If they make custom celebratory pizzas in a shape that celebrates events (like the pizza in the shape of a circle to celebrate the last solar eclipse) and they don’t want to make the pizza in the shape of the Dallas Cowboy’s logo because “fuck the Cowboys,” that is up to them.
If they hand craft bacon related food items, they creatively inject bacon into everything they make and and someone loves their Wedding Cakes but they want it without the bacon because they are marrying a Jew, they don’t have to accommodate that request.
If drawing people in loincloths on eagles is not something the artist does on a regular basis, then sure, he can refuse a request to do something that he would normally not do.
If he normally does draw people on eagles and sporting loincloths, then it should not matter who’s head is on the body.
I understand your point and even agree with you that homophobia should be confronted. I just question whether a wedding cake is the best venue for that.
Why give a homophobe the opportunity to spoil what is supposed to be a happy, special occasion?
That may be because you don’t fully understand what is going on here. The baker is not saying “I will sell you that cake but not that one” the baker is saying “I will sell you this cake but I will not sell that one to anyone” So its more like “you may drink out of that fountain but no one may drink out of this one”
You make very bad arguments that only make sense to people that already agree with you.
It seems reasonable to me (I’ll set the law aside, since I’m not a lawyer) that the government can’t compel him to any artistic expression–but they can forbid him from selling his services as a public accommodation if he’s willing to discriminate in this way.
A similar situation, I’d think, would arise if I rented out my dance studio for children’s birthday parties and taught kids a couple of dances–but refused to rent it out for black kids. I can’t make a claim about compelling artistic instruction, if the only difference between what I’ll do and what I won’t do is a protected trait of the customer.
As for Morgenstern the Chippendale Dancer, I’d think a performance like the one he’d give would be highly…interactive? If I’m right, I think a dancer might reasonably claim that he couldn’t give an adequate performance for a man, whereas he could for a woman. The interactivity makes it impossible to give the same dance. This is qualitatively different from the wedding cakes, where the cake itself is gonna be the same whether the couple is gay or straight.
No its not clear. Its the entire point of the litigation. He doesn’t want to sell wedding cakes that celebrate gay weddings. That is arguably content discrimination and not person discrimination, so the line really isn’t that clear unless you are already convinced of the answer.
Are you talking about the exact same Supreme Court that legalized gay marriage nationwide? You know, the one that recognized a constitutional right to gay marriage? Those bigots that abhor gay people getting married? They’re the ones that are going to excuse their right wing gay bigotry one way or the other?
If he had a sign up outside that had said “The owner of this establishment is a bigot.” then they would have known not to go there. Instead, the owner had put out a sign that said “open”, which indicates that it is a place of public accommodation, and that they would not be refused service. They did not go to him in order to have their happy occasion ruined, the owner decided to do that on his own.
I’m not aware if this is true for this scenario, but similar types of strategic litigation has been done in the past to push for societal change. It needs to fine the right plaintiff that has suffered some sort of harm that is justiciable, a target who is causing the harm, and a sympathetic venue.
And you would be perfectly fine telling the gay couple that they can have a wedding cake from the baker but its going to be a really a shitty wedding cake?
The rainbow design was what they ultimately got from another bakery. The couple said they never got to discuss the design before the conversation was shut down , and I have not seen the baker disagree with that statement.
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