Fake Gay Marriage Website and SCOTUS Ruling

[jab]

It isn't opposite. You, might want to think it is, but it isn't. A gay couple trying to get a "custom" wedding cake could have to do exactly that, conceal it is for them because they don't know the political and religious stance of any random bakery that makes wedding cakes.

Nonsense.
If there are 20 bakers in town and 1 doesn't want to make you a cake to your specifications, you don't really have a problem.

Unless, you're an authoritarian ideologue and are willing to create a problem to serve your own purposes. Like Scardina did.
Tom

I hope you would have a problem with going into a bakery and being refused service on the basis that a relationship that was loving and special to you was so offensive to the proprietor that they would refuse your request to commemorate the relationship. Even if you think that should be legal, I hope you wouldn't accept that too meekly, and you would acknowledge that you were experiencing a homophobic experience that hets in your community wouldn't be facing. And even if you, having toughed it all out and now very optimistic in your maturity, would acknowledge that others like us who are younger and less sure of themselves than we are, would feel hurt, humiliated, and undermined.

 

[jab]

Nonsense.
If there are 20 bakers in town and 1 doesn't want to make you a cake to your specifications, you don't really have a problem.

Wrong. The problem is segregation. There is a bakery that your folk can use and a bakery your folk can't use. I presume you're not ok with "heterosexuals only" water fountains right?

Would it depend on what fraction of available water fountains were that way? What if all water fountains were not distributed equally on their convenient access?

Is it ok for black people to not be able to sit in the front of the bus because there are plenty of seats in the back?

Hey, as long as it is separate but you know... equal. As long as the bakeries gays can shop at are as good as the ones that refuse to sell to them, it is all good.

I'm having a sense of deja vu here.

to indulge in a stereotype: they're probably better

 

[jab]

I think the moral* of the story is that eventually** the invisible hand of the free*** market cures**** all*****.

Why would anyone think that?
Tom

Lots of people think that. Isn't that that pushed by conservatives who want to deregulate industry?

But anyway in this context, it would seem, and I guess I'm likely wrong by your response, that the argument is that if there's a business that discriminates then some customers won't frequent it and if they find that discrimination appears to be a bad business model then they won't keep doing it or their business will suffer or die. No need to have the government enforce anti-discrimination laws on these businesses.

That seems an accurate summary of Tom's position re discrimination in the service sector of the marketplace.

 

[jab]

You know courts in Common-Law countries aren't in the business of chaining up civil lawsuit defendants and having them flogged until they fulfill their contracts, don't you?

They used to do worse. For example:

In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), ...

They used to do even worse than that: they used to hang people for witchcraft and burn people at the stake for heresy. What's your point? I wasn't claiming virtuousness for the Anglo-American legal system, just pointing out the difference between injunctions for specific performance versus judgments for monetary damages. I included the qualifier to the effect that what I said might not be true of the civil law system prevailing in continental Europe, because that system is based on the Code Napoleon and god knows what that guy got up to.

Slavery was a forced contract

Okay, now you're talking poetic metaphor, not law. Slaves didn't have contracts. (And "forced contract" is a contradiction in terms.)

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed in part to enforce the provisions of Section 2 of the 13th Amendment.

Metaphor again. Discrimination in voting, employment, education, and public accommodation are all evils and that doesn't make them slavery.

During the era of slavery in the United States, a significant number of people held the belief that slavery was a divine right. This perspective was founded on interpretations of the Bible that asserted the inferiority of black people in comparison to white people, suggesting that they were destined to serve as slaves. Today, the courts of this Common-Law country said bibbidi bobbidi boo so that we may move back towards divine right slavery and flogging.

I.e., allowing one last piece of the economy to stay out from under the ever-expanding scope of anti-discrimination law because the Constitution already had an explicit guarantee just for that piece is a slippery slope to bringing back slavery. There's a reason slippery slope arguments tend to be unconvincing.

Rhodomontade from Bomb again.
American slavery was a contract made among and by owners recognizing and asserting individual owners' rights to own individual slaves and this was forced upon slaves. American slavery was based on a wider contract, or compact in the law allowing slavery to exist. slaves were not communual property.
BTW poetry, even feeble poetry, beats rhodomontade.

 

[jab]

Suppose the Clearwater city council enacts an ordinance requiring beachgoers to say "Jesus is Lord" to get a parking permit. A Jew claims this infringes her religious excercise. Do you think "Please show me where in Judaism it says she must go to the beach. No one is forcing her to recite polytheistic blasphemy. She can make all the sandcastles she wants in her own sandbox. But if she wants to use the city's parking lot then she has to follow the government’s speech policies." refutes her?

This is not a good analogy as this is the government requiring religious speech.

A better analogy might be something like the government imposes a law that all Businesses be open seven days a week. A Jewish business owner then says this infringes on his right to free exercise of his religion because his religion compels him not to work on the Sabbath. Then you can say: “Shadowy Man, are you saying that because his religion does not compel him to have a business that it is ok for the government to just say to him ‘don’t run a business if you don’t like the regulations’?”

In the case of the hypothetical wedding website woman the parallel would then be that her religion compels her to discriminate against gay people even if it doesn’t compel her to run the business. That’s what is being said, yes?

In this case, presumably the owner is saying they will serve no-one on the seventh-day, so they are not discriminating again any protected group.

 

[jab]

This isn't even remotely in question. The question is whether nazis or bigots or Christians or Muslims have the right to refuse service to customers. Currently, the law is being hacked by abusing the word "custom".

To me, this isn't the important question.

The important question is "Should the government have the power to enforce a socio-political agenda?" I'm saying No. I don't want the government to have that much power.

There are some goods and services I'm fine with regulations and enforcement. Government services are an example. Also essential services, like emergency response and health care.

Wedding cakes and websites, hairdos? Not so much. If they can make you do a gay wedding website, they can make you do a Klan rally website.
Tom

I was not aware that the Klan was, at present, a protected group. So you mean to imply that is could in the foreseeable future become a protected group in your wonderful country.

 

[jab]

It isn't opposite. You, might want to think it is, but it isn't. A gay couple trying to get a "custom" wedding cake could have to do exactly that, conceal it is for them because they don't know the political and religious stance of any random bakery that makes wedding cakes. And now that SCOTUS has provided no guidance on the subject, we aren't certain where the line is now for protected discrimination.

Is the premise of your position that there are so incredibly few custom bakeries that a gay couple would be categorically unable to acquire a wedding cake of any sort?

Thank you for your evident deep concern over the insults and rejections which you are reluctantly willing, based on an overarching principle, for lesbians to be subjected to, when they are trying to commemorate their committed loving relationship: a principle not shared by the majority of women on the US Supreme Court, but a principle shared by all the men there. Of course we know that men are generally more committed to principle than women.

 

[jab]

Wedding cakes and websites, hairdos? Not so much. If they can make you do a gay wedding website, they can make you do a Klan rally website.

How many times does the above bullshit need to be refuted?

Yeah, seems I might need to add the list of protected classes to my signature for this discussion. Neither the Nazis nor the KKK made the list. Yet.

In the instance of the bigoted web site designer, and the pretend gay couple, there is a conflict between two rights: freedom of expression vs freedom from discrimination.

To clarify, the conversation at hand does not revolve around a virtuous individual exercising their right to free expression privately, either domestically or overseas, or within their religious community, who is then unjustly punished by the government.

By examining the historical context of freedom from discrimination, which has its roots in a deeply disturbing past where religion served as a tool for slavery and subsequently inspired Jim Crow laws, one could argue that the government has a persuasive case for preserving the freedom from discrimination.

Nonetheless, when it comes to this particular web designer, the government's case for infringing upon an individual's freedom from discrimination appears weaker. Their argument is especially unconvincing when it tries to respond to an imagined offense so that a web designer can justify his own discriminatory actions. This web designer is the Jussie Smollett of the 1st Amendment, for faking it.

It is rather enlightening to see this incident unfold, as it reveals the number of individuals willing to attempt to characterize discrimination as an embodiment of fairness.

Religion also was/is a strong ideological base for the suppression and subordination of women.

 

[Gospel]

Nonsense.
If there are 20 bakers in town and 1 doesn't want to make you a cake to your specifications, you don't really have a problem.

Wrong. The problem is segregation. There is a bakery that your folk can use and a bakery your folk can't use. I presume you're not ok with "heterosexuals only" water fountains right?

Please provide me with some reference to a religious view that prohibits people of different skin colors from using the same water source.

It's intriguing that race has been brought into the conversation at that junction. It would be understandable if I had raised the topic of race, but as I did not, its introduction seems somewhat misplaced. Could you please clarify the rationale behind this?

 

[jab]

Let's make that argument for blacks now (or Jews?). Or is it just okay just to limit options for gays or maybe just gays getting married?

What are your limits for allowed discrimination?

Help me out here. Can you provide me with a scenario in which a person's first amendment right to practice their religious beliefs is in conflict with statutes around non-discrimination on the basis of skin color or ethnicity?

This is what seems to be consistently glossed over in this discussion. This isn't just a blanket "to discriminate or not" situation. We're taking about a conflict of rights here. On the one hand is the right of people to not be discriminated against on the basis of their innate characteristics. On the other hand is the right of people to practice their religion and to express their beliefs without interference.

In this (fictional) case, the conflict is explicit, and is the entire basis of the case itself. If this were a baker who made custom birthday cakes, and they refused to make a birthday cake for a gay guy, that would be an entirely different situation, and I would 100% object to the baker being allowed to do so, even for a custom cake. I would object, because birthdays have nothing at all to do with sexual orientation, and there is no religious guideline against birthdays for gay people. Similarly, if the baker made custom wedding cakes, and refused to make a birthday cake for a black couple, I would object - there is no religious guideline prohibiting the marriage of people on the basis of melanin content.

In this specific case, however, there IS a conflict - even if it's one that I think is dumb. There IS a religious guideline against same-sex marriage. So we have a direct conflict between the baker's right to practice their religion free from interference, and the right of the (fictional) gay couple to get married.

At the end of the day, the gay couple does not need a cake in order to get married. They certainly don't need a custom cake. And they definitely don't need a custom cake from this particular baker. The baker's refusal to create a custom cake that violates his religious views does NOT create a barrier to the gay guys getting married, nor does it even create a reasonable barrier to the gay guys getting a wedding cake.

On the other hand, forcing this baker to create a cake for the gay couple's wedding directly forces him to violate his religious beliefs.

The closest parallel I have is the case years ago where Yaniv* sued a bunch of middle-eastern small business women who refused to wax his balls. He argued that because he identifies as transgender, and these businesses performed pubic waxing for women, they should be forced to wax his balls because transgender is a protected characteristic in Canada. On the other hand, the women were almost exclusively muslim women, whose religion prohibits them from handling the genitals of men other than their husbands in any way. In that situation I sided with the aestheticians. Forcing them to wax Yaniv's balls would be a direct violation of their right to religious observance; having waxed balls or not is not a fundamental requirement for Yaniv to be transgender; there are many other businesses that either specialize in the waxing of male genitals or which were willing to wax his balls. In that situation, Yaniv's desire to force females to handle his junk against their will and in violation of their beliefs was something I did not support - and neither did the Canadian court ultimately.

I have the same core position with this case. Off-the-Shelf wedding cakes are ubiquitously available; other custom wedding cakes that are happy to make same-sex cakes are easily available. Forcing this baker to make a gay wedding cake does not have any affect on gay rights as a whole, but it does violate the baker's rights.

Some people even/ especially in the USA and still believe on religious grounds that miscegenation is a sin. You would hold that if such a person were a web designer, they should legally free to refuse wedding websites to interracial couples, anniversary websites to interracial couples, birth announcements to interracial couples.
Web designers who hold a belief that God ordained Amurca as a majority white country should, according to you be legally allowed to refuse to work on a website commemorating the achievement of American citizenship by an immigrant from one of Trump's "shitthole" countries, and also refuse to work on birth-announcements for non-white babies.
Have I represented your position fairly and accurately?

 

[TomC]

Nonsense.
If there are 20 bakers in town and 1 doesn't want to make you a cake to your specifications, you don't really have a problem.

Wrong. The problem is segregation. There is a bakery that your folk can use and a bakery your folk can't use. I presume you're not ok with "heterosexuals only" water fountains right?

Please provide me with some reference to a religious view that prohibits people of different skin colors from using the same water source.

It's intriguing that race has been brought into the conversation at that junction. It would be understandable if I had raised the topic of race, but as I did not, its introduction seems somewhat misplaced. Could you please clarify the rationale behind this?

Race was brought into the conversation over 900 posts ago.
You used terms like "segregation" and "heterosexual only water fountains" in the post Emily responded to.
Get it now?
Tom

 

[laughing dog]

Nonsense.
If there are 20 bakers in town and 1 doesn't want to make you a cake to your specifications, you don't really have a problem.

Wrong. The problem is segregation. There is a bakery that your folk can use and a bakery your folk can't use. I presume you're not ok with "heterosexuals only" water fountains right?

Please provide me with some reference to a religious view that prohibits people of different skin colors from using the same water source.

It's intriguing that race has been brought into the conversation at that junction. It would be understandable if I had raised the topic of race, but as I did not, its introduction seems somewhat misplaced. Could you please clarify the rationale behind this?

Race was brought into the conversation over 900 posts ago.
You used terms like "segregation" and "heterosexual only water fountains" in the post Emily responded to.
Get it now?
Tom

I didn’t realize until now that “ segregation” and “ heterosexual only water fountains” referred exclusively to race.

 

[jab]

It also doesn't make a parallel with black civil rights and segregation either.

Got you

 

[Gospel]

Let's make that argument for blacks now (or Jews?). Or is it just okay just to limit options for gays or maybe just gays getting married?

What are your limits for allowed discrimination?

Help me out here. Can you provide me with a scenario in which a person's first amendment right to practice their religious beliefs is in conflict with statutes around non-discrimination on the basis of skin color or ethnicity?

This is what seems to be consistently glossed over in this discussion. This isn't just a blanket "to discriminate or not" situation. We're taking about a conflict of rights here. On the one hand is the right of people to not be discriminated against on the basis of their innate characteristics. On the other hand is the right of people to practice their religion and to express their beliefs without interference.

In this (fictional) case, the conflict is explicit, and is the entire basis of the case itself. If this were a baker who made custom birthday cakes, and they refused to make a birthday cake for a gay guy, that would be an entirely different situation, and I would 100% object to the baker being allowed to do so, even for a custom cake. I would object, because birthdays have nothing at all to do with sexual orientation, and there is no religious guideline against birthdays for gay people. Similarly, if the baker made custom wedding cakes, and refused to make a birthday cake for a black couple, I would object - there is no religious guideline prohibiting the marriage of people on the basis of melanin content.

In this specific case, however, there IS a conflict - even if it's one that I think is dumb. There IS a religious guideline against same-sex marriage. So we have a direct conflict between the baker's right to practice their religion free from interference, and the right of the (fictional) gay couple to get married.

At the end of the day, the gay couple does not need a cake in order to get married. They certainly don't need a custom cake. And they definitely don't need a custom cake from this particular baker. The baker's refusal to create a custom cake that violates his religious views does NOT create a barrier to the gay guys getting married, nor does it even create a reasonable barrier to the gay guys getting a wedding cake.

On the other hand, forcing this baker to create a cake for the gay couple's wedding directly forces him to violate his religious beliefs.

The closest parallel I have is the case years ago where Yaniv* sued a bunch of middle-eastern small business women who refused to wax his balls. He argued that because he identifies as transgender, and these businesses performed pubic waxing for women, they should be forced to wax his balls because transgender is a protected characteristic in Canada. On the other hand, the women were almost exclusively muslim women, whose religion prohibits them from handling the genitals of men other than their husbands in any way. In that situation I sided with the aestheticians. Forcing them to wax Yaniv's balls would be a direct violation of their right to religious observance; having waxed balls or not is not a fundamental requirement for Yaniv to be transgender; there are many other businesses that either specialize in the waxing of male genitals or which were willing to wax his balls. In that situation, Yaniv's desire to force females to handle his junk against their will and in violation of their beliefs was something I did not support - and neither did the Canadian court ultimately.

I have the same core position with this case. Off-the-Shelf wedding cakes are ubiquitously available; other custom wedding cakes that are happy to make same-sex cakes are easily available. Forcing this baker to make a gay wedding cake does not have any affect on gay rights as a whole, but it does violate the baker's rights.

Some people even/ especially in the USA and still believe on religious grounds that miscegenation is a sin. You would hold that if such a person were a web designer, they should legally free to refuse wedding websites to interracial couples, anniversary websites to interracial couples, birth announcements to interracial couples.
Web designers who hold a belief that God ordained Amurca as a majority white country should, according to you be legally allowed to refuse to work on a website commemorating the achievement of American citizenship by an immigrant from one of Trump's "shitthole" countries, and also refuse to work on birth-announcements for non-white babies.
Have I represented your position fairly and accurately?

Nah, you need to reduce the complexity more while aligning with your own biases, disregard the delicate balance between different protected classes & serve no purpose other than to bolster your preconceived arguments.

 

[TomC]

I didn’t realize until now that “ segregation” and “ heterosexual only water fountains” referred exclusively to race.

Ah, the poor reasoning defense.
Tom

 

[Gospel]

I didn’t realize until now that “ segregation” and “ heterosexual only water fountains” referred exclusively to race.

Ah, the poor reasoning defense.
Tom

Ahh the ole non-contributory post.

 

[TomC]

I didn’t realize until now that “ segregation” and “ heterosexual only water fountains” referred exclusively to race.

Ah, the poor reasoning defense.
Tom

Ahh the ole non-contributory post.

Do you realize that I was quoting LD?
Tom

 

[Toni]

I didn’t realize until now that “ segregation” and “ heterosexual only water fountains” referred exclusively to race.

Ah, the poor reasoning defense.
Tom

Ahh the ole non-contributory post.

Do you realize that I was quoting LD?
Tom

Applies, none the less.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I know what protected classes are. I also know that being a member of a protected class is not carte blanche for violating the rights of other people.

Being gay doesn't give the gay person the right to force a religious person to violate their doctrine and tenets.

Really? Because the Tanakh says to put gays to death. A Muslim, Christian, or Jewish person would be sent to prison for murdering a gay person.

Anybody of any religion would be sent to death for murdering any person of any religion in the US. There is no special pleading here, and there are accepted limits within which we prohibit a person from directly taking action on their beliefs.

Not to get overly technical... that isn't a belief, it is an order.

In the US, they'll refuse to make a wedding cake because the couple is gay. And we applaud their "right" to do this?

None of us applaud it here. But some of us do protect that right - because failure to protect that right sets a precedent that can be easily abused and have disastrous consequences for us all.

Okay, so prohibiting a religious holy book's order to put gays to death is okay... but forcing a person to sell a "custom" cake is a bridge too far regarding religious entitlement? Which I suppose just repeats what I said below.

Is discrimination only okay when it is trite?

Triteness has nothing to do with it. Let me turn that around on you: Is it only okay to violate someone's constitutional rights when you think they're bad people and deserve it?

We've established that there ARE limits to what we allow people to do regarding their religion. Mormons aren't allowed to marry multiple spouses (Reynolds v US (1888).) Christians and Jewish aren't allowed to put gays to death (I don't think this has actually been tested in SCOTUS, but I think we would expect an 8-1 ruling with Thomas dissenting). Both of these things are religious, the later being an order. So if the US Government can request that people ignore orders in the Tanakh / Old Testament over big things, I'm curious why the cake requirement or the website requirement is just too much. And again, the answer appears to be "it is trite". Allowing gays to live isn't a problem when it comes to beliefs, but putting a web site together for a wedding is.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

But that’s not typically how such websites work. People want their own unique story told. They lack the skills ( and often the taste and the contacts) to complete their vision, so they hire someone to create to for them.

You just agreed with me.

You seem to be missing the point Toni and I are making.

We see compelling someone to come up with ideas they find repugnant to be wrong.

The percentage of business interactions that are of this sort are tiny.

Yes, the percentage of the camel in the tent at the moment is rather small. Though, this does help support my "trite" proposition.

The vast majority are stock or an assembly of stock options. Neither of us feels a company should be able to reject such a customer based on irrelevant beliefs.

And when that case comes to SCOTUS, we'll see how that goes, and the camel is more inside the tent at that point.