Thoughts on gay cake case in front of SCOTUS

[Crazy Lee]

I actually think my opinion on this case is starting to change a bit. I'm starting to think that the government shouldn't force cake makers, or photographers, or the like, to serve gay weddings.

Bear with me on this. It's not that I don't think gay weddings shouldn't have these services. It's that, for these Christians in these businesses, their view that being gay is a sin against God and their religion is a very deeply held belief, whether it's right or wrong. When you think that your God believes being gay is a sin, and getting gay married is a sin, your belief is not going to be changed solely due to some supreme court decision. If say SCOTUS rules against the Colorado baker in this case, and he has to do gay cakes or else, it's not like he's going to say "Oh, I was wrong about the gays all along, I now love the gays and will bake all the cakes for them" and maybe he'll turn gay himself. He will still have his view that gays are evil. And he will feel as if the government is forcing him to do things against his belief, and he will close down his shop.

And most importantly. Him, and every Christian fundamental and evangelical out there will see this as another example of the (liberal) government trying to persecute and destroy Christianity. This will add to an already huge persecution complex. That's what we need more of, fundie Christians believing the're being persecuted by the government even more. Which will cause even more backlash against the LGBT community.

So, good luck with that.

[AshleyAshes]

1 hour ago, Crazy Lee said:

And most importantly. Him, and every Christian fundamental and evangelical out there will see this as another example of the (liberal) government trying to persecute and destroy Christianity. This will add to an already huge persecution complex. That's what we need more of, fundie Christians believing the're being persecuted by the government even more. Which will cause even more backlash against the LGBT community.

People keep making this argument on LGBT issue after LGBT issue but it never actually proves to be true.  'Oh, but if you FIGHT for your rights, people will just get MAD about that!'.  Yet statistics on the acceptance of LGBT individuals, same sex marriage, the progressive of laws to defend their civil rights, continue to proceed.  Not to mention, considering how the major push for LGBT rights started with the Stonewall RIOTS and has seen continued success since, I think the 'It'd be a lot easier if you didn't fight for it' argument falls pretty flat.

[Wickerstick]

You do not have the freedom to suppress the freedom of another individual, your rights end when they infringe on the equal rights of another citizen. Beyond that the United States where founded as a secular government, there should not be exceptions for the religious

[Vae]

You could replace "gay" with "straight," or "Christian," or "black," or anything else like this, and get the same negative reaction for good reason.

A cake maker decides to deny putting a black child's face on his birthday cake, because in his religion, blacks are an inferior people.
Do you know how fucked up that sounds?
Because it is. It's fucked up.

I don't really have an opinion about the legality involved, but the people making these business decisions should be shamed for their bullshit.

[Socketosis]

I think the figure of $135k is ridiculous over a stupid cake. Also yes, I also believe this will just create more animosity towards gay people.

[Faust]

I've got a better idea, let's just get the entirety of Leviticus declared non-canonical. It causes way too many problems.

Most of the other commandments in that particular book are ignored anyway. Perhaps we should demand that if anyone wants to deny rights to homosexuals on religious grounds, then they must also:

1) Offer burnt sacrifices, wine and drink sacrifices and additional sacrifices as and when required - twice daily in several cases.
2) Pour blood over their altars (YES, that's a commandment).
3) Stop eating pork (and all the other 'unclean' meats)
4) Menstrual women should purify themselves afterwards with the ashes of a red heifer.
5) Offer regular tithes to the church.
6) Physically destroy rival religions and the nations that practice them and wipe them from the record of history.
7) Let homeless people eat from your vineyards and drink from your water barrels.
8) Be circumcised (if male)
9) Refrain from tattoos, destroying fruit trees, and swearing.
10) All the other 600+ commandments.

... I am not making these up, though yes - as with any religious text - they are open to interpretation.

[WileyWarWeasel]

7 hours ago, Wickerstick said:

You do not have the freedom to suppress the freedom of another individual, your rights end when they infringe on the equal rights of another citizen. Beyond that the United States where founded as a secular government, there should not be exceptions for the religious

Unfortunately over time those freedoms shift as the population & the system grow and become more complex.

An obvious example is noise. With growing population and finite space the amount of space between people tends to shrink (especially with increasing urbanization), and previously acceptable levels of noise diminish as they impact more people more acutely. One can mitigate this by moving to more remote areas but that means increasing difficulty in other areas such as employment and telecommunications infrastructure.

Another example is the automobile. When automobiles first came out they were an optional form of transport, road rules were very lax and foot and vehicle traffic could easily interact with each other without much oversight.

However with increasing population numbers and automobile usage the freedoms for both foot and vehicle traffic had to go down just to keep vehicle/pedestrian collisions down and keep the combined traffic moving smoothly. More intricate rules, signage including painted lines and traffic lights eventually needed to be introduced in order to regulate the increasingly crowded traffic. In time society rearranged itself to accommodate the automobile and there are now many roads that are purely for vehicle traffic and allow no foot traffic.

7 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

Not to mention, considering how the major push for LGBT rights started with the Stonewall RIOTS and has seen continued success since, I think the 'It'd be a lot easier if you didn't fight for it' argument falls pretty flat.

Sometimes it's necessary not just to fight but to sacrifice and suffer as well. In USA alone there were quite a few strikes that eventually led to better wages and conditions but the strikers got beaten and shot by privately hired goons and/or state militia that the businesses they were striking against had enlisted.

In Australia we had our fair share of mass strikes as well, particularly in mining.

 

Where is the collective action nowadays? In the developed world it's near impossible to organize a boycott let alone a strike.

[Troj]

12 hours ago, Vae said:

You could replace "gay" with "straight," or "Christian," or "black," or anything else like this, and get the same negative reaction for good reason.

A cake maker decides to deny putting a black child's face on his birthday cake, because in his religion, blacks are an inferior people.
Do you know how fucked up that sounds?
Because it is. It's fucked up.

I don't really have an opinion about the legality involved, but the people making these business decisions should be shamed for their bullshit.

I realize that the legal and ethical issues here are complicated and genuinely problematic and fraught with peril, but at the end of the day, I'm at least perfectly fine with socially shaming fundies and bigots who would deny service to members of a protected class for "sincere" (gag me) moral or religious reasons.

[DrDingo]

Christianity also says to love thy neighbour, but people just pick and choose what they want to believe

Bottom line is just don't be a dick

[Socketosis]

53 minutes ago, DrDingo said:

Bottom line is just don't be a dick

Old Testament God was a huge dick.

[Gator]

a privately owned business should be able to refuse service to anyone for whatever reason they see fit.  if they wanna say "no cakes for gays/blacks/people who wear white after labor day", they should be allowed to do so.  it's their business, and they're not harming anyone by refusing service.  you can take your money somewhere else; there are plenty of businesses who have no problem making wedding cakes for same-sex couples or whoever else might want them.  they have the right to do business how they want, just as you have the right to do business where you want.  if they lose money because people don't want to do business with a company that espouses those kinds of beliefs, then that's on them. 

honestly, i think it's ridiculous (and hypocritical) how some people want to force everyone to be "tolerant".  all it does is breed resentment and create a bigger rift between sides; that's how we end up with extreme right/left views.  yes, i think any government-owned/operated institution should be unbiased and thus have non-discriminatory policies in place by default.  things like actual harassment, threats, or attempts to incite violence should remain illegal and be treated the same regardless of whether the motivation is based on race/gender/orientation or not.  but things that don't fall under those categories, such as an individual's speech/opinions, or who they choose to serve in their business, should be left alone.  allowing people to have shitty opinions doesn't equal agreeing with their shitty opinions. 

[AshleyAshes]

1 hour ago, Gator said:

all it does is breed resentment and create a bigger rift between sides

See, a bunch of you keep saying that but it just doesn't jive with reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Atlanta_Motel,_Inc._v._United_States

Using Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States as an example, in the some 53 years since that legal decision was made, ensuring that a private business an not ban people on the basis of race, we've actually NOT seen a long term push back against this.  If anything, we've reached a point where if you were to approach your democratically elected law maker and pitched your 'We should be able to ban ALL the blacks from restaurants we want!', even the most conservative law maker would say 'That's an interesting idea.  Interesting for sure.  Get out of my office now.  Please.  And be sure to email me if you have another, erm 'idea'.  ^_^'

But still, people keep saying that such progressions in civil rights will only result in 'resentment' and 'push back' but in the long term there's zero evidence if that ever happening.  And the United States, particularly in it's treatments of citizens of African descent over the last 200 years, has a LOT of case examples to look at.

[MortimusMaximus]

I am finding it so bizarre that people think an actual stance is to let bigots walk all over you (as a minority) or else they'll get mad that they have to actually, you know, not be shitty people to minorities.

[Jtrekkie]

I can see there's some prejudice in here,  so I'll be brief.

I've read what both sides have to say; I could not call the Kleins bigots. They have been quite gracious through the whole thing. Vae, you made a weak analogy. Christian doctrine does not hold gays (or liars, or bigots, or murderers) to be inferior. The Kliens  never indicated they thought anything like that, either. The bakers passed judgement on themselves only. 

Personally, it seems that forcing someone to do something against his will for my own gratification would be immoral. It is hurting him for my pleasure, it might feel good, but it's not respecting his agency. The bakers were picked on purpose, you know. The question comes down to whether it is acceptable to subject a personal, or even public, will on someone else. This was not a matter of public safety like traffic laws are, or of public courtesy like noise pollution laws are. It is purely a conflict of will.

If the answer is yes, the rule must be applied universally; fair laws don't admit arbitrary classes.

[Vae]

4 hours ago, Jtrekkie said:

Vae, you made a weak analogy. Christian doctrine does not hold gays (or liars, or bigots, or murderers) to be inferior. The Kliens  never indicated they thought anything like that, either. The bakers passed judgement on themselves only.

You're taking my use of "inferior" as too literal. My point was that it's using personal biases to exclude people based on traits that are harmless to them or anyone else.
If they were passing judgment on no one other than themselves, there would be no conflict of interest here, and there would be no exclusions. Whether or not they're doing this because of religious beliefs is irrelevant. It's still passing judgment on a group of people on those grounds, and acting exclusionary towards them because of it. That is fact. That is what they are doing.

Which is, as I have said, an extremely shitty thing to do.

If I said I wasn't going to serve Christians in my place of business, is that legal in factual terms? Arguably.
Would I deserve to be chewed out for doing that by the public? Absolutely.

I don't care what someone believes in as it applies solely towards themself, but religion isn't an excuse to act shitty towards groups of people that aren't harming anything.

[Gator]

On 1/2/2018 at 8:34 PM, AshleyAshes said:

zero evidence if that ever happening

except for the part where political "right" and "left" continue to get more extreme, and the idea that forcing business owners to support things they morally disagree with doesn't add fuel to the fire just makes no sense.  meanwhile we're having actual steps taken to remove legal protections--and not just at the "personal business" level--which is being fed by the "us vs them" mentality that continues to grow the more people feel/see that their thoughts and opinions are being policed. 

21 hours ago, MortimusMaximus said:

I am finding it so bizarre that people think an actual stance is to let bigots walk all over you (as a minority) or else they'll get mad that they have to actually, you know, not be shitty people to minorities.

but where does it end?  i think forcing private business owners to support things they morally disagree with, when their opinions/actions weren't harming anyone, is shitty.  i don't think the way to get what you want is to tell people not to think or act a certain way.  if someone is actually being hurt, i'd understand, but it's a cake.  they should be allowed to say "sorry, we don't make XYZ type of designs" regardless of what those are.  why should i feel entitled to somebody's business?  i don't need to have the legal right to get a type of cake from a certain bakery that the owners didn't want to make just because i wanted it.  i don't require that to feel like i'm being treated fairly by the law.  if i were running my own business and i said i didn't want to make religious themed cakes, am i now the bigot?  do i need to be legally forced to do so?  it just seems like a needlessly asshole thing to do.  i'm more concerned about stuff like military bans and the removal of protections on a federal level than whether or not joe and sally down the street have to make me a cake.

[AshleyAshes]

13 minutes ago, Gator said:

except for the part where political "right" and "left" continue to get more extreme, and the idea that forcing business owners to support things they morally disagree with doesn't add fuel to the fire just makes no sense.  meanwhile we're having actual steps taken to remove legal protections--and not just at the "personal business" level--which is being fed by the "us vs them" mentality that continues to grow the more people feel/see that their thoughts and opinions are being policed. 

Then surely good sir, in the face of such injustice, where a business can not deny African Americans service, you will not just sit idlely by, posting on the internet, but start a campaign of contacting elected leaders and trying to get such laws revoked, right?  In the name of morality!

 

Oh... You just doing the internet thing?  ...ah... 'morals'.

[Socketosis]

On 1/2/2018 at 9:34 PM, AshleyAshes said:

See, a bunch of you keep saying that but it just doesn't jive with reality.

I have a feeling there will be cakes getting spat on instead of just outright protests.

[Jtrekkie]

15 hours ago, Vae said:

You're taking my use of "inferior" as too literal. My point was that it's using personal biases to exclude people based on traits that are harmless to them or anyone else.
If....

 

If that was their reasoning, they wouldn't serve gay people at all. We used to have a lot of bigots and that's how they behaved to other people. These bakers do serve gay people, however, including that same couple. They don't think it is right to support gay marriage, so they directed the couple to another baker that was OK with it. There's a big difference. And for that they've most likely lost their business. 

I don't know if you're familiar with Judaism, but there are many things that we think are harmless that they don't allow themselves to take part in (and that angers many people). They generally don't try to stop anyone else from having their own celebrations; they understand their ethics are too strict for other people, but they remove themselves from it. That's what these bakers did. That's different from holding other people to your standards.

OP had a good observation in recognizing that law is no substitute for morality. At any rate, it is legal to refuse service to a single male or white heterosexual couple, but no one else. In those cases, a provider is not equal.(You'll have trouble refusing service to everyone, too. A NM judge was recently sued by a gay couple for doing that. )

That's not a fair situation for any party, and I don't think it's an easy position to defend, but that is just according to public opinion. 

[AshleyAshes]

16 minutes ago, Socketosis said:

I have a feeling there will be cakes getting spat on instead of just outright protests.

So when you said 'More animosity towards gay people' you meant 'taking no meaningful outward action except half assed health code violations'?

Oh no... Anything but that!

[WolfyAmbassador]

I bet if it were Muslims doing it, people wouldn't give a shit and say something along the lines of "it's their culture and religious beliefs, you're just an Islamophobe!", then proceed on calling the opposition bigots, because all minorities are just one big melting pot of victims who all deserve to be treated with respect and can never be assholes to other minority groups.

23 hours ago, MortimusMaximus said:

I am finding it so bizarre that people think an actual stance is to let bigots walk all over you (as a minority) or else they'll get mad that they have to actually, you know, not be shitty people to minorities.

Nobody is walking on anyone except the gay couples going into Christian bakeries knowing what their reaction is going to be are the ones looking for trouble and making a huge issue out of it. It's a shitty thing, but we don't live in a fully implemented socialist system yet, so not everything is a basic human right.

[Troj]

I yearn for the day when we collectively draw the line at people using their religious beliefs to justify hurting others or disrupting the Commons. Your right to swing your fist ends at another person's face, period, and to hell with your "personal relationship" with Barney the Magical Skynosaur.

 

[AshleyAshes]

50 minutes ago, WolfyAmbassador said:

I bet if it were Muslims doing it.

If you can cute some examples of Muslim businesses using religion to descriminate against customers in a nation where that flies against it's human rights codes, and being given a free pass, I'd be eager to see it.

 

Surely 'We don't serve Jews' would be low hanging fruit?  Good luck googling.

Till then it's just the words of a raving crazy person.

[WolfyAmbassador]

56 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

If you can cute some examples of Muslim businesses using religion to descriminate against customers in a nation where that flies against it's human rights codes, and being given a free pass, I'd be eager to see it.

 

Surely 'We don't serve Jews' would be low hanging fruit?  Good luck googling.

Till then it's just the words of a raving crazy person.

I was being hypothetical. Also, good luck being openly gay in a Muslim majority country, never mind wedding cakes.

[Red Lion]

I think this is a case where the context really matters. The entire United States is covered by the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination by privately owned places of public accommodation on the basis of ethnicity, nationality or religion and I think sexual orientation and gender expression need to be added to this list. 

However, there is a difference between a bakery saying "We don't sell to gays at all" vs "We don't make x kind of wedding cake here." if someone owns a private business I think they should maintain the right to say the latter, but not the former. Which is to say that they should maintain the right to decide specifically what products and themes they choose to make/sell. I don't see the benefit in forcing a Christian establishment to make a wedding cake for non-Christian weddings. I would also say that if the establishment were Jewish, Muslim, or otherwise then it would be unethical to force them to make cakes for Christian weddings. If an establishment specifically made LG wedding cakes I would not want a law forcing them to cater to straight weddings. Their business, their money. 

Realistically speaking, I don't see why you would refuse to make anybody a wedding cake. You could make a very generic cake and have the couple buy their own topper separately, but allowing businesses to have some level of freedom means that a few of them will use that freedom to be assholes.  As long as they can only be assholes on a private level I don't really care too much. 

[Xaende]

The baker will bake a cake for the people, just not one with a theme that clashes with their personal values. This situation is more like refusing to bake a Kwanzaa cake than denying African Americans service. Or maybe a baker campaigned for Hillary, and is now refusing to bake a "Make America Great Again" Trump cake.

From a religious angle, there are lots of things that religions handle differently. I shouldn't be able to force a Muslim to serve me pork and alcohol, for instance. I also shouldn't be able to force a Jewish wood carver to carve a manger scene if they don't want to. Not baking a gay-themed wedding cake falls along those lines. Great injustices have been committed against gay people, but this isn't one of them.

If the baker loses, then people will have government backing to force artists to take all kinds of commissions that they disagree with. For those who wish "clean" furry artists would draw more porn, your dreams may soon come true! If the ruling is to be applied evenly, they will be forced to accept commissions that go against their conscience.

 

 

 

 

[WileyWarWeasel]

Alright time for a post that is actually related to the topic:

If it wasn't for the legal precedence that this case would establish I would say that the case was insignificant.

2 hours ago, Red Lion said:

However, there is a difference between a bakery saying "We don't sell to gays at all" vs "We don't make x kind of wedding cake here." if someone owns a private business I think they should maintain the right to say the latter, but not the former. Which is to say that they should maintain the right to decide specifically what products and themes they choose to make/sell.

That seems to be the crux of the issue, and I agree that businesses should be able to decide what sorts of products/services they provide. This latest case seems to be symptomatic of political correctness run amok (certainly wouldn't happen under normal circumstances) and does have the potential to spill over into other areas.

Hopefully reason will prevail, which will mean that the artistic integrity of high-class furry art will be maintained ;33333333333333333333333333333

[Toshabi]

How they fit gay guy inside of cake?????

[Nova]

23 hours ago, Toshabi said:

How they fit gay guy inside of cake?????

Gay people have magical powers

[Faust]

On 05/01/2018 at 2:11 PM, Toshabi said:

How they fit gay guy inside of cake?????

He minced - geddit?