Is that a matter of law? If a given act of discrimination winds up in court, does animus or hostility or whatever need to be mentioned in the ruling? Or does it get barred or okayed on its own merits, with no need to reference animus or hostility?
Admittedly, I have not done a great deal of research on the exact contours of the law, and I’m surprised that none of the briefs in this case cited any earlier court opinions on the matter as I am sure that there are some.
But, I think that you would agree with me that it cannot be absolute. A store which sells Christian books cannot be required to sell Satan worship books on the idea that it would be discriminating on the basis of religion, even though it certainly would be. Indeed the entire business model discriminates on the basis of religion.
Nor can purely artificial lines be drawn that only serve to discriminate against a protected class. “I don’t discriminate against blacks, I just discriminate against those people, both black and white, who married black people.”
However, I think wherever the line is set, it must allow for some freedom and discretion on the part of a business owner. Simply by going into business and serving the public, a person doesn’t then hand the choice over to the government about which customers he will take in every instance.
What does this have to do with gay wedding cakes? Nothing. The baker is discriminating because of who the customer is, not what is on the cake. Please stop making these irrelevant analogies.
But that’s not the relevant analogy; the relevant analogy would be a store that sells Christian books to Christians, and refuses to sell them to Jews or atheists or Satan worshippers or whatever. As I understand it, the customer in this case was told that the baker refused to make any wedding cake: they never got around to discussing specifics after that, because he’d already ruled out (a) every such request in general, even if the request had been for (b) a cake that was, as it happens, constructed along the exact same lines as the last one that someone bought there.
No, the baker is refusing to make a particular cake: a cake which celebrates same sex weddings. He refuses to sell such a cake to anyone, gay or straight, black or white, who wants to purchase it.
Of course, you would say that it is not a “same sex wedding cake” it is just a wedding cake, and since he sells wedding cakes to heterosexual couples, under Colorado law, he must sell wedding cakes to homosexual couples.
However, that is pure semantics. We can definite something at any level of generality to suit our own agendas. Likewise with the Christian book store. Let’s not define the product as a “Christian book” which as you mentioned could be purchased by anyone, black or white, gay or straight. Let’s define it as a “religious book.” Since you can get one religious book just as easy as another (and likewise create one wedding cake just as easy as the other), isn’t the decision to only stock Christian religious books no different than only stocking heterosexual marriage cakes and a backhanded attempt to exclude Jews, Muslims, and atheists from the store?
It’s a long thread, and I may have missed or forgotten it, but I don’t think anyone has said that refusing to sell cakes to be used at a same sex wedding was a backhanded attempt to keep gays out of the store.
But since you want to define a cake for a same-sex wedding as being a different product than one for an opposite-sex wedding , then I assume you have no problem in breaking both categories down further into cakes for interracial weddings and interfaith weddings so that there are at least six different products.So tell me, is a baker required to sell cakes for interracial or interfaith weddings and if so what makes those situations different in a state that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation?
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That’s not, as far as I can tell, the point.
Let’s grant, for the sake of argument, that the baker makes wedding cakes that just look like “wedding cakes”. You know: three or four circular cakes, light in color and stacked biggest to smallest from bottom to top, with some white frosting on it in a pattern designed to really make the red strawberries stand out.
The sort of cake he’d make for me, if I came in and said I was marrying a woman. And let’s say it’s also the same cake he’d flatly refuse to make for a woman, if she came in and said it’s for her marriage to a woman.
Say the cake is the same; it’s only the customer who differs. What happens?
According to Kennedy, we don’t know. It depends if the evaluation by lower authorities are meanie pants. Maybe, maybe not. I could totally be a SCOTUS clerk.
What distinguishes a cake celebrating a gay wedding from a cake celebrating a heterosexual wedding?
One has icing that spells out the names “Ashley and Taylor”.
Again, they did NOT say the baker had the right to refuse to bake the cake. They said that the State showed religious discrimination in their ruling. Why is that wrong? If a defendant in a criminal trial doesn’t get a fair trial we all agree they should be set free (or at least retried) whether or not they are innocent or guilty.
According to the baker: the first represents a sacrament that violates God’s Law ™ and a (at the time) illegal act. The second does not. I think that’s why the focus was so much on free expression because of what the cake represents. Note that the baker was willing to supply other baked goods to celebrate the clients’ SSM just not a “wedding” cake no matter how generic.
[my bold]
That the marriage was not legally recognized does not make the act of having a ceremony to affirm their commitment to each other is illegal.
That difference in expression is determined solely by the status of the customers.
Tell the baker that. He’s the one who put that forth as a reason, not me.
Exactly. And the baker said that his practice of religion lets him express himself for one set of customers (DSM) and not for another (SSM)
But that’s why I keep coming back to the part that’s got my scratching my head: if a baker said that his practice of religion lets him express himself for customers who are looking to engage in same-race marriages but not for different-race ones, then do we say “well, that’s his religion; so, discrimination ahoy, I guess?”
I thought the answer there was, no, a baker’s practice of religion doesn’t allow him to sell his wares to folks seeking a same-race marriage while turning away folks who are seeking a different-race marriage. If I’m wrong about that, then I want to know; and, if I’m right about it but wrong to figure it for same-sex and different-sex, then I want to know why. Because, as it stands, I’m stumped.
There’s still a significant number of religious people who believe God said that gays are icky, don’t serve them. The number of religious people who believe God said that the races must stay separate is much, much smaller and therefore less influential.
I’m sorry but in fact they believe no such thing. They disingenuously claim to believe it, in order to feel superior and to take advantage of others. These particular “Christians” are a group of cynical liars, not a group of pious believers.
But how is that relevant? If it’s allowed under existing law, then I figure it’s legal no matter how many or how few people bother to engage in it; and, if it’s illegal, then I figure it’s illegal no matter how many or how few people bother likewise.
Indeed there is almost no way they can say it is the bible and not their own prejudice against homosexuals at work here.
They are merely finding something to excuse their own foul motives. If it was really the bible motivating them and not personal animus then they’d have to also hate shrimp which the bible also says is an abomination (and by my reading also clams/oysters/mussels). I am willing to bet most of them do not adhere to this one.