People eat lunch every day. Regular meals are a basic human need. Wedding parties, however, usually only occur once in a lifetime. I think it’s extremely problematic to put them in the same category when it comes to discrimination law.
I can see why a hungry homosexual would want a sandwich from a homophobe. But see no reason why a homosexual couple would want a homophobe to serve a hundred sandwiches at their wedding party. If I knew a caterer disapproved of my wedding, I wouldn’t even let him serve me if he wanted to, let alone force him to. Such a request is not a dignified one, and accordingly doesn’t deserve to be treated with dignity.
So what’s your criteria for when discrimination is OK? It sounds like once in a lifetime is fine, and once a day isn’t. So how about once a week? Once a month? Isn’t is just easier to say “you can’t discriminate?”
And as a customer, you should definitely have the freedom to make that choice. Someone else might make a different choice, and they should have that right too.
(I think about this every time one of these discussions pops up).
… Back in the era of small local ISPs, my ex owned and ran a small local ISP, and one town over a former classmate of his also owned and operated a small local ISP.
Former classmate received an application from a local chapter of a white supremacy group, and rejected it. The group pursued the matter through legal channels and the decision went against him: he was not allowed to reject the group’s application and he had to provide internet services to them.
The means the group were entitled to the same services as his other customers, including an email address in the form whitesupremacygroup@hisbusinessname.com.au and free hosting of a homepage for them at members.hisbusinessname.com.au/whitesupremacygroup
My ex was full of sympathy for him because his business name was being linked to this group every time they used the email address he had to give them, or whenever they linked back to their homepage. There was a genuine fear that there could be a backlash against his business, if people perceived his hosting of them as endorsement. I certainly did. I stumbled across their site listed in the member’s page directory and was horrified - that’s how the ex and I got talking about it and he explained the back story.
On the surface, having laws that prevent discrimination seems like an obvious good, but it can really depend on how they’re applied. If they move beyond “protected class” protections, as they have here, then businesses can be forced into accepting customers who could be detrimental to their business.
So, what if a “Mom and Pop” bakery in small-town Bigotville can’t refuse to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, but word gets round that they catered for that wedding and the good folk of Bigotville boycott the bakery and put them out of business? Experiencing a backlash for providing a service you didn’t want to supply is a pretty unpleasant consequence, and not outside the realm of possibility. In many ways I feel I’d prefer that nasty Mom and Pop to refuse the job and be boycotted for being the ugly little bigots they are.
There are a lot of out-there circumstances you can think of, but it doesn’t mean the solution is to throw up your hands and allow discrimination. In your first case, I don’t think something like that would fly in the U.S. Maybe corporate policy would force them to accept all applicants, but the government wouldn’t (racist isn’t a protected class).
Your second example is much more hypothetical and IMO unrealistic. If the baker was forced by the big bad government to make a cake, their fellow bigots would be showering them with sympathy and extra business, not shunning them.
It would be easier, sure, but it would also be unfair. Not all discrimination is harmful, and the state has no business sticking its nose in non-harmful discrimination.
More important than frequency, I think, are these two considerations.
Is it a necessity, or a luxury? People need food and clothing and housing, so providers of such things should be required to treat all comers equally. But nobody needs diamond rings. If the local jeweler wants to ban blacks from his store, I see no reason for the law to be involved.
Is it an object, or a service? Selling an object does not imply you agree with the person to whom you sell. But if you personally provide a service, you are making the implicit statement that you think it’s a good thing that the service is being performed. Nobody should be obligated to make such a declaration against his will.
It’s funny how suddenly religious and full of piety certain people get when it comes to gay marriage. But you never hear of a baker or caterer refusing to serve at weddings where one or both of the couple is divorced. Or refusing to serve couples who have out-of-wedlock children. If they were consistent in their religious fanaticism, maybe I could scrap up some sympathy for their cause. But it’s picky-choosy fanaticism.
Except history has proven to have different outcomes than your preference. What if Mom and Pop refuse a job and it’s made public and the outcome turns out to be they receive more business in Bigotville because of thier stance. It turns out the people of the town live up to the name. A competing business faces the choice of adopting a similar policy or going under for not being supportive of bigotry.
Bigots are not always a minority that can be dealt with through boycotting. If the majority supports bigotry then boycotting will not fix the problem. It can make it worse.
Are you OK with society creating second class citizens that do not have access to the same luxuries others have access to?
How do you want to define luxury? Is it OK for a restaurant to ban blacks because black people will still have access to supermarkets to meet the basic need of food? Should Nordstrom’s be able to say no Hispanics because they can still buy clothing at Walmart?
Who knows? Maybe the bakers are the best around. Maybe they are the only ones in town. Maybe the gay couple just makes bad decisions. I don’t think it really matters why.
I’m for tolerance and respect on a personal level.
But I put freedom, justice and equality above all else on a legal level. You can be as bigoted as you like in your home, but in front of the law we are all equal.
Only tangentially related, but I noticed more of this same recently. You know the Duck Dynasty guys and their persona of refusing to portray anything that’s less than Christian, right? Well, the other day, Willie (one of the main two brothers), performed the wedding of a country music singer, Jason Aldean. Why is this worth a mention? It seems the family that’s very vocal against gays has no problem with this fellow, who’d not too long ago, got busted by the media macking on some chick in public. The one he just married. After he left his wife and (how ever many) kids for after their affair. So, I guess it’s as different as this, eh?
Individual businesses are not “society.” And neither will discriminatory practice of individual business prevent people from getting the products they want, in this Internet age of ours.
It depends on location. I would be much more inclined to let a Manhattan restaurant ban blacks than a restaurant at the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere.
I ran into someone on Facebook who said that there would be no problems so long as they didn’t say it was a gay wedding.
So, this person’s answer to the problem is for a gay person who wants flowers or a cake to never mention the person they love to whom they’re getting married. :smack:
I suppose the cake decorator would know when someone ordered two grooms.
Or, honestly, if no bride shows up to handle these things. The guy doesn’t normally order the flowers, cake, and so on.
What tests do you want the government to put in place to decide when discriminating against protected classes is acceptable? How should these decisions be made?
If there are two restaurants side by side in the middle of nowhere is only the one who requests the right to discriminate first granted it? Should it be a bigotry time share, one month Bob’s gets to ban blacks the next Joe’s can?
When a black person goes in to a bigot’s place of business should tax funded police officers be forced to remove them? If black people keep going in against the owners wishes should we assign permanent officers to protect that owners rights?
I’m trying to imagine a set of laws and a society where your idea’s are the prevailing view and I can’t picture one that doesn’t suck.
I ran into someone today on Facebook who said that gays shouldn’t be pushing their sex lives onto other people.
Which is *totally *what a wedding does. :smack:
All that aside, I don’t understand how asking a business that sells flowers or cake to people getting married, to sell flowers or cake to a gay couple, is any kind of religious imposition.
Business owners don’t have to approve of their clients, nor do they have to have coitus with them; they just have to do provide the businesses goods or services to them.
You’re forgetting something that’s very very important.
We aren’t robots who operate just fine as long as we have our basic physical needs met. We are also social, emotional animals. We all function better when we feel like we belong and that we’ve been dealt a fair hand in life.
When some members of society are favored over others for no freakin’ good reason, it makes people experience a whole lotta negative emotions. These negative emotions make them operate in a suboptimal fashion. They are more likely to suffer mental and physical illness and engage in self-destructive behavior. They are more likely to detached from society altogether and become anti-social. They are more likely to raise children who behave in a suboptimal fashion. Which only makes it more likely that they will continue to become discriminated against.
So it first starts off being about diamond rings and wedding cakes. Then one day the dry cleaner says they don’t want to keep doing Mr. Fancy-Pants laundry because AIDS! Then the teachers start going, “Hmm, well if those guys can get a religious exemption, why can’t we? Don’t we have rights?” and suddenly the gay kids are being kicked out of class. Now all the gay families are walking around town in unlaundered clothes, with illiterate children, and the rest of the town folk–who maybe don’t have anything against homosexuals–now are discriminating against them because they are stupid and stinky. And the gay families are demoralized and stigmitized and living on the outskirts of society, not being functional at all.
It’s easy to say, “Well, they should move!” But moving only entrenches the problem and makes it worse for those who have no ability to move.
All businesses operate with the permission of the government. The services of government enable and facilitate enterprise. The government is the people. If my tax dollars are supporting the infrastructure you’re taking advantage of to make a profit, then I should be able to walk into your business and reap some of those benefits too.
Individual businesses are owned, run, and staffed by people. The business isn’t some kind of magical entity that provides goods and services; the people who own, run, and work there do.