Fake Gay Marriage Website and SCOTUS Ruling

[Jimmy Higgins]

I find this SC rulling to be quite troubling. "Expressive" is such a subjective word. It is bullshit. What is expressive? A painting? Probably. A photograph? Maybe. A hot dog? Probably not. But a hotdog with a little creative flair added in? Who knows.

I'm sure that Gordon Ramsey considers his culinary creations to be creative and artistic. Asking the chef to prepare a meal for a person in Ramsey's restaurant is asking the chef to create something creative specifically for a specific customer. Isn't that expressive? Suppose all the restaurants in town agree that their culinary creations are custom works of art, and they all decide to hang a "No coloreds allowed," sign outside their places of business. That sounds perfectly legal under this law and perfectly disgusting.

Can we count on an entrepreneur to break the racist racket? Why should we even need to hope for this outcome? What if the racists win and all the colored folk just leave town because they are sick of being discriminated against? Not just at every restaurant (supposedly expressive culinary creations), but also at every bar (performative pouring and creative cocktails), comedy club (improv crowd work), theatre(interactive theatrical elements) and who knows what else.

It is a huge fucking loophole that now anyone can drive a mac truck through (maybe literally if the f'ing bigot mechanic thinks his service is creative or "expressive" enough). The system wasn't broken before. It didn't need to get fixed. This SC decision makes the country a worse place to live for anyone who isn't a bigot.

I'd say it isn't a loophole, it is a loose thread waiting to be pulled. SCOTUS certainly didn't rule that blacks can be discriminated. However, what they did rule was that personal views can trump another's civil rights, in a certain situation where expression allegedly exists. So what we are left with is yet another crap SCOTUS decision that didn't set a standard and just opened up things and left the lower courts to figure out what the heck they meant.

One question to ask is what is the impact this case has on Reynolds v United States, which ruled that polygamy wasn't a right. The trouble with this Court is they are ruling on things so poorly, it is hard to square it with other Constitutional Law. Where is the line between religious or personal principles and the law / rights of others? This case has left that question's answer very muddled now.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't believe this is a free speech issue. When someone hangs out their shingle to be a web designer and website design is speech, they are asking for their speech to be directed by the client.

And please stop bringing up fucking Nazis.

We bring up the fucking Nazis because they make a good yardstick for free speech issues. If Nazi speech isn't protected then it isn't really free speech. Free speech is really about unpopular speech as popular speech isn't going to be blocked.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Actually... yes, I do support the right of an employee of a business to shout epithets and obscenities at customers. I'm pretty confident that if it's a sole employee of a large company, they won't be employed for very long. And if it's a commonplace thing for all employees of that company, they won't be a company very long. But at the end of the day, businesses are not required to protect the feelings of their customers.

It's bad business, but I don't think it should be illegal. There's a lot of stuff that I dislike and disapprove of, and very very few of them are things I think should be illegal. That's the entire fucking point of being a classic liberal.

For your consideration...
Dick's Last Resort
The Weiner's Circle
Karen's Diner

Yup. The bar for illegal should be set a lot higher than the bar for offensive.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I don't believe this is a free speech issue. When someone hangs out their shingle to be a web designer and website design is speech, they are asking for their speech to be directed by the client.

And please stop bringing up fucking Nazis.

We bring up the fucking Nazis because they make a good yardstick for free speech issues. If Nazi speech isn't protected then it isn't really free speech. Free speech is really about unpopular speech as popular speech isn't going to be blocked.

That is incorrect. Nazism is about obscenity. It is hyperbole to compare whether compelling a sale of a service to all people is equivalent to forcing people to sell obscene materials.

Blockbuster wasn't forced to rent pornos.
Cake bakers weren't forced to sell cakes shaped like genatalia.
Web designers weren't being forced to design websites to promote Nazi rhetoric.

The issue is whether selling one service to one group of people means they are compelled to provide said service to all people. That used to be how it was. You sell a malt to a white person, you have to sell it to a black person. You sell cakes for white weddings, you need to sell cakes for black weddings. What has happened is the alt-right has devised a hack, much like how they hacked abortion rights in Texas to help overthrow Roe v Wade. This hack implies that a person making something is expressing, therefore they are excluded from needing to observe the civil rights of marrying gay couples (for now... to be determined how far this is allowed to go).

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No, and the dispute here is not whether that is a bad idea businesswise. However, businesses are (or were, until now) required to treat protected classes of individuals the same as they treat other customers. Shouting epithets is not protected speech in every conceivable situation.

In what situation is shouting epithets NOT protected as a first amendment right?

Captive audience.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

At some point, the opinion of the seller isn't relevant or their "speech" isn't "expression" at all. Where are you drawing the line? Because based on principles, you are suggesting 1910s worldview.

I, like Toni, am drawing the line at the point where you cross from prohibiting discrimination to compelling speech, and thereby compelling the perception of belief.

"Perception of belief"... I've got to say that when it comes to principles, it has never occurred to me that a potential for perception of a belief could be used to prohibit access to services. A woman graduating college? That is quite offensive, women should be in the house doing Home Economic stuff. Why is it so controversial to demand people provide equal services to all people? Businesses are not our parents, not our churches, not our moral authorities.

Businesses should be compelled to sell what they normally sell, to all people.

Look, let's talk about how belief plays into this. I'm going to make the potentially naïve assumption that everyone in this thread actually understands the importance of freedom of religion and belief as protected by the first amendment of the US. I'm going to assume that even if someone practices a faith that you (and I) think is utter bollocks, we agree that they should have the right to their own beliefs.

Now then. Let's talk about a website designer who does custom work, who is approached to design a website for a muslim customer who is celebrating his daughter's first hijab. The designer is an atheist, who truly and deeply believes that it is morally wrong for women to be forced to wear hijab and to be treated as subordinate to men for their entire lives. The designer truly believes that this is an abhorrent practice.

Why would an atheist care about a hijab? The burka is the offensive bodywear. We going to get pissy about turbans next? Do you care to bring up a viable religious example? Or can we skip to the "if they do religious based websites for some religions, they need to do it for all religions" part?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No, and the dispute here is not whether that is a bad idea businesswise. However, businesses are (or were, until now) required to treat protected classes of individuals the same as they treat other customers. Shouting epithets is not protected speech in every conceivable situation.

In what situation is shouting epithets NOT protected as a first amendment right?

Protected in that they aren't going to jail. People are free to be against gay marriages, like they were against women going to school (or holding a job). The web design case wasn't about a prison sentence.

 

[laughing dog]

I’m worried about the chipping away of our right to free speech. I saw how easily women’s rights to health care have been eroded, I take nothing for granted any more.

Then you should be concerned that a doctor cannot be compelled to counsel a pregnant woman on all her health care options, including contraception. After all, the doctor might be conscientiously opposed to giving advice that could trigger immoral behavior.

A doctor is compelled to act in the best interest of their patients even if that conflicts with their religious beliefs. That's inherent in the profession.

It is inherent in the pharmacist’s profession, yet there are pharmacists who let the religious beliefs trump their professional duty.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The sticky issue is when society has progressed to the point where we can morally dispense with protected classes because people are no longer being discriminated against.

We need to dispense with them when discrimination is at a low level. It will never be eliminated, people always want to feel they are better than some outgroup.

 

[CosmicJellyfish]

I don't believe this is a free speech issue. When someone hangs out their shingle to be a web designer and website design is speech, they are asking for their speech to be directed by the client.

And please stop bringing up fucking Nazis.

We bring up the fucking Nazis because they make a good yardstick for free speech issues. If Nazi speech isn't protected then it isn't really free speech. Free speech is really about unpopular speech as popular speech isn't going to be blocked.

But it's a red herring because Nazis aren't a protected class, and anti-discrimination laws do not prohibit free speech.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I obviously don’t agree. I see a vast difference between baking a cake and decorating it ( no words) and being forced to write Nazi Rules! on that cake because a customer wants me to.

The difference that I argue here is that the web site designer has no problem designing a wedding website. They have no problems saying “Loving wedding,” or “Happy union of two hearts” or “Nuptials” or “Love!” Or the words “bride” or ‘groom”.

Just not for gays.

I think I see the issue here.

You are equating "website designer" with someone simply pasting text into a template. That is not creative, it shouldn't be protected.

While it's not my thing at all let's examine it a bit. I have some red-green color vision impairment, I am incapable of choosing what most people will see as pleasing colors. Let's suppose I was in the job of making websites for weddings. I could have hired someone else to choose acceptable shades of blue and pink to use in appropriate places. Along comes a gay couple--do I have to hire someone again to choose two acceptable shades of blue??

As a programmer I very rarely have to actually choose colors beyond the obvious (good data = lightgreen. Suspicious data = yellow. Bad data = light pink.) Beyond that I can't choose decent colors, everything else that requires color includes it as a configuration option so people with proper color vision can pick what they want.

 

[Copernicus]

For those interested in reading both the decision by the six conservatives and the dissent by Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, see:

Creative LLC vs Elenis

Many of the same points made by those here are discussed in the decision and dissent. I agree strongly with the dissenters on this one. As Sotomayor wrote, this is a complete reversal from what the Court had decided just five years earlier regarding discrimination laws. At that time, it had acknowledged the devastating effect of a business being allowed to advertise that a protected class would not be allowed the services of a business open to the general public.

Five years ago, this Court recognized the “general rule” that religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage“ do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law.” Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n, 584 U. S. ___, ___(2018) (slip op., at 9). The Court also recognized the “serious stigma” that would result if “purveyors of goods and services who object to gay marriages for moral and religious reasons” were “allowed to put up signs saying ‘no goods or services will be sold if they will be used for gay marriages.’”

Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class. Specifically, the Court holds that the First Amendment exempts a website design company from a state law that prohibits the company from denying wedding websites to same-sex couples if the company chooses to sell those websites to the public. The Court also holds that the company has a right to post a notice that says, “‘no [wedding websites] will be sold if they will be used for gay marriages.’”

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I don't believe this is a free speech issue. When someone hangs out their shingle to be a web designer and website design is speech, they are asking for their speech to be directed by the client.

And please stop bringing up fucking Nazis.

We bring up the fucking Nazis because they make a good yardstick for free speech issues. If Nazi speech isn't protected then it isn't really free speech. Free speech is really about unpopular speech as popular speech isn't going to be blocked.

But it's a red herring because Nazis aren't a protected class, and anti-discrimination laws do not prohibit free speech.

The entire Nazi thing is a red herring. It has nothing to do with protected class. It has everything to do with what the business sells and as to why the refuse to sell something. Nazism is raised because it is obscene. But if a cake baker made Nazi cakes for Nazis, they'd need to make them for other people as well.

 

[Toni]

I don't believe this is a free speech issue. When someone hangs out their shingle to be a web designer and website design is speech, they are asking for their speech to be directed by the client.

And please stop bringing up fucking Nazis.

We bring up the fucking Nazis because they make a good yardstick for free speech issues. If Nazi speech isn't protected then it isn't really free speech. Free speech is really about unpopular speech as popular speech isn't going to be blocked.

But it's a red herring because Nazis aren't a protected class, and anti-discrimination laws do not prohibit free speech.

The entire Nazi thing is a red herring. It has nothing to do with protected class. It has everything to do with what the business sells and as to why the refuse to sell something. Nazism is raised because it is obscene. But if a cake baker made Nazi cakes for Nazis, they'd need to make them for other people as well.

I brought Nazi up because most people would see Naziism as repugnant and understand why someone would want to refuse to help spread their message be creating content for Nazis. It’s a pretty hard thing to explain that one can refuse to create support in favor of one thing you detest ( Nazis) but not something that your religion or your conscience tells you is mortally wrong ( gay marriage—Again, I fully support gay marriage and I think that resistance to gay marriage is declining rapidly). We’ve seen affirmative action destroyed. This will end up destroying the concept of protected classes.

 

[Copernicus]

I brought Nazi up because most people would see Naziism as repugnant and understand why someone would want to refuse to help spread their message be creating content for Nazis. It’s a pretty hard thing to explain that one can refuse to create support in favor of one thing you detest ( Nazis) but not something that your religion or your conscience tells you is mortally wrong ( gay marriage—Again, I fully support gay marriage and I think that resistance to gay marriage is declining rapidly). We’ve seen affirmative action destroyed. This will end up destroying the concept of protected classes.

The reason that people keep rejecting your Nazi red herring is that Nazis are not a protected class, which you never seem to pay attention to. You just keep bringing it up as if Nazis were a protected class. In the above post, you even end up claiming that "This will end up destroying the concept of protected classes." But Nazis are not a protected class. People have even posted the Wikipedia page on protected group to try to explain the difference between Nazis and a protected class. Doesn't seem to help. Everyone agrees with you that Nazism is repugnant and "why someone would want to refuse to help spread their message by creating content for Nazis." Yet you still seem to think that they don't agree with you. This ruling is not what protects businesses from having to publish Nazi hate messages...because Nazis are not a protected class. This ruling is about letting businesses decline to provide their goods and services to a protected class. Which Nazis are not.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Cultural.

Ah yes, "black culture". Everyone's favorite "get out of racism free card". Blaming the gap on black culture isn't any less racist than blaming it on black people. To the extent that black culture differs from white culture, it is because of racism. Culture doesn't exist in a vacuum. Culture is shaped by history, and America's history is one of monstrous brutality toward black people (and other groups of course).

It's the culture of poverty, not black culture. You see similar things in the white trash areas

Well, why is a "culture of poverty" so much more pronounced in Black America than in White America? How did it happen? Could it be four centuries of brutal racism and oppression? The point is, they didn't do it to themselves.

Which is irrelevant.

You're the doctor in the ER trying to treat trauma with a seat belt. We need to address the current issue, there is no point in addressing a cause in the past unless you have a time machine.

Which doesn't address my point at all.

Sure it does. Black immigrants aren't burdened with the cultural baggage that comes with having a boot stamping on their face for four centuries.

In other words, you admit it's cultural. There is a big problem that needs fixing, it's just AA is completely useless at treating it.

Additionally, our immigration laws tend to favor skilled and educated workers.

Plenty are by marriage.

However, you are right, they do a pretty good job of screening out the losers. Once again, supporting my point.

The real issue is poverty.

There are multiple issues and they are intertwined an inextricably linked. Racism and discrimination create an impoverished underclass, and the poverty reifies the dominant social group's belief that the underclass is impoverished due to some natural or cultural inferiority.

Poverty can only be cured with education, not with money--and you have a big horse-to-water problem with this. I believe the eternal blaming of discrimination is actually counterproductive as it gives people an easy excuse.

It isn't about blaming. It's about recognizing and acknowledging that people who have been pushed into a hole by this country's racism are going to need this country's help climbing out of that hole.

But the offered help does nothing--you can't make the horse drink.

The "help" we've given thus far is so inadequate as to be comical if it weren't so pathetic. Nothing this country has done to "help" has come anywhere near being adequate enough to offset the damage done in the past.

We haven't supplied any help--because we keep trying to use AA to fix a problem it can't fix.

Meanwhile, blaming provides an excuse not to look within.

Lol. Like it or not, they have every right to blame. They didn't do it to themselves. I'm sure if this country ever actually takes drastic steps to rectify the problem, they'll stop blaming.

Blaming the wrong target doesn't solve the problem. You have to address what's actually changeable. Focusing on blame for something that can't be changed is just perpetuating the problem.

I do not know how to fix the problem but I can see the current approach is a total failure.

Well, I'm likely way to left of you, so you probably wouldn't like what I have to say about this.

Money isn't a fix. If your answer involves money it's wrong.

 

[CosmicJellyfish]

This will end up destroying the concept of protected classes.

This is circular logic. You're basically arguing that we shouldn't protect equal rights because then we might lose the ability to protect equal rights.

And then you end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Moreover, there is no evidence that protected classes are in jeopardy. Doing away with protected classes isn't part of the national political conversation.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I’m worried about the chipping away of our right to free speech. I saw how easily women’s rights to health care have been eroded, I take nothing for granted any more.

Then you should be concerned that a doctor cannot be compelled to counsel a pregnant woman on all her health care options, including contraception. After all, the doctor might be conscientiously opposed to giving advice that could trigger immoral behavior.

A doctor is compelled to act in the best interest of their patients even if that conflicts with their religious beliefs. That's inherent in the profession.

It is inherent in the pharmacist’s profession, yet there are pharmacists who let the religious beliefs trump their professional duty.

And I disagree with them.

1) It is inherent in the profession.

2) There's nothing creative about being a pharmacist.

 

[Gospel]

So, creativity is the benchmark now, superseding principles, is it?

 

[Copernicus]

There's nothing creative about being a pharmacist.

Decorative vials for all medicines, but not for abortion and contraception prescriptions.