I’m saying that the hatred comes first, then comes the justification by religion (in general, and in America, at least). Religion didn’t drive white southerners to oppress black people – hatred and bigotry driven by other factors did, and they found a convenient rationalization in selective reading of religious texts.
My guess is that the Supreme Court would have declined to hear a speculative case where racial discrimination was involved. For a non-speculative case, I think they’d seek to protect freedom of expression, but be pragmatic. Moving the discussion from interracial marriage, if a business declined to create Juneteenth media, whether written articles, posters, online objects, or edible objects, I think the Supreme Court would back their decision to decline the business opportunity.
Why are you moving from interracial marriage. If you think a wedding contractor (like Smith) should be allowed to do weddings for single race, but not interracial, marriages, just say so.
So you get to be the arbiter of what’s an actual religious belief and what is a purported religious belief based on underlying motives? Or would that be the job of some government department?
I’d happily take the job, but it’d be better if SCOTUS did it. I mean a non-corrupt SCOTUS, which hopefully we will have someday.
Or just the courts in general-- Usually it wouldn’t need to make it all the way up to the Supremes. At least, not if we had courts that recognized precedent and the concept of rule of law.
And courts judge all sorts of things already, because that’s exactly their job.
I’m not sure what a wedding contractor is, but I’m presuming you mean a goods/service provider hoping to be hired by the wedding organisers, whether the couple getting married or a wedding planner acting as a general contractor. If it’s a venue hiring out a location, then no, they shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate against interracial couples because the location is not expressing any opinion. However, suppose the location has a celebrant included in their package, and the celebrant is opposed to interracial marriage. There’s then a conflict between the celebrant’s right to not be compelled to officiate an interracial marriage, and the couple’s right to purchase the wedding package.
I think the celebrant has the legal right to decline to officiate at the wedding. His participation would be based on his individual beliefs, and I don’t think the government can compel him to reject those beliefs. I think the Supreme Court decision supports my belief.
An interesting question, and perhaps one more topical to the OP, is would the venue be able to offer celebrant-led weddings to non-interracial couples, and BYO celebrant weddings to interracial couples. I think the Supreme Court ruling would allow such a practice. The ruling enforces the principal that the government can’t compel a violation of free speech. That should restrict the government from forcing businesses to compel their employee’s speech. However, if the wedding venue, independent of government intervention, chose to require it’s celebrants to perform interracial weddings, I think that would be legal. Groff v. DeJoy set a higher standard for businesses to provide religious accommodation. In that case, Alito wrote. "We think it is enough to say that an employer must show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.” My opinion is that the hypothetical wedding venue could state that the lost revenue from providing a reduced service for interracial weddings, plus the impact to their reputation, would exceed the threshold set by Groff v. DeJoy.
The government, including the courts, should seek to create a legal framework where people’s freedoms are maximised, but also where people are treated fairly, including being free from discrimination. Sometimes those two goals have conflicts, such as in CREATIVE LLC ET AL. v. ELENIS. Government trying to regulate religion would work against both goals.
‘Umm, I just wanted them to; build us a website/bake us a cake/cater the reception meal!’
I don’t have the first clue where you’re getting “officiate at the wedding” from?
I was replying to Hamlet.
A “wedding contactor” could be any of a number of service providers. A celebrant/officiant is a wedding service provider where it’s obvious speech will be part of her role.
I feel like the website is speech. And catering the chicken isn’t. I’ve seen arguments either way on the cake, but I’m inclined to think most “off the shelf” wedding cakes shouldn’t be considered speech.
Again, why shift to a celebrant?
Do you think bigot Lorie Smith should have legal protection for only doing her wedding website work for people she decides are “white” and refusing to do so for interracial couples or people of color?
I’m boiling mad about this crass decision. I’m so mad I can barely write this. If I have a “sincerely held” non-religious conviction, does that allow me to do whatever I want to anyone anywhere? And to call this bigot an “artist” when all she probably does is plug some names into a template and press Go. Give me a break.
On CNN’s “Smerconish,” this morning, Lorie Smith and the Alliance Defending Freedom attorney, Kristen Waggoner were interviewed.
Smerconish asked [paraphrasing] if I see the website you designed for a opposite-sex couple’s wedding, and I want to hire you to do the exact same thing for my same-sex wedding – only changing the names, the date, and the pictures – would you?
Smith’s non-answer [again: paraphrasing] is that she only does custom content, not cookie-cutter, templatized stuff, implying that this request wouldn’t fall within her wheelhouse.
She conspicuously did not give a yes or no response. The attorney was silent.
Which, to me, sounded like quite a sleazy way around a pretty damned important question.
It also got her around helping us to understand where on that continuum between “off-the-rack” and “uniquely and absolutely custom” she feels the line should be drawn.
I do believe that somebody could make a good faith [NPI] argument, before SCOTUS, that not ‘creating’ for an interracial couple does not violate anti-discrimination laws (race being a protected class), because – though the issue could be framed as (read: absolutely is) one of race – “it really isn’t a matter of race because I’m not discriminating against a black person or a white person.”
Maybe this is already clearly prohibited under well-established law, but – obviously – so what?
Do I think the answer should lie in Loving v. Virginia? [bolding mine]
In a unanimous decision, the Court held that distinctions drawn according to race were generally “odious to a free people” and were subject to “the most rigid scrutiny” under the Equal Protection Clause. The Virginia law, the Court found, had no legitimate purpose “independent of invidious racial discrimination.” The Court rejected the state’s argument that the statute was legitimate because it applied equally to both blacks and whites and found that racial classifications were not subject to a “rational purpose” test under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court also held that the Virginia law violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. “Under our Constitution,” wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren, “the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.”
Of course, I do.
But – again – so what?
What if nobody actually asked you to design anything at all? What if you made the whole thing up?
I agree, or even most custom ones.
I always found this hypothetical interesting.
Suppose I’m getting married to my same sex spouse, and I’ve decided I want a wedding cake baked by a company that refuses to serve same sex couples on the grounds covered in this lawsuit. Not a rainbow cake, not a sheet cake that says Happy Marriage Ana and Beth ( the tackiness of a sheet cake with text for a wedding is a subject for another day) not a cake with a two bride topper. I just want a pretty cake with a customized floral decorations, two varieties of flowers with special meaning to us.
So I go in by myself and order a cake, maybe I even take an opposite sex friend with me and insinuate that he’s my fiancé- maybe I even lie and say he is.
The big day comes and I pick up my cake, maybe I even add the two bride topper. Then I post pictures of the cake with my wedding photos, crediting the bakery. The post goes viral and the bakery claims damage to their reputation as bigots, and claim that they have been harmed by other bigots refusing to buy their cakes.
Does the bakery have a case?
It’s bad enough that people propose ridiculous hypotheticals on a message board in order to win internet points. Now they propose ridiculous hypotheticals to win SCOTUS cases.
What if none of this happens, but the bakery goes to court saying, “Well, it could have happened!”.
Does the bakery have a case?
AIRI there was no problem making exactly that cake . . . until the baker/owner found out precisely who it was for.
Apparently it’s a sort of Schrodinger’s Cake, the cakes ‘’‘gayness’‘’ is only revealed when it’s for a non heterosexual marriage.
Using hypotheticals and analogies have been a part of legal interpretations/caselaw since the Code of Hammurabi. Hell, in the oral arguments in this case, almost every judge used a hypothetical or analogy to make a point or draw a line.