What if that business is a gas station, and EVERY gas station in town had the same sign, and your gas tank was empty?
Or it’s the only grocery store in town on Thanksgiving morning, and your cupboards were bare?
I’m a little cynical of the most recent lawsuit, given the timing, but many of these cases are attempts to clarify current law. Does religious freedom allow discrimination against other classes, or is forcing an owner to act against his/her beliefs worse? We may each have our own views on the topic, but these cases are about finding what the COURT holds to be the best scenario.
If you want to role back the civil rights act and allow discrimination, how should we handle such issues? Should a bigoted shop keep be allowed to advertise to entice their hated demographic to come in so they can derive pleasure from wasting their time and rejecting them? How about if they film it and post videos they can profit off of?
Maybe I am being whooshed, but I thought the whole linchpin was the difference between “generic product” and “customized product.” The former is demanding that a business provide everyone the same generic product, but the latter is demanding something much more of the business, encroaching on the businesses’ own rights or beliefs.
That if a white person comes into an African-American bakery and wants to buy doughnuts that are already on the shelf - doughnuts already premade, available to the general public - that the black baker cannot refuse him, but if the white person comes in and says “I want you to bake me some doughnuts that are decorated “KKK” in frosting and also have Confederate Stars and Bars” that the baker can indeed refuse because 1) he doesn’t make any KKK/pro-Confederate doughnuts for anyone else and 2) this is encroaching on the black baker’s own dignity, values and beliefs.
Overall the court did not answer this question. So it will keep ending up in court till the legislature writes applicable law or the supreme court makes a meaningful decision.
I’m of the opinion a business should be required to make any item they would make for any other customer regardless of what protected class they may belong to.
If they would make a vanilla cake with chocolate frosting for straight white couples, they should also be required to make a vanilla cake with chocolate frosting for any gay or black couple who comes in.
If the shop does not offer a rainbow shaped cake or swastika shaped cake, then it’s not a service they offer, they should not be compelled to create things they wouldn’t make for anyone.
Just to bring us back to the real claims. He’s not arguing on freedom of religion grounds. He’s arguing on freedom of speech grounds. He’s claiming that he’s an artist and government cannot compel his artistic speech. He likens himself to a painter. Anyone can purchase his paintings that he has already done, but he reserves the right to choose commissions that reflect his sense of artistic propriety. He’s saying in essence that he may want to paint a swastika in Diwali inspired Hindu colors and anyone is welcome to buy it, but if someone comes in and says they want a black, white and red swastika for their neo-Nazi rally, that he doesn’t want to have to paint that. He feels that the government is compelling his speech to make him create it.
I think it’s actually really complicated and hinges on a lot more than simply bigotry vs religion. Firstly, it hinges on how far exactly can the government go in enforcing laws protecting a protected class. It also forces us to ask how one actually becomes a protected class and how does that policy work and is it constitutional. And I think the hardest question to ask is what is art-a commodity or speech? Could I have asked Jacob Lawrence to paint a ‘Caucasian Migration’ series demonstrating the struggles that white people had in the New World? Was his commissioned art speech or simply a commodity to be bought and sold? I think that that’s really a big question. If they rule against this baker, they’re going to have to come up with a really solid reason why someone like Ruby Williams is protected from compelled speech, but this baker guy isn’t.
Yeah you are correct. It would be the same as not allowing them on the bus at all.
If you’d like a similar historical situation it would be like the Greensboro Woolworths refusing to serve black customers. If only the chef’s then had been savvy enough to refuse based on the artistic effort they put into thier sandwiches, they might be able to be legally discriminating to this day!
The real important thing here is you defend a bigots right to discriminate above the rights of an innocent minorities right to live in our society with the same access to services as anyone else, because that’s justice right?
More accurately, it would be that Woolworth’s would have to serve anyone black that came to their lunch counter with everything that they normally serve, but not be forced to write in ketchup across the bread ‘Segregation is bad. Integration is awesome.’
In this case, a transgendered person can say, “I would like to buy a cake.” and the baker has to say yes. A transgendered person can say, “I would like to buy a normal cake, but when I get home, I’m going to use it to celebrate being transgendered.” and the baker has to say yes. If a transgendered person says “I would like to buy a customized cake that you are specifically crafting for the purposes of celebrating me being transgendered.” a baker can say, “That is a message that I do not wish to use my talents to create. You may have a normal off-the-shelf cake instead.”
As an addendum, let’s turn it back into a painting instead of a cake. Ruby Williams can not refuse to sell a painting to a white person (Not that she would, she seems like quite a nice person.) She could not refuse to sell a painting to a white person who then takes it home and makes it the centerpiece of a Caucasian pride display. She can though refuse if the white person came to her and said, “I want to commission you to make a specific painting about how awesome white people are.” The first and second are discrimination since you’re not providing a service that you provide to everyone. The third is compelled speech because it’s forcing you to make a statement via your artwork. They are (perhaps) different things.
That’s a very dubious analogy. So far as I’m aware, nobody asked the baker to write any explicit statement of support for any view his cake.
Suppose a jeweler sells watches with a free inscription service, should the jeweler be allowed to refuse to inscribe “Frank & Ted, eternal love” on the watch, when he’d be willing to inscribe “Frank & Tina, eternal love” that watch?
Suppose a baker sells personalized wedding cakes, that consist of putting bride and groom figurine on top of the cake, along with the bride & groom’s two names. Should he be allowed to decline to personalize a similar wedding cake where the only difference is that the figurines are both men and the two names are both male?
I think if you offer personalized products, you should not be permitted to refuse to offer a personalized product that’s essentially the same when the only difference is attributable to membership in a protected class. If there’s an exception to anti-discrimination law based on artistic expression being speech, then it should be carefully and narrowly defined, otherwise it’s just a gaping loophole for every bigot to claim their product is “art”.
To continue, (sorry I’m breaking this up. I have ADHD and my mind wanders from point to point.)
Photography I think is where you’re really going to get into an interesting discussion. Can I pay Ansel Adams (obviously not now) to take a picture of something that he doesn’t want to take a picture of. Say a random tree? Could I say ‘I want you as an artist to take a picture of this tree in my yard.’ Could Ansel Adams refuse? We would normally say, “Yes.” He is an artist and can choose to represent what he wants, even if someone else asked him to take a picture of a tree in their yard and he complied. What happens though when it’s a photograph of something that is controversial or protected? If Ansel Adams takes a picture of a predominantly white church, could we compel him to take a picture of a predominantly black church? As an artist can he just say that he finds the black church artistically uncompelling and we accept that as an artistic freedom or do we force him to either take the picture or lose his ability to be a photographer?
Let’s look at a famous image like Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” It’s a famous photograph taken by Lange that depicts a white dust bowl refugee. This was done in service to the FSA. Could say a black family compel her to take a similar picture of a black migrant in the name of non-discrimination? I think it’s an interesting conundrum.
I think though that that is exactly the problem. Is the inscription simply typing a word into an engraver? I think it’s hard to say that that is art. Or is it calligraphy that is personalized and distinct? Maybe that is art. I would liken it to say a Muslim calligraphist. Let’s say that he makes a living by hand-lettering messages for people “I love you sweetheart” in Arabic or the like. Could I force him to write, “Muhammed is a fraud. Death to Muslims.” or can he say, “No. My artwork is not for such a hateful message.” Or if we want to turn it into a protected class issue, someone simply wants him to write “Jesus is the only sun of the Triune God and salvation comes only from Him.” Assuming our calligrapher is willing to write the shahada, can the government compel him to write something that he finds offensive?
No one was asking the baker to write a message, though.
It would be like if someone black came to the counter on Juneteenth and tried to order a special meal (off the normal menu) to celebrate the abolition of slavery in the US, and they said no you can’t have that because I don’t approve of celebrating that occasion.
Trees don’t really illuminate anything, since trees are not a protected class.
If you’re an artistic photographer who just follows your muse to take artistic pictures and sell them, obviously you can choose to photograph whatever you wish. It would be preposterous to suggest otherwise.
But if you run a business that offers photographic portraits to the public, then I think that’s pretty clearly on the other side of a line - you can’t offer that service only to white people.
If you’re a wedding photographer, where your business involves attending weddings and taking photographs? That’s not speech, it’s still offering a product to the public. But it’s seems like a difficult marginal case to me. Perhaps there should be an exception to anti-discrimination for a business that involves personal participation, but it needs to be carefully defined. Or perhaps there’s an argument for a stricter standard, that if you’re not willing to provide the same service to weddings for all members of a protected class, you must get out of that business.
Whatever the merits of the situation, to suggest that left-wing extremists are motivated to persecute one poor baker for kudos is just silly. It’s like claiming that Rosa Parks was trying to persecute one poor bus driver.
Obviously, the motivation here is to bring a relevant test case to clarify the law.
If this baker doesn’t want to be that test case, he has a rather easy path to avoid that. It’s just as much his choice that he wants to assert his right to be bigot under the law.
Not quite it. If they came to the counter and asked for a meal catered off of the catering list, the counter would have to comply. Would the counter have to comply if they said that they wanted it to create a special and unique Juneteenth dish for their party.
I too would like the law to be consistently applied this way, but that is not the case.
A CA ruling went as far to say patrons could select cakes out of the case and the baker would have to comply but they could not compel the baker to make a cake, even if it’s a cake they’ve made in the past.
Because everyone shopping for wedding cakes would be thrilled with the option of selecting a pre-made cake months before their wedding…
I don’t think they should need to create a unique dish, but if the patron asked for a dish they already offer but for the purpose of celebrating the 19th, they should provide it.
