Max, how many times does it need to be pointed out that your use of 'force' is in appropriate?
Probably at least as many times as it is necessary for those who claim it is inappropriate to bother to pick up a dictionary and actually inform themselves on the different meanings of the word "force".
To force someone to make a cake is to sit them down in front of ingredients and then abuse them until there is a cake.
While the "must sit them down and abuse them till they make a cake" rule has yet to make it as an entry into reference works, if you would Google Merriam-Webster and read ALL the meanings of force you wouldn't be stuck on your stunted meaning. For example:
: to make (someone) do something that he or she does not want to do
: to make it necessary for (someone) to do something
: to make (something) necessary
Full Definition of FORCE
transitive verb...
2: to compel by physical, moral, or intellectual means
Do you notice that the law and the court is making it necessary for the baker to do something, to either sell wedding cakes for gay wedding celibrations OR to cease selling wedding cakes entirely? Are you aware that the law and the court is also taking 7 thousand dollars from the baker as compensation, and ordering him (and his staff) to undergo discrimination re-education training and keep records of his actions for two years?
Yes there is force. The law and the court is forcing him, compelling him to do something he does not want to do. Moreover, should he not comply, the court will find him in contempt and then use physical force, including potential jail time.
Your complaint is based a glaringly plain error; the dictionary makes clear the definitions of the word "force" and "forcing" are not limited to direct, physical, force. When the law and force "compels" someone against their wishes they are forcing the person to do something. And the means by which they exert force starts with seizure of their assets (fines, leins) and mandatory re-education etc., and if not complied with, it ends at arrest and imprisonment.
Finally, if this is still unclear to you might consult a thesaurus. The words "force, compel, coerce, constrain, oblige mean to make someone or something yield. Force is the general term and implies the overcoming of resistance by the exertion of strength, power, or duress".
PS - As you did not quote where I used the word force, I can't reply to the context.
The baker has a great many choices, but a limited set of choices as he has previously chosen to make cakes publicly for profit.
Having choices is irrelevant to the meaning of the word force (or coercion). A law and a court that compels him to do (or not do) certain things is force. Whether or not it is moral or legitimate force is a different matter.
He can choose not to make cakes at all. How is this being forced to make a cake, when he can clearly choose not to make the cake? It's pretty much the opposite of 'being forced to make a cake'.
He can choose to make the cake. But then it's not him being forced, it's his choice.
Disingenuous nonsense. He cannot freely "choose to refuse make a wedding cake for same sex wedding ceremonies" while being free to choose to make a wedding cake for opposite sex wedding ceremonies. He is being forced to make wedding cakes for both categories of marriage OR none at all.
If he were free to make or not make cakes as he pleased, we wouldn't have this thread.
He can chose not to make the cake but make cakes for others not-for-profit, or as part of a private cake baking club.
Irrelevant. The question is of what he IS NOT FREE TO DO.
The one thing the government is forcing him to do is surrender his economic niche, IF he refuses the basic rules of neutrality that are laid out for public businesses. that is not forcing him to make cakes. It is not forcing him to not make cakes. It is only and exactly revokin his privilege of running a public for-profit business.
First, in your post (my bolded section) it confirms that your original definition of force was stunted and you now admit the government is actually forcing someone - very good. Therefore, we can ignore further complaints about my use of the word "force".
Second, you are confusing (like many on the left) the difference between what the government is forcing him to do versus the outcome of that force. The government is forcing him to surrender part of his right of free contract and free speech so as to prevent him from NOT selling his talents for gay marriage, while supplying his talents to traditional marriage. It has nothing to do with "economic niches".
Third, your so-called "basic rules of neutrality" in "public business" and claim that it is merely the "revocation of a privilege" is an old ploy - used in just about every budding authoritarian regime in the last century. Among the flaws:
- The rules are not neutral. If they were neutral any buyer or seller of products or labor could choose to contract with any other willing buyer or seller. To restrict the choices they make is a non-neutral intervention on behalf of the governments desire outcome.
- The term "public business" does not mean "owned by the public". A private business is a organizational arrangement to trade goods and services with others, their potential client base being many or few. Some like to arbitrarily call the sale to many a "public business", a useless characterization for discussing this issue.
- Free contract, which is 'doing business' is a right, not a privilege. If people did not have that right then the state could mandate no one could trade anything - in which case most of us would either be living in self-built mud huts or dead. ONLY a man who lives on an island without others exists in a social environment where trade does not exist.
Your error, I suspect, is rooted in the assumption that all men and women are servitude to the state, and like plantation masters, they decide what "privileges" we are permitted. That view is hostile to human rights.
