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Fake Gay Marriage Website and SCOTUS Ruling

I think she's expressing it fine and you just don't want to see it.

She and I are taking approximately the same position: Creativity is involved in providing the good. Not merely in producing a standard good.
Medical treatment is no less a creative activity than web design, so your response is off point.

Moreover, in my view, creativity is irrelevant in this commercial situation.
Creative? Ask 10 doctors, you should get the same answer from each. It's highly skilled, it's rarely creative.
Practicing medicine is problem-solving. Sometimes the problem is easy, sometimes it is not. Just like web design - sometimes it is easy, sometimes not. Problem-solving involves creativity.
Non-answer detected.
Creativity: Expect different results from everybody doing it.
Skilled: Expect similar results from everybody doing it, or a bimodal distribution (where it falls near a dividing line and different doctors place it on different sides of the line.)
 
I think she's expressing it fine and you just don't want to see it.

She and I are taking approximately the same position: Creativity is involved in providing the good. Not merely in producing a standard good.
Medical treatment is no less a creative activity than web design, so your response is off point.

Moreover, in my view, creativity is irrelevant in this commercial situation.
Creative? Ask 10 doctors, you should get the same answer from each. It's highly skilled, it's rarely creative.
Practicing medicine is problem-solving. Sometimes the problem is easy, sometimes it is not. Just like web design - sometimes it is easy, sometimes not. Problem-solving involves creativity.
Non-answer detected.
Creativity: Expect different results from everybody doing it.
Skilled: Expect similar results from everybody doing it, or a bimodal distribution (where it falls near a dividing line and different doctors place it on different sides of the line.)
Your first sentence describes the rest of your response.
 
A fundamentalist Christian jewelry maker could not refuse to sell wedding bands to a gay couple. A fundamentalist Christian jewelry maker COULD refuse to inscribe those bands with Michael and Tony forever on religious grounds.
And here's where we disagree. There's nothing creative about inscribing the band, it's simply customer-supplied text, these days likely handled by a machine.
 
I believe there are fewer categories of personal characteristics than services.

And that's why you're OK with giving the government the power to enforce involuntary servitude?

I don't.
But you do you.
Tom
What "involuntary servitude" is being enforced by gov't or are you simply babbling?
You favor compelling people to work on things they find repugnant. Involuntary servitude.
I favor compelling those in commerce to offer the same services and products to every customer.

In a civilized society, there are various instances of “ involuntary servitude. Taxes come to mind, as do anti- discrimination laws. Both of which to some people force them to work on things they find repugnant.
 
So a Jewish jeweler who does custom pieces should be compelled to create a ring with a swastika on it?
If it's in his font, yes. Otherwise, no, as it's a creative act. And I doubt it's in his font.
A Muslim woman who does body waxing should be compelled to wax the genitals of a man?
This one is a total red herring--she did vulva waxing, not testicle waxing. The service being asked for was one she didn't even know how to perform. The gender of the person they're attached to is irrelevant.
 
At the risk of starting a….shitstorm—which is NOT my intention: What is the purpose of protected groups?

Can you imagine a time when those protected groups might not be necessary?

Can you imagine a time when someone not in those groups which are now protected would need to be included in these protected groups? Who might those people be?
Everyone is in one protected group or another.

My personal belief is that, as society progresses, we will have less need and hopefully no need to say that it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex/gender/race/ethnicity/gender/gender identity/sexual preferences/religion/whatever else I forgot to mention. In fact, I believe that is the ultimate goal: that everyone will be equally accepted and protected by the law.
That was part of the appeal of Star Trek:TOS.
Really? What protected group are white heterosexual cis men in? I mean, they still pretty much rule the world but which protected legal class?

If we are ALL in a protected class, then what is the point of protected classes.

I'm sorry: I'm really tired and maybe I'm missing stuff....
 
I believe there are fewer categories of personal characteristics than services.

And that's why you're OK with giving the government the power to enforce involuntary servitude?

I don't.
But you do you.
Tom
What "involuntary servitude" is being enforced by gov't or are you simply babbling?
You favor compelling people to work on things they find repugnant. Involuntary servitude.
I favor compelling those in commerce to offer the same services and products to every customer.

In a civilized society, there are various instances of “ involuntary servitude. Taxes come to mind, as do anti- discrimination laws. Both of which to some people force them to work on things they find repugnant.
Well, the same thing can be said for traffic laws. Laws against stealing and murder.
 
I think she's expressing it fine and you just don't want to see it.

She and I are taking approximately the same position: Creativity is involved in providing the good. Not merely in producing a standard good.
Medical treatment is no less a creative activity than web design, so your response is off point.

Moreover, in my view, creativity is irrelevant in this commercial situation.
Creative? Ask 10 doctors, you should get the same answer from each. It's highly skilled, it's rarely creative.
Practicing medicine is problem-solving. Sometimes the problem is easy, sometimes it is not. Just like web design - sometimes it is easy, sometimes not. Problem-solving involves creativity.
Non-answer detected.
Creativity: Expect different results from everybody doing it.
Skilled: Expect similar results from everybody doing it, or a bimodal distribution (where it falls near a dividing line and different doctors place it on different sides of the line.)
Your first sentence describes the rest of your response.
Another non-answer.

Are you going to address the issue of creativity or keep throwing up non-answers to avoid addressing it?
 
Really? What protected group are white heterosexual cis men in? I mean, they still pretty much rule the world but which protected legal class?

If we are ALL in a protected class, then what is the point of protected classes.

I'm sorry: I'm really tired and maybe I'm missing stuff....
If race is protected then white is protected.
If sexuality is protected then heterosexual is protected.
If gender is protected then cis is protected.

There are some who do not believe that it's possible to discriminate against the majority but obviously they never heard of apartheid South Africa.
 
[
Another non-answer.

Are you going to address the issue of creativity or keep throwing up non-answers to avoid addressing it?
It is no more a non- answer than your ironic replies. You think web design requires more creativity than practicing medicine and I don’t. Your self- serving definitions do not create the differentiation you wish to make.
 
But make this simpler: Should a Pakistani Muslim American be forced to create a custom wedding ring set inscribed with a Hebrew blessing for an Israeli American Jewish couple?

Two protected classes here.
If the jeweler makes wedding rings with Hebrew blessings for others, then yes. If they don’t do Hebrew blessings on any wedding rings, then no.
How is that different than creating a website for a gay couple? It’s just words, after all. It’s pretty easy to switch from Arabic font to Hebrew font.
The difference is the web designer will make a website for a heterosexual couple but not for the gay couple.
I guess a gay wedding is as different from a heterosexual wedding as the Arabic language is from the Hebrew language. Therefore it’s a completely separate product being made.
 

A fundamentalist Christian jewelry maker COULD refuse to inscribe those bands with Michael and Tony forever on religious grounds.
I agree that under current interpretation of the law, that is legal. But I think it should not be.
And I think not too far in the future they can refuse the sale of a ring.
It that was t the question. It isn’t about selling a ring. It’s about inscribing it.
You don't get it. This is a glitch to allow bigger glitches. You keep thinking this has to do with speech. It has to do with repression and the difficulty of recodifying a new Jim Crow.

O'Conner and Kennedy would have voted against the web designer.
 
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I think she's expressing it fine and you just don't want to see it.

She and I are taking approximately the same position: Creativity is involved in providing the good. Not merely in producing a standard good.
Medical treatment is no less a creative activity than web design, so your response is off point.

Moreover, in my view, creativity is irrelevant in this commercial situation.
Creative? Ask 10 doctors, you should get the same answer from each. It's highly skilled, it's rarely creative.
Practicing medicine is problem-solving. Sometimes the problem is easy, sometimes it is not. Just like web design - sometimes it is easy, sometimes not. Problem-solving involves creativity.
Non-answer detected.
Creativity: Expect different results from everybody doing it.
Skilled: Expect similar results from everybody doing it, or a bimodal distribution (where it falls near a dividing line and different doctors place it on different sides of the line.)
So computer coding is creativity.

Could I make a request that we stop trying to discuss this in hyper technical and unestablished terms regarding legality?
 
So why does this help create a loophole for person to avoid providing a service to gays, but not blacks?
If somebody claims she believes black people getting married is un-Christian, a court could perfectly well take judicial note of the fact that black Christians have been getting married for two thousand years with the full support of Christian churches, and deduce that she's lying about her reason for refusing service.
And yet, Christian Churches have been marring gay couples for a number of years, yet the SCOTUS fell for that web designer's views.
You can't seriously imagine that's a sound counterargument. A recent movement to become more accepting among the more liberal wing of the religion, which only happened by plagiarism of non-Christian moral progress, hardly wipes away either two thousand years of general practice or the existence of a conservative wing. So when a Christian claims she got her views against same-sex marriage from her religion's traditional teachings we have every reason to believe her. But if one were to claim she got views against black marriage from her religion's traditional teachings we'd have no reason to believe her -- she'd obviously be lying and just trying to game the system.
 
"If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky
Opening a business to create websites for other people is not free expression. It's directed expression.
What is your criterion for labeling other people's expressions "directed"? And do you think there's something in the Constitution that excludes expressions from First Amendment protection when they satisfy your criterion?
The website creator is expressing the thoughts and feelings of the person who requested the website. They may add their own artistic flourishes but the main message is from the person requesting the work. It's like someone translating one language to another.
So does that mean that in your view, when Katharine Graham published the Pentagon Papers, that was "directed expression", not "free expression", because she was expressing Daniel Ellsberg's thoughts rather than her own? So the First Amendment shouldn't have protected her, and Richard Nixon should have been granted an injunction imposing prior restraint against the Washington Post?
The press already has a special place in the constitution that gives it its rights.
How do you figure that helps your case in any way? If getting the thoughts from somebody else made an expression of Ms. Smith "directed" speech and not "free" speech then it would equally make the expressions of the WaPo directed press and not free press. There's practically nothing in constitutional case law distinguishing freedom of speech from freedom of the press -- the SCOTUS barely gives a rat's ass whether somebody is a reporter -- and there's no constitutional basis for supposing free speech doesn't include the freedom to take direction. You might as well claim you can arrest a Jehovah's Witness for preaching from the Watchtower because she didn't write it herself.
 
The US Constitution created a massive firewall between Federal and State rights.
The US Constitution recognizes the right of a State to a jury trial in disputes of over $20. Not seeing any other "States' rights" in there. The Rights it lists are Rights of the People.

So they used interstate commerce to justify their intercession into State business. Reading the case and how food crossing state lines, as used at the BBQ in question seems like an egregious overstep of anti-Constitutional authority possible to justify forcing accommodation to all people (I can easily see purists in here arguing against that). From a bare technical legal look, it seems thread thin.
Why? Selling food from out-of-state looks like interstate commerce to me. Just like the Mann Act -- the feds wanted to outlaw prostitution so they said "transport any woman or girl across state lines for any immoral purpose". This was back in the day when the SCOTUS was still a court of law and hadn't evolved into the House of Lords it is today. Nowadays you get a Gonzales v Raich, where growing weed on your own land and smoking it yourself counts as interstate commerce to the SCOTUS. That's thread thin. The Civil Rights Act? Not so much.

(Now I'm getting verklempt -- talk among yourselves. I'll give you a topic -- "interstate commerce" is neither interstate nor commerce; discuss.[/SNL])

I see this new Bizarro SCOTUS that aims to Plessy v Ferguson the nation back up, caring more for the technicalities of the law instead the heart of it.
I guess that depends on what you see as the heart of it. If you see the function of government to be holding down class enemies so you can impose your will on them, maybe so. But I'd have thought the heart of judicial review is to have limited government rather than a British-style unrestrained Parliament.

The justification for reversing Plessy v Ferguson is not that it was bad for the country but that it was wrongly decided. Go read Bostock, the Gorsuch decision that upheld the rights of gay and trans people. If you think different rules for different people based on race technically qualifies as "equal protection of the law", you're reasoning like Alito, not like Gorsuch -- and not even Alito wants to Plessy v Ferguson the nation back up, though his explanation for why not was painfully strained special pleading. As for the majority, they sided with Gorsuch.
 
So why does this help create a loophole for person to avoid providing a service to gays, but not blacks?
If somebody claims she believes black people getting married is un-Christian, a court could perfectly well take judicial note of the fact that black Christians have been getting married for two thousand years with the full support of Christian churches, and deduce that she's lying about her reason for refusing service.
And yet, Christian Churches have been marring gay couples for a number of years, yet the SCOTUS fell for that web designer's views.
You can't seriously imagine that's a sound counterargument. A recent movement to become more accepting among the more liberal wing of the religion, which only happened by plagiarism of non-Christian moral progress, hardly wipes away either two thousand years of general practice or the existence of a conservative wing. So when a Christian claims she got her views against same-sex marriage from her religion's traditional teachings we have every reason to believe her. But if one were to claim she got views against black marriage from her religion's traditional teachings we'd have no reason to believe her -- she'd obviously be lying and just trying to game the system.

So 250ish years of "we the people" using religion to justify slavery isn't considered traditional. Ok (y)
 
The US Constitution created a massive firewall between Federal and State rights.
The US Constitution recognizes the right of a State to a jury trial in disputes of over $20. Not seeing any other "States' rights" in there. The Rights it lists are Rights of the People.
Tenth Amendment anyone? Also see Barron v Baltimore, which held the states were not handcuffed by the Bill of Rights.
So they used interstate commerce to justify their intercession into State business. Reading the case and how food crossing state lines, as used at the BBQ in question seems like an egregious overstep of anti-Constitutional authority possible to justify forcing accommodation to all people (I can easily see purists in here arguing against that). From a bare technical legal look, it seems thread thin.
Why? Selling food from out-of-state looks like interstate commerce to me. Just like the Mann Act -- the feds wanted to outlaw prostitution so they said "transport any woman or girl across state lines for any immoral purpose".
The difference there is that one act was committed with the intent to commit a crime in the first state. The other case is about food from one state and how it is sold in another. The food moving to another state was never part of a conspiracy, it was just heading over state lines. SCOTUS could have said that was a stretch. They didn't. This court very well could have.
I see this new Bizarro SCOTUS that aims to Plessy v Ferguson the nation back up, caring more for the technicalities of the law instead the heart of it.
I guess that depends on what you see as the heart of it. If you see the function of government to be holding down class enemies so you can impose your will on them, maybe so. But I'd have thought the heart of judicial review is to have limited government rather than a British-style unrestrained Parliament.
Holding down class enemies? Requiring corporations provide the services they sell to all comers isn't "holding down class enemies". The role of SCOTUS being to limit government is a tad bit naïve as the larger cases have usually pitted Government verses Government.
The justification for reversing Plessy v Ferguson is not that it was bad for the country but that it was wrongly decided.
If that were the case, it wouldn't have taken nearly six decades to reverse. So many people have this absurd idea that law, especially at the SCOTUS level is black and white. The results of Plessy v Ferguson led to the necessity for Brown v Board of Education... and it being a unanimous decision.
Go read Bostock, the Gorsuch decision that upheld the rights of gay and trans people. If you think different rules for different people based on race technically qualifies as "equal protection of the law", you're reasoning like Alito, not like Gorsuch -- and not even Alito wants to Plessy v Ferguson the nation back up, though his explanation for why not was painfully strained special pleading. As for the majority, they sided with Gorsuch.
I'm not suggesting special pleading or different. I've been saying the whole time, if it is the product they make and isn't obscene, it should be provided for the customer. No swastika or porn cakes on demand. But wedding cake, yeah. You'll notice, that unlike your distorted claim of my argument, my position is rather neutral. People must be served! Not gays, not blacks, not Christians, just people. All people.
 
So why does this help create a loophole for person to avoid providing a service to gays, but not blacks?
If somebody claims she believes black people getting married is un-Christian, a court could perfectly well take judicial note of the fact that black Christians have been getting married for two thousand years with the full support of Christian churches, and deduce that she's lying about her reason for refusing service.
And yet, Christian Churches have been marring gay couples for a number of years, yet the SCOTUS fell for that web designer's views.
You can't seriously imagine that's a sound counterargument. A recent movement to become more accepting among the more liberal wing of the religion, which only happened by plagiarism of non-Christian moral progress, hardly wipes away either two thousand years of general practice or the existence of a conservative wing.
Non-responsive to my point.
So when a Christian claims she got her views against same-sex marriage from her religion's traditional teachings we have every reason to believe her.
"Traditional teachings" is a nebulous and unhelpful term. What is the minimum necessary for a teaching to qualify as "traditional". Why why do traditional teachings matter compared to "non-traditional" teachings.

There are Christian sects that believe just about anything. So, of course, we can believe whatever they say the believe. That doesn't mean we have to accept that belief as a valid operational guide when we are dealing with social policy.
But if one were to claim she got views against black marriage from her religion's traditional teachings we'd have no reason to believe her -- she'd obviously be lying and just trying to game the system.
There are plenty of Christian sects that preach racial bigotry. So, your argument falls apart.
 
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