but want a professional poet to help flesh them out
-I have a poem written, but want a professional graphic designer to help me choose the art and layout and other visual artistic elements which will best enhance and enforce the message of the poem
etc.
Even if we all agree that writing a poem is art and printing a poem is not art, there’s no reason to think that everyone will agree exactly where the line needs to be drawn between them.
(Although, again, my instinct is to say that the court drew the line in the wrong place in this particular case.)
Yeah, but you know how you offered this one without reading the thread first? Analogies very like this one have been discussed, and pretty well refuted, over the pages that you didn’t read. It may be worth reading the previous discussion around it before asking everyone to rehash it.
The Constitution does not concern itself with your religious beliefs, it merely protects your right to those beliefs and practices. Claiming God made me do it, or God prevented me from doing it, is going to be really hard to prove. * Miracle on 34th Street* hard to prove.
If it was up to God to decide, I’m pretty sure he’d be all for it provided it was red velvet cake with sour cherry frosting. Don’t fucking try sneaking devils food past him.
You keep going back to this.
Do you realize that the judge in this case decided the case on Free Speech grounds and NOT Free Exercise grounds right?
Yes the baker has religious reasons but the argument was a free speech one.
It’s more like:
You have written a poem about weddings. You will print that poem to anyone for a fee. I want you to print me a copy of that poem to use in my gay wedding. You refuse, based on you not wanting to use your artistic expression for something you disapprove of.
There was nothing new or unique being asked for in this cake. There was no fleshing out. There was not asking the baker to help with layout or other artistic elements.
Morgenstern,
I’m a little surprised at this from you.
I had the impression, that you were . . . well,
sort of a class act.
Miller. Steady on.
Your phrase of the day: "Unless there exists a compelling government interest in . . . "
Study it. Learn it.
I feel it needs to be reiterated again, while the judge did speak of things like art and creativity, the details of the case being tried make it clear that he was NOT talking about art or creativity from the standpoint of art and creativity. He was talking about the mechanical process of baking a cake according to a recipe and applying frosting to it according to the plan from the standard pre-existent cake book. Creation, not creativity.
The ruling was written to apply to all wedding cakes, regardless of design, presumably because the judge wanted to eliminate the possibility of christians having to sell things to gay people as much as he possibly could. He quite explicitly stated that wedding cakes are not speech because of their content or design, but rather simply because they are wedding cakes, because wedding cakes are inherently speech because wedding cakes are sacred. Or something like that.
So the argument is a free speech one that explicitly doesn’t concern itself with either the content of the speech or the reasons for the speech - the medium is the speech here, not the message. Wedding cakes can be denied to anyone, for any reason, because speech, because sacred. That’s the argument.
Unless the cake is pre-made and in a display case, at which point it magically stops being speech, because the judge has a personal vendetta against his argument making logical sense. Or because he thinks a bigoted argument isn’t complete without “separate but equal”.
Allright, nobody is making anyone do anything, Morgenstern.
“Free exercise of religion” is your phrase of the day. Study it. Learn it.
Sure! And does the phrase “sexual orientation ain’t in there” have any meaning, "ElvisL1ves?
Euphrosyne-
You’re new here, relatively, so I’ll let this slide.
Here at the SDMB we pride ourselves with being able to debate and discuss without resorting to ad hominems and insults. Please try not to do so in the future.
If you feel you must insult another poster - or use strong language - please do so in our BBQ Pit forum. The rules are looser there - though there are still some - and you should be able to work it out of your system.
". . . unless the government has a compelling interest in . . . " is your phrase of the week, raventhief.
Study it. Learn it.
My take on this case is that the moral outrage against the baker is fully justified, but the legal outrage against her is not. Fact is, that at least for today, in Bakersfield, people who bake wedding cakes can be bigots.
- No. Not baking. I’m a cake baker and a cake decorator (on the side, not in a shop). Decorating.
Yes. I believe a case can be made that it does trigger first amendment protections. Please read what I wrote today at 11:33 AM.
- First, let not First Amendment Protections be infringed. The rest is commentary.
The compelling interest here is preventing discrimination against vulnerable minorities.
This phrase is indeed key. There is a compelling government interest in being able to enforce antidiscrimination laws in a robust manner. The proposal–that a businessperson may not be compelled to engage in speech in a transaction if she wants to discriminate against the customer–strikes at the heart of this compelling government interest.
Nobody thus far–not the judge, not you, not any other poster–has proposed a clear and well-founded legal standard by which the proposal may continue without gutting antidiscrimination laws. Failing such a principle, this proposal has got to fail.
This case is NOT about religion. It’s about free speech.
Specifically, wedding cakes are inherently speech. A wedding cake that is an undecorated sheet cake from a mix with no frosting or decoration at all and which is sold by an atheist would be considered fully protected speech according to the judge’s argument. Religion has nothing to do with it. Decoration has nothing to do with it. Creativity has nothing to do with it.
Per the judge: All wedding cakes* are protected speech, because he says so, QED. That’s the whole argument, in all its majesty.
*Except ones in display cases, because tires. His logic really is something else.
OK.
I think we’ve moved into the areas of theory and going forward. I know I have.