You are right, both cases were settled. But the settlements both involved adding gay matchmaking services to the site. I got my information from this article where conservative Christian and former Focus on the Family member Neil Patrick Warren referred to being "forced by a judge " to open the sites to gays.
Maybe we could settle these problems easier if we just resolved it with a cage match between Neil Patrick Warren and Neil Patrick Harris…
You are missing an important point. Can I make non-whites sign a waiver that they will not reject my portrait for “getting the skin tone wrong”? I’m happy to paint your portrait, but as I said, I’m not practiced at painting dark skin tones, so I need you to sign a waiver that you will pay me even if you object to the the way your skin tone comes out.
Now, do you still want me to paint your portrait? Otherwise, I’ll accept payment it advance. That will be $5,000. Thank-you!
But seriously. why on earth would you want to force someone to paint your portrait when that person did not want to? Similar with the wedding cake. How do you know the baker isn’t going to spit in the batter before baking it?
Lets change your example to dogs. Black People vs White People vs Experience painting is a problem for 2 reasons. First, it’s really not any harder to paint a dark skinned person than it is a light skinned one, in fact, as I’ve told you it’s actually easier. Just, take my word for it, it is. But mainly it’s the protected class issue that gets in the way so to illustrate your most basic point let’s go with dogs.
Suppose you paint portraits of people’s dogs. OK, not you, Fred paints portraits of peoples dogs. But Fred has a secret. Fred hates Pit Bulls and Pit Bull Owners. Fred - tells me - well I’ve never really painted Pit Bills and they have a funny shaped head and I don’t know If I can paint it correctly, please sign this waiver that you will pay me even if you don’t like the results… fine… most people are going to say no thanks and move on.
But suppose I step on the porch to leave and Fred forgets the window is open. I hear him say on his cell phone, “Yeah you can’t believe this redneck asshole who just came in here with his demon dog pit bull and actually wanted me to paint the damn thing!!!”
Well, I’m going to fuck Fred and I’m going to fuck Fred HARD.
I’m going force Fred to paint my Pit Bull and I’m going to ruin Fred in the process as well. I’m going to the Better Businesses Bureau, the news paper, the local pet stores, every where I can go that Fred might want to gain income from, I am going to fuck Fred HARD and RUIN his reputation. Because who the fuck is he to pass judgement on MY DOG.
Now, John Mace, the problem with your hypothetical examples is that it’s never about Fred, a racist bigoted asshole, it’s allways about Tom, some guy who for some innocent reason, doesn’t want to supply service to group ABC1234. But, in real life, even though people like Tom do exist, most people who want to refuse service to group ABC1234 are a lot lot more like Fred than they are like Tom.
In reality, I really wouldn’t try to ruin Fred over the problem with the dog. In reality, it’s trivial and not worth the aggravation of carrying out “the fight”. But a wedding, is the opposite of that, a wedding is not trivial. If Fred refuses to bake a cake for me and my partner because he thinks WE ARE AN ABOMINATION Fred is going to have a very very BIG fight on his hands.
No offense, John Mace, but I fail to see how you fail to see how an important a wedding is or how offended someone would be if Fred said that me and my lover were AN ABOMINATION.
Well of course I’m not going to eat the cake. I’m going to blow it up with firecrackers and post the video to my face book page. Fred won’t mind because that will win him points with all his bigoted asshole buddies. Look how persecuted poor old Fred is!!!
So no harm, then. That’s what I thought.
Do you make all customers sign the identical waiver? If not, you’re breaking the law.
Do you charge all customers the same rate? Do you make them all pay in advance? Denny’s Restaurants got in trouble by making black customers pay in advance when white customers weren’t obliged to do the same.
Gee, why do I want people to obey the law? Because allowing them to break it at will is harmful to me and my friends and family.
(And cooks have been caught spitting in food, and fined heavily for it. There are ways to detect this.)
This is utter nonsense. Should stores also be expected to produce ads listing all the products they do not carry?
Revisiting the dog portraits, say I have a business called Perfect Pet Portraits. I’m a really talented artist and people live my portraits of cats and dogs. Then someone comes in and wants me to patin a portrait of snakes. I fucking hate snakes. The reasons that my cat and dog portraits are so good is because I really love cats and dogs and I can see in them what the owners see in them. But snakes, no freaking way. Would it make sense for anyone to force me to paint a portrait if their disgusting fucking snake, they that love!?
They do have the option of no discriminating against protected classes. Might be easier than listing products they won’t sell to people.
But hell if they want to needlessly make peoples lives more difficult, they can produce a list.
Rather than trying to rework the system to accommodate bigots how about we just continue to follow existing law? Don’t discriminate against protected classes or suffer consequences.
Another nail in the coffin against discriminating against people based on sexual orientation.
The ruling is specific to employment because it’s the EEOC but it paints a clear path forward through the courts to apply the CRAof1964 to sexual orientation.
This raises another issue. It points to it (as some have already said) “not being about the cake”. It’s about making a point. So, I’m a baker not wanting to bake a cake for a SS wedding, you know this and want to make a point, you want me to “obey the law”. And if I don’t want to do this, you want to punish me. One way to do that is to sue me. But let’s say I can’t afford the lawsuit and I begrudgingly bake the cake. But you know what, you’re not through with me. You get the cake and then claim that it’s not as nice as the cake you know I baked for a hetero wedding last week. So you refuse to pay. Now I have to go after you for payment for a cake you claim was not what you expected.
Now, in general, any business can have a problem with a customer. And some customers are just plain difficult. Some you just can’t please. Some are complete assholes. When I am talking to a prospective client, one of the things I gauge is "is this someone I want to do business with?. I’ve quietly declined jobs just because I think, this guy is going to be a problem. I perform a creative service, and I have to feel that the client and I are somewhat aligned. If he wants something that is not in my wheelhouse, the odds of me being able to give him what he is expecting are reduced. I always try to assess this before I take a job just so I don’t wind up with an unhappy client and a big problem after I’ve done the work. Seems like a good way to conduct business.
Now going back to the gay couple who wants to force me to make their cake, if I know there’s a problem of mis-alignment going in, that I don’t feel that I can muster up the excitement to create something up to my standards, or theirs, why wold someone want to force me avoid what I foresee might have an ugly ending. And what is stoping the gay couple—who really is less interested in the cake than making a point and having me knuckle under—from simply saying that they don’t think the cake I made them is up to my bakery’s usual standards and they don’t want to pay?
Seems like I’d be forced into entering into a business arrangement that I’d ordinarily avoid. Not specifically because of the client’s gayness, but because of my assessment that this job looks like it will be more hassle than it’s worth. I’ve turned down clients because I don’t think there was a good creative fit with what they were looking for and me getting excited enough about the job to do a really good job on it. No one providing a creative service should be asked to do that.
This notion of harm here is a stretch. The choice is, should the power of the state be used to:
A) force someone to work agains their religious convictions
B) protect someone from working against their religious convictions and a gay couple having to go to a bakery down the street
Given the protections we have for religious freedom,and the important role it has played in the very founding of this country, it seems insane to me that anyone would really thinks A is a more appropriate use of the power of the state.
There is a simple solution to all of that. Just bake the cake when they ask you to and do it with a good attitude and do your best work. I’m pretty sure if you did that you would have gretful customer, not the problem customer you are obsessing over.
Except that baking a cake is not that creative. Sorry, but it’s just not. Now, if the topic was compos a piano melody for my wedding party, yes, you are right, that might be hard to do under duress.
It sounds to me like bakers can do exactly that. In fact, bakers who want to discriminate against gay couples (or black people, or Jews) can probably get away with it if they frame it thusly, and I’m not sure if it’s possible to do anything in cases in which the baker says “I didn’t like them and their attitude and didn’t want to work with them”.
Swap “gay marriage” for “interracial marriage” and see if B still makes sense.
In addition, there is the hypothetical boycott from discriminatory organizations against nondiscriminatory organizations, which did happen in the south if I recall correctly.
Not saying that there are any real cases here, but let’s say there was huge pressure to not serve same sex couples, to the point that most people in a small town would boycott the owner if they did serve them. But the owner genuinely wants to serve them, either from actual non-prejudice, or at the very least their money’s as green as the next couple’s. The owner can just point to the law and shrug “hey, I WANTED to not serve them, but I HAVE to because it’s the law!”
See how well that works out at every other job. Yes, boss, I will do these 6 things - because I enjoy them - but don’t ask me to do number 7.
If you believe the stories, this tiny little redneck town in Georgia, back while it was still segregated there were white business owners who wanted to serve blacks but it would of ended their business due to social backlash. But I doubt any town anywhere in America has that level of hostility towards gay people.
Hypothetical: John and Joe are getting married. And they want a cake from the bakery down the street that they go to every week. They know the owner and sit in their often having coffee and croissants. Joe and John have a dear friend, Susan (happily married to a man) who helps people pull off weddings. She arranges for the venue, decorates it, does the flowers, etc. As a gift to her dear friend John and Joe, she tells them, “I’m going to take care of everything.” They’re thrilled. She has exquisite taste and they trust whatever she will do.
Okay, so when it comes to the cake, she goes to the bakery that she knows Joe and John like. She talks to the owner, explains that she’s a wedding planner and they discuss the cake. "They talk about the height, number of tiers, type of cake, icing, color, etc. They agree at a huge 6-tier cake that is going to cost $5,000! All is good, then the baker asks, “And what would you like the cake to say?” She replies, “Happy Wedding Day Joe & John”. The baker pauses uncomfortably and says, apologetically, that he is a devout Christian and wouldn’t feel good about making a cake for an even that goes against his deeply help religious convictions, and regretfully, has to decline the very lucrative job.
Should the baker be sued? Could he be sued? By whom? The client, Susan, is a heterosexual woman. He is not saying he won’t bake a cake for her, just not for a particular flavor of event.
Hypothetical 2: Susan is getting divorced from her husband who has been cheating on her. She’s tired of his shit and wants, files for divorce and wants to celebrate her new-found freedom. She is going to throw a huge bash for all her friends. She wants a great big wedding-typ cake and wants it to read. “Happy Divorce Day. Good riddance to the asshole!” But the baker, a devout Christian is against the concept of divorce and again, apologetically declines the job.
Should he be sued? Could he be sued? On what grounds?
From a religious conviction standpoint, is there any difference between his convictions against divorce and SS marriage?
We’re not talking about an employee carrying out orders from a boss. That would be a different discussion. We’re talking about someone in a creative field being forced to create something they have no interest in creating. I turn down work quite often, sometimes simply because I don’t think I can muster up the energy or excitement to do as good a job as I’d like to. In fact, I’ve turned down the most lucrative job I’ve ever been offered because I, disagreeing with what the client makes, I know I would not have done a good job.
Imagine a popular sculptor who does corporate installations. let’s say he’s gay, should he be forced to spend a year of his life working on an installation for Hobby Lobby? Should a devout Christian sculptor be forced to spend a year working on an installation for Planned Parenthood?