Just because you want that to be the case doesn’t mean that that is necessarily the case.
Yeah, discrimination against a specific action, not against an individual. For the proof of that, let’s reconsider the gay guy I mentioned earlier. And let’s say he wears a jacket with the rainbow flag on it, and a patch that says “Gay Pride”. He comes in to a cake shop and orders a birthday cake for his sister. No problem. He comes back next week and orders a birthday cake for himself, requesting the rainbow flag as a design. Again, no problem. He comes back again and says he wants a wedding cake for himself and his boyfriend. The cake shop owner declines. So, the cake shop owner has expressed no discrimination or animosity against Joe due to his sexual orientation. But he has chosen to not be part of an action he thinks immoral.
When the same situation were to apply to a Jew, or to a black man marrying a white woman, is your opinion the same? From my point of view, it doesn’t matter that he “has chosen to not be a part of an action he thinks immoral” – by operating a bakery that serves the public, this choice still constitutes discrimination based on sexual orientation. Just like it would be discrimination if he refused to bake wedding cakes for interracial couples or Jewish couples because he thought that interracial weddings were immoral, or Jewish weddings were immoral, while he would serve the Jew and the black person non-wedding cakes.
That seems a little specious. By the same reasoning, couldn’t anyone discriminate against Christians and their religious practice so long as their religious belief isn’t harmed? If we define protected discrimination so narrowly, what’s stopping a Governor of some state forbidding, let’s say, circumcision, or prayer in public places?
Further, magellan01’s argument allows a business to discriminate against anyone, because everyone takes “actions” that one could decide are immoral on religious grounds. The cake-maker could decide that he believes that being mixed race and procreating is immoral, so he wouldn’t bake cakes for anyone that is mixed race and getting married, or for the birthdays of any mixed-race children.
Except that courts are increasingly ruling that same sex marriage is subject to the equal protection of law. The assertion that gay marriage is subject to less legal protection than homosexual sex or gay pride marches does not seem to have a firm basis in civil rights law.
As others have said, just becaus a baker has baked a cake for a black man does not mean that refusing to bake a wedding cake for an interracial couple is therefore acceptable.
Fuck that. If you invite me to come into your your place of business to give you money for something on your shelves, you don’t get to decide what you’ll sell me and what you won’t.
Similarly, if your business is fabricating certain bespoke items, you don’t get to cordon off your list of services based on who I am.
What part of SSM is he discriminating against, the SS or the M part? If he won’t back a wedding cake for anyone, it’s the M part. If he only won’t bake it for someone who’s gay, it’s the SS part, and that’s against the law.
Yes: responding to someone’s political speech as an individual is the one that’s more protected by the constitution than responding to someone’s celebration. If you want me to decorate a cake that denigrates black people, and I refuse you, I’m responding to the political speech, and my own speech in this regard is protected. If you want me to decorate a cake that celebrates a marriage, and I decide whether to refuse you based on whether you’re straight or gay, I’m responding to you as an individual, and my own speech in this regard isn’t protected. My speech would be protected if I refused to decorate any cake that celebrates a marriage.
Well sure. Liberals are all bubble clueless idiots, as a group, so there is always plenty to bash there as well. And don’t even get me started on conservatives, who, as a group are stick up the ass prudes or evil motherfuckers without any compassion or human decency. Man…it’s a good thing that there aren’t any libertarians, liberals or conservatives in this thread to be offended, and that we are only calling names to people ‘as a group’, right? That way we skate the rules and still get to bash on people all we like without having the mods take notice!
I agree that as long as the product isn’t different from one you’d be willing to sell to or make for someone else, you’re de facto discriminating if you refuse to deliver it to some events and not to others. But I do think that a baker should be allowed to refuse baking a cake with “All hail Satan”, since he wouldn’t do that for anyone, and I’m uncertain if I’d extend that right all the way to refusing to put two grooms on top of a cake. It’d be kind of an Asshole thing to do, “If you want to grooms you have to put them on yourself”, but I’m leaning towards allowable.
I’m not entirely sure how to phrase that “loophole” though, so it doesn’t also allow something like “I’ll print a cake cover from any picture of a white person you like and sell it to you, no matter what color your skin.”
And I struggle with finding an acceptable way of allowing for my desire to refuse to rent out my hypothetical auditorium to meetings of the local chapter of Lying-spreaders-of-harmful-lies club.
If you think the distinction makes a difference (I don’t), then pick any other unacceptable example you like - for example: the baker won’t bake a cake for an interracial wedding, or a wedding between two black people, or a wedding between a sighted/blind couple, etc
Taxpayers have to maintain records for as long as seven years. Lois’s hard drive “crashed” after the Congressional investigation began. How very convenient.
Could a taxpayer under audit pull that move?
That’s not what the Treasury Inspector General reported.
Nice cherry picking. One Senate subcommittee vs. TIGTA and the full House of Representatives.
It’s not as simple as that. I know you’d like it to be, but it’s not. It’s not either/or. It’s the combination of the two. I have no problem with people getting drunk; I also have no problem with people driving cars. But when it’s both of those things, I, and I assume, you, would have a problem. Even if there were no law against it.
I think a person’s right to follow his own religious beliefs is trumps all. For a person to be asked to act in a way that goes against their religious conviction requires an overwhelming argument. For instance, it goes against the religious conviction of Quakers to swear to God. So they are able to affirm a position. This goes back to George Washington during the Revolutionary War when inhabitants of Westchester County (NY) had to take an oath of allegiance. A gay couple having to go to the baker down the street does not qualify as some huge burden.
There’a huge difference between making a Quaker swear to God and making a Christian marry someone of the same sex. I mean, bake a cake. What religious conviction would be broken here, anyway?
By that same logic, someone could say, “I mean, just swear an oath. It’s just an oath. What religious conviction would be broken here, anyway?”
Whether a religious conviction would be broken is heavily subjective based on that person’s perspective.
So you’re okay with Fred Phelps and his “God Hates Fags” stance? You’re okay with people being condemned to death because they chose to convert from Islam? You’re fine with female genital mutilation? You’re even okay with Taliban rules about not educating women?
That’s a terrible argument. A black person having to get up and move to the back of the bus isn’t, in and of itself, a terrible burden - it’s bad because it’s a symptom of systematised inequality.