I am about as far as you can get from being an expert on wedding cakes, but it does seem to make sense that an “off the shelf” wedding cake would be a quite unusual thing.
Sure. There is the exception for theatrical casting, just for instance.
But not in running a store-front in a shopping mall. You can’t open a Hallmark greeting card store, and refuse to sell to blacks. Absolutely forbidden.
This has already been settled here: yes, a vendor may refuse to draw a specific picture. No one is asking the cake-maker to do a “gay” wedding cake. They’re only saying he cannot refuse to serve gay customers. The tattoo artist may refuse to do swastikas; he can’t say, “Oh, your skin is dark, so the tattoo won’t show properly, therefore I won’t do any work for you.”
That contradicts the account given above in this thread. Can you cite this for accuracy, please? The way the story is told, he refused to serve the customer, because the customer was part of a gay couple.
The baker has stated in many interviews that he was willing to sell other goods to the couple, just not a wedding cake for a same sex wedding. Here’s my post from a GQ thread that at least started out just asking about what exactly had been requested. There are links to video clips where you can hear the baker’s version of events straight from his own mouth.
This contradicts the claim that he would have sold them a “standard” wedding cake.
Even if he made such an offer, if he refused a service for one customer (in a protected group) that he would have made for another customer, then he is breaking the law.
Would he decorate a special cake for a Presbyterian wedding? But not for a Jewish wedding? Civil rights violation, big-time.
I said elsewhere that I see three levels of bakers.
Alice offers a set of different designs for cakes. You look through the binders, you choose one, there you go. If she’s unwilling to let a gay couple choose one, that’s plain discrimination.
Bob is like Alice, only he allows various custom jobs chosen by the customer: he’ll draw the design they ask for, or write the message they ask for. For him, if he refuses to write a specific message because the content of the message is offensive, I can cut him some slack; but if he’d write an identical message (“Congratulations on your marriage!”) for a het couple but not a gay couple, that’s discrimination.
Carol is unlike the others. She meets the couple intuits their love, and creates a cake that expresses her understanding of their love, with little input from the couple. She’s a goddamned artist, and if she refuses to go through her process with any particular couple, I’ll give her a lot of deference.
I’m seeing nothing to indicate that Carol exists, much less that this baker was Carol. If he would have been willing to make the exact same cake if he thought it was for a straight couple, then it’s not about the cake or about his artistry, it’s about the customer’s sexual orientation. And that’s discrimination.
No. Not necessarily accurate. Also potentially untrue, and potentially wrong. Would you like more adjectives?
Decorating a special cake is speech, he can argue. Can you explain, with a compelled speech analysis, why you’re so confident? Why is it “big time,” precisely, when the compelled speech doctrine is applied?
I thought hearing it direct from his mouth would suffice.
However, his lawyer in arguing before the SCOTUS was asked the question and answered that the baker would indeed sell any stock item he had. It was the first question Justice Ginsburg asked(pdf link to entire transcript. See page 5).
The discussion goes on for several more pages of the transcript. The line the baker’s attorney draws is that pre-made goods placed for sale must be sold to anyone as there is no compulsion of speech as the baker’s speech was complete and for the purpose of putting the good to general sale. But goods custom made to order are an artistic expression and government cannot demand a particular expressive act.
Like it. Don’t like. it. It is the argument of the baker’s attorney.
The oath they all swore says “I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” Does that mean anything?
I think you know better. In any case, that’s another subject, one which we’ve gone over before, if you’d take the time to search. Nothing you’ve posted here is new, btw.
What if the couple said, “Look, we’re gay, but we don’t need a cake that celebrates a gay wedding. Make us exactly the same kind of cake you make to celebrate a straight wedding. Your ‘speech’ will be exactly the same.” In that case, can he be compelled to the same speech he’s publicly given before–or compelled to stop offering public accommodation?
Race is a suspect class. If the Supreme Court decides that sexual orientation is also a suspect class (and it seems to me that it \very well might, considering the historical bigotry we have seen against people with non-hetero sexual preferences) then I suspect that the answer might be different.
Artists can and have refused to paint Trump’s portrait for the white house. They can refuse to paint portraits of left handed people or divorced couples.
Saying that no one is forcing a baker to run a bakery seems like a distinction without a difference. Sure he could just stop producing wedding cakes altogether (which is in fact what this baker did) but when wedding cakes represent over 20% of your business (as was the case with this baker) you are coercing the baker to use his artistic expression to do something he doesn’t want to do.
If he will sell them an off the rack wedding cake but not gay themed wedding cake its not the customer, its the event (I don’t know if he would sell them an off the shelf wedding cake, he offered to sell the other cakes but it was not clear if his meant other “wedding” cakes).