Then, in this case, we shouldn’t force him to do anything?
I agree, now all we need to do is find that line where societies’ rights supersede an individuals rights.
I think it would be the logical conclusion as I understand the baker’s argument that they would argue that they are not compelled to bake even a generic design as an on demand order.
In reality it seems unlikely that a baker would make typical wedding cakes (e.g. one with multiple tiers) on speculation to have on the shelf for general sale. So having multiple such cakes on the shelf might seem unusual.
But if other somewhat more generic cake designs (for the sake of argument a single tier sheet cake) are normally stocked then the baker would find himself bound to sell a such a cake to a gay couple after restocking his allotment of generic cakes.
And that is not a argument that is just you not caring about other people’s rights.
Would you care if the lawsuit was about compelling an artist to paint a portrait of Trump in the Oval office looking pensive like in the famous JFK portrait?
How lucky the country is that your cares don’t create law or policy, then!
A distinction without a difference.
Many of them have. But the fundamentalists and evangelicals have not.
Yes, people generally choose their faith. For example, I choose to believe that the story of creation is an allegory for the big bang, the formation of planets and stars, the creation of life and evolution culminating in the creation of man. Others believe men rode around on dinosaurs a couple hundred generations ago. I am not sure how that disparity in belief makes one set of beliefs more constitutionally protected than the other.
Should the right-wing homophobe be allowed to tell the gay couple “I’ll sell you a cake, just not a good one.”? Would offering to sell gay people nothing but sloppy garbage be an acceptable and non-discriminatory business practice?
You are assuming that “discrimination” in business is some absolute evil. But our laws and jurisprudence recognizes that sometimes it’s bad, and sometimes it’s not. That’s what this case is about-- determining whether it’s bad in this particular case. Personally, I would be OK with the scenario you describe as long as you changed* “sell” to “create and sell”. You keep wanted to gloss over the difference between selling something “off the shelf” and “creating a specialty product”. But that is at the core of the issue here.
*If we really want to get into the nitty gritty, I’d probably be OK with leaving it at “sell”, but I’d have to think about that a bit more before committing myself. For the purpose of this case, though, we’re not talking about selling off the shelf items.
There are also other Baptist denominations that permit gay marriages.
For example the National Baptist Convention USA with 6.5 million members (as opposed to the Southern Baptists with 15 million members).
The largest Presbyterian denomination also allows it and they are pretty mainline:
There are simply too many mainline denominations that permit gay marriage to say that this is anything close to a consensus position against gay marriage by Christianity in America.
Can a restaurant with specialty tasting menus discriminate?
He’s not refusing them because they’re gay.
Even if you cannot suss out the difference between the two, I suspect that the Supreme Court will. Even if they ultimately rule that he cannot refuse to make the cake, they will see the distinction between refusing to serve gay customers to whom he is willing to sell anything other than a custom wedding cake, and refusing to serve gay people.
I know about anti-gay discrimination created by the HIV scare, were you talking about something else?
No, that’s window dressing. The core of the issue is whether or not belonging to a certain club gives one the right to discriminate against gay people. I see this as being little different than arguing that abortion should be illegal because some people oppose it on religious grounds or that it’s okay to date young girls because Joseph was older than Mary.
Holding a belief is not a religious practice. One is not required to open a business and refuse custom to gay people in any way in order to practice one’s religion, so that’s not a religious practice either. If it were, everyone who belonged to that religion but didn’t own a business while refusing to serve gay people was a sinner. Is this the case? Do they make that argument.
Really? It’s easy as pie for me. “I’ll sell you this but not that” smacks of “I’ll let you drink out of that fountain but not this one.”
(And it’s puzzling to me that these people are so desperate to justify their homophobia that they take it this far. Making the cake and confessing to the sin seems much more efficient.)
Except he apparently does want to do (produce wedding cakes) what he’s refused to do. As long as he doesn’t have to do it for for gay people. That much is clear. Colorado says you can’t discriminate against gay people anymore than you can against other protected classes of people.
There was some talk of a rainbow design. Was that fake news?
Perhaps all wedding cakes are custom just all portraits are custom. If there is no such thing as an off the shelf wedding cake then all wedding cakes may be a form of art.
I really think the religious arguments are a red herring. This isn’t going to be decided based on free exercise grounds. It’s going to be decided based on compelled speech, if any exists.
I predict the Supreme Court will perceive one.
Probably. If they don’t excuse their right-wing bigotry one way, they’ll find another. So long as it’s understood the real reason isn’t because they belong to some church that requires such bigotry but because they don’t like (abhor, as you put it) gay people getting married.
My understanding is that they never got to the point of talking about design, but that he shut them down as soon as he was aware it was for a gay wedding.
The only talk I’ve heard about rainbows have been in hypotheticals. Did you have a cite that says otherwise?
Should the liberal artist be able to tell the conservative “I will paint you a picture of Trump in a loincloth on the back of an giant eagle Making America Great Again, just not a good one”
The thing I am wondering about in all this is:
Why on earth would a gay couple want an avowed homophobe to bake their wedding cake?
Wedding cakes are complex, intricate creations which take a lot of work and attention to detail. There are too many ways it could get screwed up, ranging from deliberate sabotage that would not show up until people actually tried to eat the cake, to negligence caused by not wanting to make the thing in the first place.
Why not respond by saying: “Thank you for letting us know about your feelings. Have a nice day.” And then going to the bakery down the street operated by reasonable people?
In my opinion, trying to force a homophobe to create one’s wedding cake against his wishes, just because you can, comes dangerously close to demonstrating an actual “Gay Agenda”, thus vindicating the fears of the anti-gay crowd.