I get that, and i completely understand. My proposal would have a tendency to make open displays of bigotry part of the landscape.
I guess i was also thinking, or hoping, that such a requirement would, given the recent historical shift towards recognizing gay rights and accepting same-sex marriage, serve more to out the bigots than to denigrate the LGBTQ community. But i can see that there would probably be plenty of places where that might not be the case.
I think placing one of those little fish things in the window would get the message across.
*snip.
I agree with your first paragraph. The remedy in the original Civil Rights Act is simply not appropriate in these isolated cases. Gay people seeking wedding cakes are not in the same position as blacks in the south in the 1950s.
I cannot agree, however, with your second paragraph. Unlike state-sanctioned discrimination like in school segregation, no person has the right to be treated appropriately or fairly by another private individual.
I have no right to dignity when I walk onto someone else’s private property. I have no right to insist that people treat me a certain way.
What I can insist on is that if a private person is in the business of selling soda, he cannot refuse to hand me a soda on the same terms as he would another because of my protected class. If you can exchange soda for money for a white person, then there is no good faith reason that you cannot do the same thing for a black person. You can think all day that you hate blacks, think that they are inferior, etc., but you still have to hand them a damn soda. That is a de minimis intrusion on your private property and it only forces you to perform a task that you already perform for others.
This case is in a league all its own. The cake maker is being forced to create a product that he refuses to make for anyone: a cake celebrating a same sex marriage. He will not sell that type of cake to anyone, so where is the discrimination?
One may say that clearly by not selling SSM cakes, his policy will harm gays much more than straight people. Agreed. But where does that principle stop? If I refuse to sell “Black Lives Matter” t-shirts, then one would have to concede that would affect my black customers more than my white ones. If I did not sell country music t-shirts then that would affect my white customers more than black ones.
I don’t see any limiting principle in the State of Colorado’s argument. A private business owner could be forced to do nearly anything under the guise of protecting a class’s “dignity.”
There isn’t meant to be a limiting principle. They are hostile to businesses run according to faith. “Human rights commissions” in general have tended to be arbitrary. They really should just go away and the traditional legal system should be handling these kinds of claims.
The Colorado Civil Rights Commission wants to claim a standard that discriminating based on viewpoint is legal as long as the reasoning is secular and not religious. That turns the 1st amendment on its head.
But they do. The very existence of something called a “protected class” carries within it particular attitudes to fairness and appropriate treatment. And the legal definition of something called a “public accommodation” recognizes that there are times and places where it is necessary and appropriate for society to set certain limits on the ownership rights attaching to private property, in the interests of fairness.
We might disagree about exactly where the boundaries of these issues are, and where they should be, but the boundaries exist. The law might not currently extend far enough to provide remedies for the gay couple in this particular case, but questions of fairness and appropriate treatment are, in some ways, at the center of laws and rulings related to civil rights.
These two sections seem to be fundamentally at odds.
Because it seems to me that, in some very real sense, what the gay couple in this case is asking for is precisely what you outline in the first paragraph here: that the baker perform a task for them that he already performs for others,* viz.*, make a cake.
You suggest, in your second paragraph, that he’s being forced to create a product that he refuses to make for anyone. But i reject your assertion. He makes cakes for people, and he’s being asked to make a cake. The fact that he doesn’t like what the cake is going to be used for doesn’t materially change the nature of the task he is being commissioned to perform. You believe that it does change things, and you have a right to that belief, but i am under no compulsion to accept your definition of where the boundaries are here.
Like i said earlier, i could live with a free market solution to this problem. But let’s not pretend that the categories and distinctions upon which you’re basing your argument are timeless and objective; they are contingent and subjective. The fact that you disagree with me doesn’t make you wrong, in a philosophical or logical sense, but it doesn’t make you objectively correct either. The fact that you can point to CURRENT understandings of legal definitions like “protected classes,” and the fact that those current understandings might mean that the decision in this case will conform with your preferences, does not make your preferences inherently superior or your argument inherently more logical and correct.
This paragraph fundamentally misinterprets a central aspect of the case. It’s not about simply selling; it’s about a place whose business model relies on commissioning and creating things in response to individual customer orders.
Now, on the one hand, this aspect of the case will work in favor of the baker, because a central part of his argument is that his works are creative and he cannot be compelled to create something that conflicts with his religious beliefs.
On the other hand, though, it makes the case very different from your assertion about “selling.” If all this cake shop did was sell pre-made cakes over the counter, and did not take individual orders, i don’t think this case would have been brought. Similarly, a t-shirt shop that sells a particular range of t-shirts, but does not create custom shirt is, similarly, not required to sell every possible t-shirt. If a t-shirt store produces its own shirts, and takes order for shirts with personal or individualized messages, then that would be an appropriate comparison with the current case. But it’s not just about selling.
If the baker is a devout Catholic, could he refuse to sell a cake that was going to be used to celebrate the marriage of people that were divorced?
Please do not personalize arguments in this fashion.
[/moderating]
That would seem like a logical outcome of the baker wins this case.
Of course you are under no compulsion. However, if you define the activity at that level of generality, there is no difference in anything. Why don’t we just call the activity “engaging in commerce” and say that since you sell one thing its not a material difference to sell any other thing.
To this man, it is a very material difference to create a wedding cake for two men versus one man and one woman. His belief is supported by the traditional majority religions in this country. That is hardly some wild hypothetical or a triviality.
If I sold T-shirts with custom messages would you say that I must put any message at all on my T-shirt because it is just as easy to put one message as it is another?
I’m pretty sure he could do that already. “Divorced people” aren’t a protected class.
I’m not arguing that it’s hypothetical, or even a triviality. I’m simply arguing that, in a material sense, the skill and labor required to create a cake for a gay marriage is effectively identical to the skill and labor required to create a cake for some other occasion. You don’t have to like the message or the occasion, but i believe that it’s disingenuous to say that carrying out the task constitutes some sort of personal endorsement, or an infringement on your personal belief systems.
Must? Well, no, because i’ve already said that i could live with a free market solution to this problem, even if i’m not sure it’s the only or even the ideal outcome.
But if it is, in fact, just as easy to put one message as it is another on a t-shirt, and if the messages are dictated to you by your customer rather than written by you, then all of your whining about having your own morality or rights undermined is not going to constitute a particularly compelling argument to me, because all you’re doing is utilizing a technical skill to whack someone else’s message on a piece of cloth.
I understand that this is a fraught issue, and i also understand that there are areas where i might be inconsistent on the issue myself. If i owned a cake shop, and some guy wanted me to make him a cake with swastikas or burning crosses or “God Hates Fags” or something, i’d probably tell him to piss off. And the fact that i’d do that is part of the reason that i would be willing to live with a free market solution in this case: i want to be able to reject Nazis and white supremacists and homophobes in my cake shop, so i can live with the idea that someone else can refuse to make a cake for a may marriage. But, while there’s some subjectivity and some gray areas here, let’s also not pretend that these are equivalent. Homosexuality is not like Nazism, and refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding is not the same as refusing to make a cake for a white supremacist, no matter how much some people might like to argue that it is.
And at the federal level, neither are gays. Which is what makes these types of lawsuits so difficult. I’m not a fan of protected classes and different levels of scrutiny, but that’s embedded deeply into our jurisprudence, so we might as well figure out if gays are a suspect class (I think that is the correct term, although it sounds a bit “suspect”) or not and get this constant bickering over with. Based on how we’ve done things in the past, being “gay” isn’t a choice and it doesn’t hurt anyone, so it seems that designating them a suspect class is the way to go.
What religion speaks about the intricacies of wedding cake design?
His belief about what constitutes a valid marriage might be supported by his religion, but I’m fairly sure that concept is separate from his ability to make a cake for a customer’s wedding reception. I know it may come as a shock, but people who don’t share his religious views can have weddings too.
If his religion prevents him from making wedding cakes for people, then he shouldn’t be in the wedding cake business.
Are you kidding? Perhaps you could take a look at some of Elvis’s posts and tell me what the difference is between his posts and mine.
Here let me start you off:
“Put the shovel down, John.” post 573
“Why should anyone engage with people who won’t bother to read, just broadcast-post in the blind?” post 581
I think the argument that is on the table is that the baker is saying that you cannot force an artist to create art that they don’t want to create. Freedom of expression and all that. As was pointed out to me earlier, a religiously neutral law cannot be circumvented by claims of religious freedom (see peyote case).
Pssst: Discussion of moderator actions belongs over in ATMB >>>>>>
Cheesesteak, while I agree with what you are saying, I do have to point out that your statement that “people who don’t share his religious views can have weddings too” is really the crux of the matter. In his mind, they really can’t (or at least shouldn’t), not if their “religious views” include the notion that marriage isn’t just between a male and a female. The real issue is that being a Christian doesn’t mean refusing to involve oneself with the activities of sinners. After all, it’s not like the person in question refuses to bake cakes for couples who commit adultery (a sin), or who steal, or etc. If he’s not consistent in refusing to do things like that, then his Christianity isn’t really impaired by being required to provide services for someone committing the “sin” of being homosexual.
How is the baker supposed to know if his customer has committed adultery? Besides, Christianity is about forgiveness. You don’t get forgiven if you continue to live in a state of sin. You have to stop sinning first. So, even if he knew someone had committed adultery in the past, unless the person is continuing to do so, then there is no telling whether the person has confessed and been forgiven or not. If you think homosexuality is a sin, then a planned SSM is a sin in progress.
Of course this is a Christian definition of sin, other religions and belief systems have alternate views of what constitutes sin.
You don’t get to choose the legal tenets of another person, and effectively this is what our baker is doing, he is not being asked to subscribe to other values, instead he is attempting to force others to accept his worldview in a manner that is not consistent with the principles of law.
I guess, going back to my example of divorcees getting married (not re-married), then they would be living in a state of sin. They would be committing adultery. A planned wedding of divorcees is a sin in progress.
As mentioned upthread, divorces are not a protected class, so discriminating against them is perfectly legal. If he is, if he making sure that both parties to the wedding are pure and virtuous before committing to baking a cake, then at least he would be consistent when he says he won’t sell one to a gay couple.
If he has sold cakes to divorcees, then he is already “endorsing” a sinful lifestyle, and it is him just deciding which sins are acceptable to him at that point, and the sin he has singled out to discriminate against happens to be one that is protected by his state law.