SCOTUS gay rights case

[Jimmy Higgins]

You beat me to it Thomas! Of course it's not about religion for the Restaurant. It's about not exposing their staff to hate.

So we’re agreed that the state can’t compel a business to promote a message it disagrees with. Glad that’s settled.

The issue here is the word "promote"... and "message". You, and others, are equating their business as promotion. Like gas stations promote foreign automobile car manufacturers because they allow me to buy gas there.

A wedding cake baker were no more promoting weddings between heterosexual couples than they are between gay couples. Before gay marriage was legalized, were wedding cake bakers promoting a policy of being anti-gay marriage because they weren't baking cakes for state recognized weddings between gay couples? No.

Oleg appears to be making the argument for "separate but equal."

Can the state compel a Jewish baker to make a Nazi cake?

Wedding cakes aren't obscene.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So you don't want to answer my question.

I answered your poorly thought out question that was merely tangential to the conversation. I explicitly explain why it isn't even relevant to the wedding cake. I'm sorry if you didn't like the answer. But don't say I'm not answering your questions that are desperately grasping at hypotheticals to push for the reestablishment of discriminatory practices that will undoubtedly impact minorities in a country you don't even live in.

I had a specific question:

Do you think a commercial artist, who advertises her drawing and painting skills, should be compelled to take any commission whatsoever?

Either your answer is 'yes' or 'no'.

You think that is a yes or no. OI! Also, I answered your question.

WEDDING CAKE! That'd be paint by number. We aren't talking about compelling someone to create a depiction of a gay orgy on a flat sheet cake.

You responded to the question. You didn't answer it.

For the reading challenged that means if a person is putting together a painting that preset-ish (ie paint by number), no, they can't refuse. If they are being completely told what is to be painted, then there could be reason to say they don't need to do it, if it passes some level of threshold.

Oh yes. Where is that threshold? In a wedding cake, say?

Kind of like how a photographer needs to take pictures of a wedding, but not of an orgy.

Can a photographer choose to photograph some orgies and not others?

Give me a sec.

*walks over to storm door*

*puts hand on wood molding*

*slams door on hand*

*walks back to computer*

Fuck that hurt! But as the broken bones wobble in my shattered hand, this is less painful and more constructive than continuing with this inane retort of yours.

 

[Metaphor]

So you don't want to answer my question.

I answered your poorly thought out question that was merely tangential to the conversation. I explicitly explain why it isn't even relevant to the wedding cake. I'm sorry if you didn't like the answer. But don't say I'm not answering your questions that are desperately grasping at hypotheticals to push for the reestablishment of discriminatory practices that will undoubtedly impact minorities in a country you don't even live in.

I had a specific question:

Do you think a commercial artist, who advertises her drawing and painting skills, should be compelled to take any commission whatsoever?

Either your answer is 'yes' or 'no'.

You think that is a yes or no. OI! Also, I answered your question.

WEDDING CAKE! That'd be paint by number. We aren't talking about compelling someone to create a depiction of a gay orgy on a flat sheet cake.

You responded to the question. You didn't answer it.

For the reading challenged that means if a person is putting together a painting that preset-ish (ie paint by number), no, they can't refuse. If they are being completely told what is to be painted, then there could be reason to say they don't need to do it, if it passes some level of threshold.

Oh yes. Where is that threshold? In a wedding cake, say?

Kind of like how a photographer needs to take pictures of a wedding, but not of an orgy.

Can a photographer choose to photograph some orgies and not others?

Give me a sec.

*walks over to storm door*

*puts hand on wood molding*

*slams door on hand*

*walks back to computer*

Fuck that hurt! But as the broken bones wobble in my shattered hand, this is less painful and more constructive than continuing with this inane retort of yours.

Yeah, we both know you can't answer the question.

 

[ZiprHead]

For those who say a Christian sole proprietor has to handle a gay wedding.

Should a Jewish catering service be required to cater a Neo Nazi anti Semitic party? In this case catering actually serving at the oarty.

If you have a business like a store or restaurant you are required by laws to serve all.

Does a construction contractor or caterer have a right to refuse offers of work?

It's illegal for a businessperson to discriminate against Germans as a whole class of customers (which woud be a more relevant example), even if they were doing so on "religious grounds".

Nazis aren't a protected category.

 

[laughing dog]

So you don't want to answer my question.

I answered your poorly thought out question that was merely tangential to the conversation. I explicitly explain why it isn't even relevant to the wedding cake. I'm sorry if you didn't like the answer. But don't say I'm not answering your questions that are desperately grasping at hypotheticals to push for the reestablishment of discriminatory practices that will undoubtedly impact minorities in a country you don't even live in.

I had a specific question:

Do you think a commercial artist, who advertises her drawing and painting skills, should be compelled to take any commission whatsoever?

Either your answer is 'yes' or 'no'.

You think that is a yes or no. OI! Also, I answered your question.

WEDDING CAKE! That'd be paint by number. We aren't talking about compelling someone to create a depiction of a gay orgy on a flat sheet cake.

You responded to the question. You didn't answer it.

For the reading challenged that means if a person is putting together a painting that preset-ish (ie paint by number), no, they can't refuse. If they are being completely told what is to be painted, then there could be reason to say they don't need to do it, if it passes some level of threshold.

Oh yes. Where is that threshold? In a wedding cake, say?

Kind of like how a photographer needs to take pictures of a wedding, but not of an orgy.

Can a photographer choose to photograph some orgies and not others?

Give me a sec.

*walks over to storm door*

*puts hand on wood molding*

*slams door on hand*

*walks back to computer*

Fuck that hurt! But as the broken bones wobble in my shattered hand, this is less painful and more constructive than continuing with this inane retort of yours.

Jimmy - I've heard the "ignore" button works wonder on those injured hands.

 

[Jarhyn]

It isn't hard if you try. Setting a flag on fire is a protest - clearly political speech. Making ______ (fill in the blank) for money is not speech, it is commerce.

so Michaelangelo's painting the Sistine Chapel was not speech, but commerce, Madonna's "Like a Virgin' video was not speech, but commerce.

Those are both examples of art as expression... for money. It is speech. Making a pretty cake to sell is baking and decoration, not speech.

To be fair both are commissioning of art. If someone would fulfill a request from person A, they need to be prepared to fulfill the same request of person B, assuming fulfillment is a function of publicly licensed business.

If Becky is allowed to buy a cake of a penis cut in half, so is Billy.

 

[Politesse]

For those who say a Christian sole proprietor has to handle a gay wedding.

Should a Jewish catering service be required to cater a Neo Nazi anti Semitic party? In this case catering actually serving at the oarty.

If you have a business like a store or restaurant you are required by laws to serve all.

Does a construction contractor or caterer have a right to refuse offers of work?

It's illegal for a businessperson to discriminate against Germans as a whole class of customers (which woud be a more relevant example), even if they were doing so on "religious grounds".

Nazis aren't a protected category.

The equivalence between gays and Nazis is false. That's why I corrected the analogy.

 

[repoman]

This is where we need to be instead of the US backwardness.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The equivalence between gays and Nazis is false. That's why I corrected the analogy.

A fact not lost on the rational among us. I believe some of us are approaching the issue emotionally.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Some people want to withhold their services to some people that come to them to purchase services that they sell. This isn't compelling people to do things that they feel are wrong. Baking a cake for a wedding between a gay couple is the same as baking a cake for a wedding of a not gay couple. Designing a website for a wedding of a gay couple involves pretty much nothing different than a wedding for a not gay couple. The processes are the same. There is no messaging, there is no promotion of any event. It is a website, it is a cake... for a wedding. There is no such thing as a "gay wedding". There is no "gay marriage certificate".

So if they sell cakes for weddings, they need to sell cakes for all weddings.

Disagree. Designing is very different in my book and I take a wide view on what constitutes designing.

Present a complete design from elements they already provide, they offered to bake cakes, they need to follow through on their offer. Once it crosses the line into requiring creative actions that's another matter, they should be free to refuse to create what they don't like. Thus "put two male figurines on the cake" is fine (assuming they have male figurines in the first place, I would assume someone doing wedding cakes does.) "Draw a picture of two men holding hands" is not. (But if they have the ability to print an image on a cake and you provide an image of two men holding hands they have to print it.)

It doesn't matter if they have never made the particular layout before, so long as it's a combination of standard features there's no designing even if the combination requires some sort of configuration to set up. (Looking at my former employer--virtually every cabinet had the ability to be ordered with a range of extended width styles, left and right separately. Oddball combinations would likely trip up at an engineering step and require human intervention to set up a few parts. Yes, that required a good understanding of the system but you could write a complete set of directions for exactly how to do it, no creativity was involved.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I am "conflating" that a women's only gym is discrimination by sex and they are allowed.

One is an excusive club and the other isn't. Glad I can help.

The other what?

I forgot who I was talking to. Women's only gym's (in some not all states) are legal because they (women's only gyms) are intertwined with right to privacy laws. Similar to women's & men's restrooms. It's a complicated issue that your conflation/marginalization attempts to cram into a point that can only be characterized as the big crunch. The bakery in question is a public accommodation with next to no grounds to argue right to privacy. They are not even the same issue, I mean they are close but not quite the same.

Observation: My wife used to go to Curves. I found out from the owner of the franchise that while they can discourage men they legally can not exclude them. The law may differ from state to state. They pretended to be women-only but could not actually be.

 

[TomC]

Observation: My wife used to go to Curves. I found out from the owner of the franchise that while they can discourage men they legally can not exclude them. The law may differ from state to state. They pretended to be women-only but could not actually be.

I wondered about that myself.
There used to be a women's only gym in my town. "No Men Allowed" was their main selling point. It was fairly popular, I think.
I'm not interested in gyms at all, so I don't really know how successful it was. It's long gone.

Nobody seemed inclined to push the issue though. I'm absolutely sure that if a gym promoted themselves as a "Whites Only" gym there'd have been huge problems.
Or a "Blacks Only" gym.

How did the staff of Ladies Only Fitness handle trans? I have no idea. I doubt that was a problem in southern Indiana in the 80s and 90s.
Tom

 

[Metaphor]

I am "conflating" that a women's only gym is discrimination by sex and they are allowed.

One is an excusive club and the other isn't. Glad I can help.

The other what?

I forgot who I was talking to. Women's only gym's (in some not all states) are legal because they (women's only gyms) are intertwined with right to privacy laws. Similar to women's & men's restrooms. It's a complicated issue that your conflation/marginalization attempts to cram into a point that can only be characterized as the big crunch. The bakery in question is a public accommodation with next to no grounds to argue right to privacy. They are not even the same issue, I mean they are close but not quite the same.

I don't know where in the U.S. women's only gyms are legal and where they are not, only that such businesses exist (they certainly exist, or existed, in Australia). I was simply responding to something Politesse said in post 72:

You people always say "calm down, they wouldn't go there" before they go there, then switch to "how could anyone have known that would happen" once they have. Word to the wise, it does not take a genius to see that if you legalize discrimination based on sex, that discrimination based on sex is almost certain to then occur.

Years ago on this board, there was a thread about whether a sex worker could discriminate based on the sex of the potential client. There were people on this board who said "no, if you service women by putting your penis in their butthole you also have to service men by putting your penis in their butthole". It sounds like a straw man position, but it's not. That's how devoted to this 'you must not discriminate in commerce' position some people are.

 

[TomC]

I don't know where in the U.S. women's only gyms are legal and where they are not, only that such businesses exist

To the best of my knowledge,
they're not legal here in the USA.

But "women" are a politically correct Protected Person Group, so nobody cares if they do illegal things. The rules change when the people involved have different opinions.
Tom

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Observation: My wife used to go to Curves. I found out from the owner of the franchise that while they can discourage men they legally can not exclude them. The law may differ from state to state. They pretended to be women-only but could not actually be.

I wondered about that myself.
There used to be a women's only gym in my town. "No Men Allowed" was their main selling point. It was fairly popular, I think.
I'm not interested in gyms at all, so I don't really know how successful it was. It's long gone.

Nobody seemed inclined to push the issue though. I'm absolutely sure that if a gym promoted themselves as a "Whites Only" gym there'd have been huge problems.
Or a "Blacks Only" gym.

How did the staff of Ladies Only Fitness handle trans? I have no idea. I doubt that was a problem in southern Indiana in the 80s and 90s.
Tom

Curves is pretty lightweight--the one I've seen the inside of has no place where there would be any shared nudity.

 

[Jarhyn]

Nobody seemed inclined to push the issue though. I'm absolutely sure that if a gym promoted themselves as a "Whites Only" gym there'd have been huge problems.
Or a "Blacks Only" gym.

Only after a major movement caused the end of legal and legalized segregation and Jim Crow.

And a bunch of people fought tooth and nail to get access to a bunch of times where people pushed the issue towards "men only" and other folks had to push back until they broke.

There was so much pushing in fact that it broke the US Military on the issue, among others.

 

[Bomb#20]

So don't have to sell to a black couple then? Where is the line between expression and violating civil rights?

People keep bringing up this specter. It isn't realistic. When some baker says he has a religious objection to helping profane the holy sacrament of marriage, the rest of us have every reason to believe him. We can all read his church's scriptures...

Read up on Loving v Virginia.

Quite familiar with it. It doesn't bear on the issue in dispute. The 14th Amendment doesn't restrict private citizens from discriminating, just governments.

Religion was very much a cornerstone on prohibitions. Religion was used to back slavery as well.

Certainly; but you're missing the point. I didn't propose using religion as a justification, but as contextual information for helping a court figure out whether a particular litigant is lying.

 

[Bomb#20]

According to you, making copies for money is not speech, it is commerce, which means it would be constitutional for Congress to pass a law banning Kinko's from doing anything of the sort

Half points for being partially correct. It is commerce, but it is not representing the things said as being said by the copyists.

There is a difference between "I am Bob, and I believe what I am saying" in exchange for Jerry's money, versus printing out a hundred copies that say "I am Jerry and I believe what I am saying" by Jerry.

One is paid endorsement.

And no, I don't think paid endorsement should be protected as free speech.

But unendorsed copying? That's just common carrier protections.

One is renting a printer and buying paper and ink, and owning your own message yourself., and the other is renting an image of a whole person and prostitution to make a statement in possible conflict of interest.

You, as sharp as you occasionally seem, should have no trouble understanding this much... So why does it seem so difficult for you to get past?

Save the condescension for when you've proven something. How the heck do you imagine any of what you wrote has anything to do with the issue of whether a law saying "No taking pay to copy criticisms of Congress members." would be constitutional? Nobody in my example was asking Kinko's to claim it agreed with the customer's criticism, any more than Mrs. Graham asked her WaPo employees to claim they agreed with some editorial she wrote. Paid endorsement is a red herring here. Unendorsed copying is plainly covered by the First Amendment. If it weren't covered then a public school could make children recite the Lord's Prayer, provided it allowed them to do it with their fingers crossed to express that they aren't endorsing what they're being made to say. And if it weren't covered then freedom of the press would be restricted to Gutenberg-style one-person operations. I can see how that would appeal to Congresscritters, but why anyone else would think that's a good idea is a mystery.

 

[Jarhyn]

According to you, making copies for money is not speech, it is commerce, which means it would be constitutional for Congress to pass a law banning Kinko's from doing anything of the sort

Half points for being partially correct. It is commerce, but it is not representing the things said as being said by the copyists.

There is a difference between "I am Bob, and I believe what I am saying" in exchange for Jerry's money, versus printing out a hundred copies that say "I am Jerry and I believe what I am saying" by Jerry.

One is paid endorsement.

And no, I don't think paid endorsement should be protected as free speech.

But unendorsed copying? That's just common carrier protections.

One is renting a printer and buying paper and ink, and owning your own message yourself., and the other is renting an image of a whole person and prostitution to make a statement in possible conflict of interest.

You, as sharp as you occasionally seem, should have no trouble understanding this much... So why does it seem so difficult for you to get past?

Save the condescension for when you've proven something. How the heck do you imagine any of what you wrote has anything to do with the issue of whether a law saying "No taking pay to copy criticisms of Congress members." would be constitutional?

This is in fact a red herring that you foist. The constitutional issue cleaves exactly on the point I describe: the relationship between commerce, free PRESS, and paid endorsement.

The issue is in taking that pay to ENDORSE the thing copies.

No endorsement = no issue.

Nobody in my example was asking Kinko's to claim it agreed with the customer's criticism, any more than Mrs. Graham asked her WaPo employees to claim they agreed with some editorial she wrote.

And so nobody was trying to do something beyond participating in the free press.

the issue comes into it that IF someone seeks to rent a printing press to anyone as a matter of public business, they have to rent it to everyone.

If their business includes endorsement, that's no longer renting a press, that's renting a prostitute. And renting of prostitutes is regulated and always has been.

 

[Bomb#20]

It isn't hard if you try. Setting a flag on fire is a protest - clearly political speech. Making ______ (fill in the blank) for money is not speech, it is commerce.

By that rule, when you type up a flyer saying Congressman Emmer is a misogynistic jerk who should be voted out of office for treating women as brood mares, that's a protest and clearly political speech.

It is. But in the real world, there are limits to "free speech". Slander and libel are limits on free speech. Lying under oath in a trial is a limit on free speech. As is speech such as shouting fire in a crowded movie theater or making terroristic threats.

Why do progressives keep making that argument as if it proved anything? Who the heck claimed there are no limits? That whole line of argument appears to amount to "There are limits; therefore whichever limit I'm demanding today must be okay.", as though the only possibilities are (a) all possible speech is legal, and (b) only speech that progressives like should be protected. It's a blatant false dilemma fallacy.

(Incidentally, anybody who's familiar with the "shouting fire in a crowded movie theater" SCOTUS case should be embarrassed to appeal to it -- it's an object lesson in how corruptly government can be expected to interpret justifications for censorship. What the government said was analogous to shouting fire in a crowded movie theater was socialists telling draftees how they could legally challenge conscription. The SCOTUS even overturned its own dishonest ruling -- fifty years later.)

But pay Kinko's to run off the hundred copies you mean to hand out? According to you, making copies for money is not speech, it is commerce, which means it would be constitutional for Congress to pass a law banning Kinko's from doing anything of the sort.

That would not bother me a bit.

What a surprise. So it's okay with you for Congress to ban Kinko's from criticizing congressmen for money; is it also okay with you for Congress to ban New York Times employees from criticizing congressmen for money?