I was just thinking (always a dangerous activity). Suppose I was in the business of custom decorating cakes and I was asked to decorate one with some racist or white supremacist slogan. I would certainly refuse as this violates deep convictions and I would want nothing to do with it. How does this differ from a devout bigot refusing to decorate a cake for a gay wedding?
I assume you would refuse to do a white supremacist cake for any customer.
Presumably the “devout bigot” wouldn’t have a problem decorating a cake for a straight wedding.
Conceptually, when you open up a business, you agree in principle to follow the laws governing your business. If you operate in a municipality that has specific protections for people due to race, religion, or LGBTQ status, then it is illegal to deny someone custom over their positioning within one of those groups. No municipality protects racism or white supremacy (these days).
Outside of these protected reasons, you as a business owner have freedom of association. You may choose to reject business for any reason or no reason at all, outside of the specified restrictions.
I’m not the biggest fan of equating morality with legality. From a moral standpoint, one person is promoting hate, and the other is not. One is promoting a specific denigration of other human beings, the other is not.
Decorating the wedding cake might be close to refusing to let a trans try on wedding dresses because “men” are not allowed to try on the stores dresses. A few years ago, a wedding dress store in my Canadian city was nailed by the Human Rights commission for that.
@Cheesesteak nailed it.
The law is the law and you’ve got to follow it whether you approve of it or not.
Once you’re operating within the law, then you can do whatever your conscience dictates. And suffer the consequences for doing so. Some people’s consciences value very different things than others. That’s all we can say that’s value-neutral.
But value-neutrality is not actually an ethically defensible stance. So pick some standard that is ethically defensible and comply with that with a clear conscience.
There may indeed be some devout bigot who has convinced itself that hating gays is ethical. By their lights they’re doing right. But like anyone taking a stand on an ethical question, they will suffer the consequences of the judgement of others whose lights don’t agree.
It is possible that your cake with the racist slogan could be part of a campaign of harassment or even terrorism that is in itself illegal, thus making you a party to something illegal. Gay weddings are not illegal.
Just as an example, that guy whose son was name “Adolf Hitler,” and wanted a birthday cake that said “Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler,” and got turned down by a couple of places, rightfully did, in my opinion.
I know of three different occasions (one was my own synagogue, and one was the Hillel at my university, after my graduation, one was just one I read about) where people had left cakes on Hitler’s birthday in front of the edifices of Jewish organizations that said “Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler.” In one case, it was part of a long string of anti-Semitic acts that ended in significant and irreparable property destruction. In each case, the police were called, and elected to bring in bomb squad members to remove the cake. No bombs in any case, but it was a big disruption.
If some guy is asking you for a cake that has that slogan, and insisting it is for his son, and you are weighing in your mind the possibility that he is telling the truth vs. the possibility that he is planning to harass a synagogue, well, I know what I’d think. And I would not want to be even tangential to harassing a synagogue.
Now, let me balance that with something someone once asked me back when I was an American Sign Language/English interpreter. It was “Would I interpret at an anti-abortion rally?”
Well, yeah, of course I would, if a Deaf person requested it. I would not interpret very specifically at an act of vandalism against a Planned Parenthood clinic, because that is illegal, but just a rally, or meeting of some kind? yes. I believe Deaf people should have access to anything they want, whether I agree with it or not-- besides, I don’t know the person’s reasons-- for all I could know, they’re spying for a pro-choice group.
I would also interpret for a KKK group, if that were requested, albeit, I would probably suggest that if someone else were available, they probably would not be especially comfortable with my face there. But if it were lawfully assembled, and a Deaf person wanted access, a Deaf person should have access.
I’m not really sure what bakers who refuse to bake for same sex weddings think they’re accomplishing. It’s lawful assembly, and it’s not as though because the baker refuses, people are going to cancel the wedding and rethink their sexual identities.
Okay, there are protected persons, but are there protected events? It’s not really the status of the customer that’s at issue. Presumably the “devout bigot” would happily sell a cake to a gay woman for her brother’s wedding to his girlfriend, but not to a straight woman for her brother’s wedding to his boyfriend.
I mentioned before … this is basically how the Courts have come down:
Bakers bake and sell cakes. They have to sell those cakes to everybody.
Photographers take pictures at weddings. They have to photograph weddings.
Bakers don’t have to write hate speech on cakes.
Photographers don’t have to stick around to take pictures of the newlyweds bumping uglies in the hotel room.
If you work at Subway sandwiches, a customer saying that they do want lettuce but do not want onions doesn’t take you into the realm of custom work that allows you to deny them service.
So if bakers can refuse to write hate speech, can they refuse to write non-hate speech for arbitrary reasons?
I am assuming that if a gay couple came in and ordered a cake saying “Happy Birthday Adolph Hitler”, the baker could refuse, and the gay couple couldn’t claim that he refused just because they were gay if the baker can show that they’ve sold cakes to other gay people. But could they also successfully refuse to write “Happy anniversary to my gay lover” on the cake and not be considered discriminatory? How about if they refused to use a same-sex cake topper? Would they successfully be able to not write “Happy wedding, Dave and Steve” on the grounds that he wouldn’t write that on anyone’s cake, even if the people buying it were straight?
Good question.
The answer seems to start on (document) page 12:
OhByTheWay:
I haven’t seen anybody doing it here, but a common refrain when Masterpiece was going on was …
“So … can I force a Jewish delicatessen to sell pork, then ?”
Obviously, pork wasn’t their stock-in-trade.
But they couldn’t refuse to sell a corned beef sandwich to somebody because that customer was a member of a protected class.
My take on this is that the text is custom work. The courts have – IIRC – found that to be speech, but not the cake underneath.
The cake isn’t speech. The writing is. From memory, you can’t – as a public accommodation – use discriminatory speech, but neither can you be forced to include nearly any form of speech.
I think that’s how it went 
It’s a false equivalence. Being a racist is wrong and racism doesn’t deserve to be defended. There’s nothing wrong with being gay so people deserve to be defended when they are assailed for being gay.
No, because pork is something they don’t sell (to anyone). Just as you can’t force them to sell washing machines.
I believe they believe they are not participating in something they find sinful.
A possible analogy might be asking a kosher food establishment to cook pork ribs for a catering job. Sure, other businesses will do that, but by refusing to cook pork the kosher business is not themselves violating their religious rules.
Not 100% sure on that, still working on the analogy, but right now it’s a working hypothesis.
Mind, I’m not talking about how the law views it, I’m trying to see the viewpoint of the baker here, which may or may not overlap with the law.
A kosher restaurant is not going to have the facilities to cook pork, nor know how to handle pork safely. They will not have any recipes for pork, and if they obtain them, they may not have the pans and seasonings called for. Pork is not on their menu. Unless they have a sign up that says “We do anything for you,” they have a right to say “We prepare only what is on our menu.”
For example, if a baker made birthday cakes, but did not make wedding cakes at all, because this baker did not do anything that elaborate, the baker would be in his rights to refuse to do a wedding cake for a gay couple. That fact the he did a sheet cake saying “Congratulations,” with a few roses on it, for a couple having a very tiny wedding does not release him from a general policy of not doing “wedding cakes.” Everyone knows what is meant by “wedding cake.” If the gay couple wants anything even the slightest bit elaborate, they need to go to a place that specializes in wedding cakes.
And if our hypothetical gay couple wants a sheet cake with a few roses that says “Congratulations,” for their tiny wedding with six guests, honestly, they should just go in and ask for that, and not mention it’s for a small wedding.
It’s not typical, in my experience, when ordering baked goods, to tell the bakery what they are for. If the cake says “Happy Birthday,” or “Happy Anniversary,” one can guess, and a wedding cake is specific, but I have ordered all kinds of things and not felt it necessary to tell the baker what they were for.
I ordered a sheet cake for my son’s bris, and did not feel compelled to inform anyone at the bakey about the upcoming event.
Similarly, when I bought two 10 lb. bags of flour, and a crapton of yeast and barley malt, and the cashier commented that I was “doing some baking,” I answered “Yup.” I did not feel the need to tell her I was baking 4 dozen bagels for my son’s bar mitzvah.
Like I said, the analogy needs work.
Maybe a better one would be someone asking a kosher caterer to supply cheeseburgers? From the standpoint of food handling, ingredients, etc. that would be possible but of course it would be completely NOT kosher to do that.
We will supply a hamburger buffet, where people can assemble their own hamburgers, and cheese may be an option. You are going to have to supply your own plates, flatware, serving dishes, etc, as this would render ours nonkosher.
We are not sure why you are asking a kosher catering service to do this. You might be happier with a different service. We can recommend one.
This confuses me. It’s always been my understanding that the rules prevent kosher Jewish people from even cooking pork. You can’t be a kosher-certified location if you cook and sell pork, right?
So then it wouldn’t be about participation at all. It would be because the rules say it is forbidden for the shop owner. (Same with making cheeseburgers.) That doesn’t work with the cake thing, since I am unaware of any religion that makes baking cakes against the rules
I also note that no one seems to have a problem with making cakes for other “sinful” purposes. Why would a gay marriage be the only time it counts as participation?
The issue with your question is that the baker wasn’t asked to make a guy wedding cake, they were asked to make a wedding cake for a guy coup. They could have sold the same cake to a straight couple and it would have looked the same.
You might have a problem with selling a cake to a group of Proud Boys, but that’s not the same as not being willing to write “Death to all whatever” on the cake