You tell me.
Yeah, this seems like a pretty clear distinction to me, too. “Congratulations on your marriage” is apparently not a message the baker objects to, since they’ll sell cakes with that message to plenty of people, so if a gay couple wants that cake, they have to provide it. But “support gay marriage” is not a message they support, on a cake that anyone buys. So they’re free to refuse to make that cake for anyone.
And of course, we’re free to choose to buy our cakes (even non-message cakes) elsewhere in response to their decision. But that’s separate from the legal question.
EDIT:
Actually, to the extent that the Bible says anything about slavery, it’s accepting of it, even urging slaves to be content with their lot. You can argue that those parts of the Bible aren’t actually the Word of God, but then, you can argue the same thing about the parts concerning homosexuality.
And in a world screaming “Why don’t moderate Muslims condemn the actions of the extremists?”, all day, every day, one has to wonder why you never hear mainstream Christians calling out this discrimination?
Why don’t we hear them pointing out that the ‘word of God’ specifies very clearly, “Judgement is mine!” Aren’t Christians supposed to focus on their own sins, not judging those who sin differently from them?
The key distinction here - and a lot of people lose sight of this in these discussions - is that not all classes of people are protected by these various anti-discrimination laws. Gays are frequently a protected class, and are in the case at hand. But Nazis are not.
IMO (and as mentioned in the OP) the judges seem to have made a leap in interpreting discrimination against a pro-gay message as discrimination against gay people. But once you make that leap, then the rest follows. But the rest does not follow in the case of Nazis. Because even if you interpret refusal to make a Nazi-themed cake as discrimination against Nazi people, that’s generally not banned anywhere.
So even if you can “absolutely” refuse the Nazi-themed wedding, it wouldn’t follow that you could refuse the pro-gay message, which depends on another issue.
Very important point. Messages aren’t a protected class. The customers don’t have to be gay, and what if gay customers wanted to buy a Nazi cake?
Merchants shouldn’t be able to discriminate in who they sell to, they should be able to discriminate in what they sell. But even then it’s a bit tricky, in this case it looks too close to the line of requiring an artist to produce any image or other work a customer wants. I won’t say it’s all the way to that point, but close enough to be worrisome. There needs to be a line somewhere when the government can compel businesses to act and I’d rather the line wasn’t drawn overly fine.
Seems that this could be used to require a painter to paint paintings that he’s been asked to paint (on commission,) even if he disagrees with the message of the painting. In other words, can’t turn down commissions.
Secular people founded communist Russia sent tens of millions of people to the gulag. So clearly secular people should be disqualified from every forcing other people to do things against their will again. Alternatively, we should decide cases on their own merit and not use arguments made decades or centuries by people with the same label to decide who gets to have an opinion.
These people are not going to gay people’s houses and knocking the cake out of their mouths. They are refusing to do something they consider sinful. That is exactly what you say they should be doing.
Cake is not a typo.
All this talk of legal abstracts is perfectly fine, but what about the practical aspects?
Why would you commission a cake from someone that hates you? There are tons of ways of screwing up a cake that aren’t legally actionable (ooops, I left out the eggs! Sorry!). It’s what I’d probably do if Adolf and Eva insisted I make them a Nazi cake. What can they do? Tell all their Nazi friends not to use my business? Works for me!
Yes, it sucks if there is only one bakery in all of the town. I don’t know what the answer to that is.
Its an easy leap. Since most or all Nazis are white, a refusal to bake a pro-nazi cake hurts a particular racial group the most. Race is a protected class so jewish bakers must bake the cakes.
That is definitely not an easy leap for non-nazi judges.
This is the key point for me. Refuse to sell any cake for a gay wedding because gay= wrong. Refuse to include a message or image you find offensive = acceptable.
And what sin is that considering the bakers themselves are not the ones committing homosexual acts? Please point to Book, Chapter and Verse.
Note: this is not necessarily directed at Puddleglum but rather the Bakers.
AIUI, it is wrong to endorse/promote something wrong, not just merely participating in the wrong.
You’re correct that there’s no Scripture verse that says “you shall not make pro-gay icing messages on cakes,” but the principle is akin to Muslims not being willing to participate in a pro-pork commercial ad.
Additionally, what does it matter? Even if the Bible said that one could not make pro-gay cakes, wouldn’t the law still rule against Christians anyway?
If you don’t want to make a cake, don’t make a cake. Sometimes it’s that simple.
Why does this ‘participating in a wrong’ not come into play when selling guns? And what about all the times they unknowingly sell to gays? Are they getting demerit points for that too? Why do only cake sellers have this virtue? Not realtors, or grocers? Are they are going to hell for selling to same sex couples?
The whole business of ‘its against our beliefs’ doesn’t pass the sniff test, in my opinion. People should not be free to discriminate because of their own arcane interpretation of Christianity.
Contrary to liberal propaganda, guns can be used for LOTS of things, many of them good and morally upright.
As for “discrimination,” Jesus said plenty of things that would cause collective apoplexy in liberals today.
“But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Matthew 3:7)
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” (Matthew 23:27)
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Look, it’s great that you support gay rights, but could you possibly do it without maligning an entire class of people? Lots and lots of Christians are vocal supporters of gay rights. Millions of them. And the only reason you haven’t heard of them is because you’re not listening.
The pertinent point, as others have made, seems to be that messages are not people at all, let alone a protected class.
So, my first reaction is: why on earth should anyone be barred from running a business in which they wont sell any range of products that choose, including or excluding any range of (say) political or social messages that they choose, provided they treat all customers equally?
However, if this logic holds up, custom wedding cakes certainly seem to require some fine distinctions!
My initial feeling is that refusing to decorate a cake with an abstract broad pro-gay-marriage political statement should be within the rights of the cakemaker, along with refusing to paint swastikas, “God is Dead”, “Trump is a Dick”, or anything else that the shopkeeper might object to, even if the objection is based on bigotry.
However, if the shop is in the routine business of customizing wedding cakes by putting names on them, or those little miniature figures, then it should certainly not be legal for the cakemaker to refuse to put “Peter and Frank” or two male figures on the cake.
So I now question whether such a fine distinction really makes sense – is it a meaningful distinction that the cakemaker cannot refuse to decorate this cake in fashion consistent with celebrating this particular couple’s gay marriage; but he can refuse to decorate it with a broader political statement celebrating all gay marriage?
Sorry, why should I, as a liberal, care one way or the other about these passages?