No, that’s not the tricky part at all. If you choose to run a business, you cannot discriminate against a protected class. The law is clear that if you are willing to make wedding cakes for straight couples, you must make equivalent wedding cakes for gay couples. If you are in the business of putting names and model figures on wedding cakes, it’s quite obviously discriminating against a protected class to refuse to do the exact same thing for same-sex couples, solely because they are homosexual.
The tricky part lies in the notion of decorating a cake with other content such as broader political statements. Certainly, a cake-maker can have a blanket policy to reject anything construed as political. But suppose a cake-maker will only make “political” cakes with a conservative bent, but will sell them to anyone. Is that still discriminating against a protected class?
It’s hard to see a bright line here. Suppose I set up a business to sell tee-shirts with conservative Christian political slogans. Clearly it’s ridiculous to suggest that I cannot do this, or that I am obliged also to sell tee-shirts with liberal political slogans.
Yeah, just like we were infringing the “right” of slave owners to treat a class of people as sub-human when we told them they couldn’t keep slaves any more. And that is an entirely apt analogy. Flyer is entirely at liberty to continue to exercise his constitutional right to be a homophobic bigot. But society (and the US constitution) say that he can’t exercise his bigotry to discriminate against the people he hates in any public office or under certain circumstances when running a business.
Alright violate pit rules in this thread and see how long the moderators acting for the administrators are obligated to allow you to post. You will see that you are NOT entitled to a specific platform, regardless of your willingness to pay, for your content.
Sure you have freedom of speech with your lips. And you have freedom of press with your press. You don’t have the right to compel others to participate in your freedom of expressions. If I’m an Islamic printer should I be compelled to print Satanic, Christian, or Jewish literature? If I’m a left wing local newspaper should I be compelled to publish pro-life editorials?
Well, the 1950s, for starters. Gay people were fully tolerated, as long as they kept their flambulous struttery in Soho, in the shadows, as long as no one knew about their existence.
Sorry, when did religious conservatives ever try the “live and let live” approach with homosexuals? What I remember is decades of constant political assaults by so-called “Christians” on our rights and our dignity, outrageous scapegoating, and outright lying about our characters and intentions. The religious right never talked about “live and let live” until they were losing, and even then, it’s something that only applies to them. You’re all bent out of shape because some assholes in Ireland have to make a cake. By comparison, the religious right has tried to strip children away from their gay parents, tried to force school districts to fire gay teachers, argued for the dishonorable discharge of gay soldiers, mocked the integrity and sincerity of our intimate relationships, supported the torture of gay youths, and routinely blames gay people for fucking hurricanes.. And you want sympathy because of a motherfucking cake?
I don’t see the difference. We agree that I can operate a Christian book store, correct? I stock only books related to the Christian religion: bibles and such. That is not religious discrimination because customers of any religion may come in and buy the books, even if it is conceded that Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, etc. will be less likely to come in.
Why, then, may I not run a bakery which specializes only in opposite sex marriage cakes? Again, all people, gay and straight alike, may purchase my cakes.
Why in the latter instance am I forced to bake a SSM cake any more than a bookstore is required to stock books related to all religions?
I think he was referring to the recent, more tolerant, times, when conservatives were at the forefront, pushing for civil unions to make sure that everyone was equal under the law.
Or maybe they were actually passing laws outlawing same sex marriage and civil unions at the same time, thus exposing the sham that they wanted equality for everyone as long as they didn’t use the holy word “marriage”. But they couldn’t have been doing that, because that would be enshrining “special rights” for heterosexuals, and conservatives are against that, right?
It’s about the sort of service they offer. The service being offered by a retailer is, “I will sell you some of my stock.” They can’t say, “I will sell you some of my stock, unless you’re gay.” The service being offered by these bakers is, “I will make you a cake to your specifications.” They’re not allowed to say, “I will make you a cake to your specifications, unless you’re gay.”
You can run a Christian bookshop with no obligation to stock non-Christian books. By analogy, you can run an business selling an off-the shelf range of baked goods or clothing that carry only conservative political or religious slogans or imagery. Obviously, you cannot refuse to sell them to any protected class, but you have no obligation to stock any wider inventory.
You cannot run a business providing cakes customized to specific weddings by way of decorating them with names and little model figures - i.e. products customized to people, not to generalized political or religious views - and then refuse to provide the exact same product/service to a protected class, where the only basis for differentiation is membership of the protected class. So, if you make cakes with a little bride and groom and “Tom and Sue”, you must also provide a cake to a gay couple with two grooms and “Tom and Frank” if that’s what they want.
The grey area seems to lie here:
Can I run a business that produces custom products - tee-shirts, cakes, whatever - but restrict the customization with respect to the range of generalized political or religious views that you are willing to express on those products? My own view would be that you should be able to do this, provided that the nature of your business is made clear. “Christian cake shop” or “KKK t-shirt store” or some such.
What if it were a straight couple wanting a particular pro gay message published by a religious organization? Is it the message that is protected or the consumer?
Miller, you folks here on the Straight Dope obligated to host any content anyone wants you to host? Absolutely not. Otherwise you couldn’t ban people.
There’s a user agreement you had to approve when registering to use this board that spells out that your presence here is at the pleasure of the moderators/administrators (or at least I assume so, not having actually read it). If there’s an existing arrangement between the wedding participants and the baker and one of them is in breach, let us know.
Otherwise, the arrangement in question isn’t really the one between the baker and the customers, it’s between the baker and the state - the baker can operate a business and in doing so, takes on various obligations including nondiscrimination.
Where in the US? Depending on that answer it might be a simple case with the bakery winning. While there are some federal protections in things like employment, sexual orientation is not a federally protected class with respect to public accommodations. Here’s a map of states that offer that protection from the ACLU.
Yes.
Because you are in the business of offering printing services to the public, and so you have to print for any member of the public whatever they want printed.*
No, because the editorial is the newspaper’s editorial opinion.
But you have to sell ad space to a pro-life group, if they want to buy it, just as if a pro-choice group wants to buy ads.
*With obvious exceptions for things covered by other laws, like copyrighted material, legally obscene works, etc.
I think the “default” position would surely be that the government would not seek to force any private business to do anything against their will. The US tradition of free speech has always been to counter bad speech with good speech, rather than to force anyone to explicitly or implicitly endorse anything they don’t agree with.
However, there’s a big problem in allowing businesses to discriminate. It’s all very well to say that a black person or a gay couple should go somewhere else that wants their business, and in a big city on the liberal east or west coast that’s generally not a problem. Let the bigots act bigoted, so we know who they are! However, if you’re a black person in the rural south, or a gay couple in the Bible Belt, maybe the next store or the next hotel is 100 miles away.
An anti-SSM Christian will claim that making a cake with two grooms on it implicitly endorses the general principle of SSM. And they are correct. But the purpose of these laws is quite assuredly to protect people, not to force anyone to endorse or express generalized political opinions. The simple fact is, however, that the society that we have chosen (and that the courts have upheld) is that as a business owner, your right to be a bigot does not trump the right of any protected class to be protected from your bigotry.
Ok. Form a baking club then. And do contracts that boards like this have you agree to trump federal law with regards to discrimination? Could we claim discrimination if we want to use this board to publish messages they prohibit?
No you don’t. Wal-mart refused to make a Confederate flag cake. They made an ISIS one though. The government is never going to compel Wal-Mart to make that flag cake. Universities illegally sanction students for free speech. A sanction is definitely not an accommodation.
I’ve tried, but I am still not seeing the distinction between these two (three) areas. The bakers is serving gay customers. Gay customers can come in and order birthday cakes, donuts, coffee, and custom wedding cakes. The shop refuses to customize cakes for same sex marriages; it does not refuse to customize cakes for gay people.
Suppose Frank and Tom are getting married and Tom’s sister Sue (who is heterosexual) orders the cake. The shop refuses. Who is shop discriminating against? Sue is a heterosexual. Frank and Tom are not its customers.
Suppose, alternatively, that Jim and Jill are getting married and Jill’s brother Dave, who is gay, orders a wedding cake for Jim and Jill that the shop makes. The store thus sells the products that it offers to gay and straight alike, it is only the product that it offers that differs.
The argument seems to be that it would be easy to put “Congratulations Tom and Frank” on a cake, so the shop should be forced to do so. I cannot see the difference between that and saying how easy it would be for a Christian bookstore to custom order a Quran for its Muslim customers. After all, they sell religious books, right? Shouldn’t they have to accommodate customers without regard to religion?
I know this thread is about the “grey” area of being forced to put a political message on the cake, but again, I don’t see the difference. To many people, baking a SSM cake is, as you admit, speech endorsing that wedding.
This whole debate is so far removed from the original purpose of laws related to public accommodation as to be absurd. The idea was that if my restaurant sold sausage and bacon, I had to sell the exact same sausage and bacon to all comers without regard to race, religion, etc. It didn’t mean that I had to alter my product offerings to make those groups feel welcome.