Should bakers be forced to make gender transition celebration cakes?

[laughing dog]

Regardless of whether the punishment is jail, or fine, or discriminatory deprivation of livelihood, or discriminatory authorization of discriminatory refusal of service, when it's the government using government power to punish the disapproved thought, that's thought crime. It's theocracy.

No, it is not theocracy under the normal understanding of the term. When one has to resort to such high-handed rhetorical devices to make an argument, it diminishes whatever actual reasons buttressing the position.

Ultimately, whether or not this religious bigot of a baker is punished will depend on court rulings. If this case gets to this Supreme Court, I suspect that this Supreme Court will accept the argument made by James Madison and others even though I think it is based on a wrong premise that the baker is endorsing the message of a cake of which he had no problem with its physical characteristics - a message he would not have even known if he had not been told.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Then there should have been no attempt whatever to end the Jim Crow practices of restaurants, hotels, clinics, etc., etc. etc.?

I find it dishonest to compare this to the Civil Rights battles of the 60s.

Racism was huge and pervasive. It went from basic equality before the law to basic human needs like housing and health care and education. It was entrenched for centuries.

Extremely different from managing to find a bakery or campground that isn't accepting, when 99% of all such frivolous stuff is fine with the businesses who just want your money.
Tom

The post I was responding to asserted that the writer thought that no private business should be compelled to give service to anyone. Period. So it makes sense to then ask, are you extending this libertarian viewpoint all the way to saying that Jim Crow practices (in restaurants, clinics, theaters, bus lines, etc.) should not have been addressed by Johnson's DOJ and by Civil Rights legislation?
As to racism not being a fair analogy to anti-gay prejudice, the LGBTQ community has indeed faced discrimination in housing, health, employment -- the full gamut, not just concerning cake shops. Both the post that was prior to mine -- and my post -- went beyond Masterpiece Cakes. That was clear from the earlier post referring to all private businesses.

 

[Bomb#20]

Regardless of whether the punishment is jail, or fine, or discriminatory deprivation of livelihood, or discriminatory authorization of discriminatory refusal of service, when it's the government using government power to punish the disapproved thought, that's thought crime. It's theocracy.

No, it is not theocracy under the normal understanding of the term. When one has to resort to such high-handed rhetorical devices to make an argument, it diminishes whatever actual reasons buttressing the position.

The Colorado government is engaging in viewpoint discrimination. If they'd made it legal for businesses to turn down Muslim messages but illegal to turn down Christian messages, would you also call it a high-handed rhetorical device when a Taoist called that "theocracy"? How about if he just called it a violation of church-state separation? Your rhetoric sensibilities wouldn't be offended by that, would they?

Ultimately, whether or not this religious bigot of a baker is punished will depend on court rulings. If this case gets to this Supreme Court, I suspect that this Supreme Court will accept the argument made by James Madison and others even though I think it is based on a wrong premise that the baker is endorsing the message of a cake of which he had no problem with its physical characteristics - a message he would not have even known if he had not been told.

Well, it might go the other way. The SCOTUS might rule that artists are common carriers, and since nobody should assume an artist is endorsing an artwork's message and the government won't blame him for an offensive message, this means artists have to send whatever message a customer demands (short of libel, incitement to violence, etc.).

Suppose that happens. What happens next is that some customer will demand that a gay baker provide a cake that symbolically represents the opinion that gay marriage is a sin. The baker will refuse, and some religious bigot of a Colorado local official will ignore the SCOTUS and side with the baker. The religious bigot of a customer will sue, and an appellate court will cite the (by supposition) Masterpiece decision, rule for the customer, and order Colorado to reverse its decision. God knows what happens then. Maybe the ruling has teeth and the gay baker who won't bake a homophobic cake will be shut down. Or maybe the ruling is toothless and Colorado will continue its de facto policy that Woke is the established state religion, and the SCOTUS will deplore this but provide no remedy.

The SCOTUS has no police powers. So if Colorado continues to shut down artists who refuse Woke messages while refusing to shut down artists who refuse anti-Woke messages, there isn't a lot the SCOTUS will be able to do to force Colorado to force gay artists to create anti-gay artworks, especially if the President and Congress are beholden to Woke voters. If that's how it goes down, the SCOTUS will basically have two choices: acquiesce to governmental religious non-neutrality, thereby making rule-of-law and the court's own authority a joke, or else reverse its own previous Masterpiece decision and rule that artists have a First Amendment right to refuse Woke messages on the same terms that other artists are allowed to refuse anti-Woke messages.

If this case gets to this Supreme Court, I too suspect that this Supreme Court will accept the argument made by James Madison and others. But I think it's a lot more likely to be because they want to forestall the above scenario and the resulting dilemma than because they give a hoot about anything as immaterial as a nonexistent premise that the baker is endorsing the message of a cake. If they're ultimately going to find they have to side with bakers' constitutional free speech rights over customers' alleging a statutory right to compel speech, why not do it now?

For those who find that outcome loathsome, there are basically three ways forward. (1) Enact a Constitutional Amendment to repeal some part of the First Amendment. (2) Give up Woke control over business licensing boards and turn them into the honest neutral law-enforcement bodies they're supposed to be: bodies that refrain from viewpoint discrimination. (3) Pack the Supreme Court with wannabe theocrats church-state-separation violators.

 

[Bomb#20]

I love how discussing whether a person should be compelled to do business with a transgender person, as they would any other person, immediately leads to hypotheticals of the KKK and Nazis.

Well, when someone expresses a principle that logically implies artists should have to create pro-KKK and pro-Nazi artworks, and somebody else notices that implication, how long do you think it should take for him to point it out?

People raise these hypotheticals not because being transgender is bad like being KKK, but because they know the guy isn't in favor of applying his principle to the KKK, and having the contradiction in his beliefs pointed out is supposed to make him rethink them. But people usually come up with an excuse not to rethink their contradictory beliefs.

Personally, I want to hear justification for a transgender person needing to drive 60 miles to the big city because all the local places refuse to make him a cake to celebrate an important moment of their life.

Well, do you also want to hear a justification for a Christian needing to drive 60 miles to the big city because all the local places refuse to make him a cake to celebrate his conviction that marriage is between a man and a woman? Or can you figure that one out for yourself?

Now, judging from your KKK remark, you'll probably decline to answer the question, and you'll probably justify that to yourself with an ad hominem attack on me -- probably something about how I must think celebrating bigotry is the same thing as celebrating personal fulfillment. But that's not it at all. I'm asking because the answer to your question depends on the answer to my question. If you say yes, there's one justification for a transgender person needing to drive 60 miles to the big city. If you say no, there's a different justification for a transgender person needing to drive 60 miles to the big city.

 

[James Madison]

It is a shame there would be failure with words.

The law is the law but it is not a moral teaching.

Here the law is immoral.

The law is immoral because it offends your moral compass?

It is immoral because it endorses immorality like the immorality of discrimination based on ignorant prejudice.

Being against ignorant discrimination is not only my morality.

Christian delusion is not morality and no sane court should say it is.

That is one hell of a circular argument.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Cake to celebrate a moment of life vs cake to communicate political opinion.

Cakes to celebrate moments of life are extraordinarily common. Cakes to espouse political opinion, usually desperate pleas in online arguments to justify obstructions to someone’s civil rights.

A baker selling a cake? They should be compelled to sell a custom cake to any person if they would have sold it to anyone else.

 

[Bomb#20]

The problem is thinking deluded religious nuts should have special rights to discriminate.

So it's only the one true religion's religious nuts that should have special rights to discriminate, huh?

 

[James Madison]

Isn't the snowflake the insane baker discriminating against innocent people simply for what they are?

Could you resort to more pejoratives for someone you disagree with and more euphemisms for those you side with? It is so damn persuasive that the person you disagree with is “insane” and the person you favor is “innocent.” Let me pause for a moment and tell you how wowed I am by ostensibly some poor, innocent person can’t get a cake by someone you find less appealing and is therefore “insane.” You are a smooth typer, you are, you are.

Yet, your statement is detached from reality. The refusal of service was based on the message. The refusal of service was not based on “what they are.”

But go ahead, recite the facts supporting your contention the refusal was based on “what they are.”

I don't refuse service to blacks for what they are.

I refuse their requests because of the horrible message it will send. It sends the message I approve of blackness.

A cake used by a black man. What a horrible message.

A cake a transsexual would want. What a horrible message.

You argument in favor of ignorant bigotry is noted.

I can't use enough words to describe the ignorance of this baker. The immorality of this baker and those that support his ignorance.

I feel as if I am talking to some white racist in 1960 when segregation was legal droning on and on about separate but equal.

Your defense of this ignorance and criminality on the part of this deluded baker will be crushed by history.

I refuse their requests because of the horrible message it will send. It sends the message I approve of blackness.

Phillips isn’t objecting on the basis he is sending a message of approval, at least nothing I’ve read states Phillips’ refusal was because he would be sending a message of approval. Even if this is true, the objection need not rest solely on this as a fact, and there’s another fact his objection can rest upon. The other fact is he is enaged in speech that symbolically recognizes the customer as trans, recognizing the date of transition, and the cake is a celebration, or as you say a symbolical “approval” of the transition and their identity as a transgender, regardless of whether he approves of the message or not.

And a fundamental principle of free speech is the government cannot compel people to speak (save for maybe govnerment employees acting in their capacity as an official/employee of the government). You want to allow the government to compel messages you deem appropriate, and preclude a right not to speak if the motive and reason to. Or speak is one you personally dislike. That’s not free speech.

I feel as if I am talking to some white racist in 1960 when segregation was legal droning on and on about separate but equal.

Well, this is evidence your “feelings” are wrong. I have brown skin, black hair, brown eyes, and I’m an ethnic minority. So, go screw yourself with your F’d up “feelings” of who I am, conceived, no doubt, in a pool of ignorance as to who I might be and who I am.

The ignorance here is you can’t accept as reality, as a possible fact, that people might disagree with you who aren’t white, who aren’t racists, and who aren’t anything close to segregationists. Hence, your “feeling” of who you are taking too. It’s completely unfathomable to you that some people, yes people who aren’t white, aren’t racists, may just be basing in free speech principles.

Your porous logic would have the Cuban phenomenon in Florida, specifically Miami-Dade county, where Trump’s approval rating increased, permitting a “feeling” they are just like white racists supporting segregation in the 60s, since Trump appears that way to some people. And that would ignore the palpable reality they support Trump because the Dems appear to them as closer to the freedom killing Socialist regime they fled, and not because they favor a white racist
who supported segregation.

 

[Bomb#20]

The ‘message’ is not obscene, illegal, or abrasive.

Of course the message was abrasive. Its entire point was to abrade Phillips!

 

[Bomb#20]

Cake to celebrate a moment of life vs cake to communicate political opinion.

Cakes to celebrate moments of life are extraordinarily common. Cakes to espouse political opinion, usually desperate pleas in online arguments to justify obstructions to someone’s civil rights.

Noun phrases vs complete sentences. It sounds like your answer to my question is yes, you can figure out for yourself a justification for a Christian needing to drive 60 miles to the big city. (If that's not what you meant, sorry, but this is what you get for answering in sentence fragments.)

The justification for a transgender person needing to drive 60 miles to the big city is that a Christian needs to drive 60 miles to the big city, and the government should not be in the business of authorizing one citizen to compel other citizens' speech just in order to avoid driving 60 miles to the big city, while not authorizing a different citizen to compel other citizens' speech just in order to avoid driving 60 miles to the big city, discriminating based on whether the government agrees with what the citizen wants to compel other citizens to say. The justification for the government staying out of that business is that the government getting into that business is a violation of equal protection of the law, an abridgment of free speech, and an establishment of religion.

A baker selling a cake? They should be compelled to sell a custom cake to any person if they would have sold it to anyone else.

No worries -- Phillips wouldn't sell a custom celebrate-transition cake to anyone.

 

[laughing dog]

The Colorado government is engaging in viewpoint discrimination.

No more than any anti-discrimination law, so I disagree.

If they'd made it legal for businesses to turn down Muslim messages but illegal to turn down Christian messages, would you also call it a high-handed rhetorical device when a Taoist called that "theocracy"?

No, because at least that is religiously driven.

How about if he just called it a violation of church-state separation? Your rhetoric sensibilities wouldn't be offended by that, would they?

I don't think my rhetoric sensibilities were offended but I cannot be sure since I have no clue what you mean by that.

Perhaps you refer to my comment about the misuse of the term "theocracy" to discredit another viewpoint in discussion in atheist board. All I can say is that expecting terms to be used correctly is a rhetorical sensibility, then I am guilty. But, I would think that membership in that club would be rather large.

Well, it might go the other way. The SCOTUS might rule that artists are common carriers, and since nobody should assume an artist is endorsing an artwork's message and the government won't blame him for an offensive message, this means artists have to send whatever message a customer demands (short of libel, incitement to violence, etc.).....

I do admire the imagination and desperation necessary to come up with such a fantastical slippery slope argument.

 

[untermensche]

It is immoral because it endorses immorality like the immorality of discrimination based on ignorant prejudice.

Being against ignorant discrimination is not only my morality.

Christian delusion is not morality and no sane court should say it is.

That is one hell of a circular argument.

No it is not.

That is one hell of a bad reading.

You support ignorant bigotry.

You are immoral.

You think some ignorant bigot should have the right to refuse service because they don't want to spread the message that some people celebrate gender transition.

I wonder what kind of person would celebrate a gender transition?

 

[untermensche]

I don't refuse service to blacks for what they are.

I refuse their requests because of the horrible message it will send. It sends the message I approve of blackness.

A cake used by a black man. What a horrible message.

A cake a transsexual would want. What a horrible message.

You argument in favor of ignorant bigotry is noted.

I can't use enough words to describe the ignorance of this baker. The immorality of this baker and those that support his ignorance.

I feel as if I am talking to some white racist in 1960 when segregation was legal droning on and on about separate but equal.

Your defense of this ignorance and criminality on the part of this deluded baker will be crushed by history.

I refuse their requests because of the horrible message it will send. It sends the message I approve of blackness.

Phillips isn’t objecting on the basis he is sending a message of approval, at least nothing I’ve read states Phillips’ refusal was because he would be sending a message of approval. Even if this is true, the objection need not rest solely on this as a fact, and there’s another fact his objection can rest upon. The other fact is he is enaged in speech that symbolically recognizes the customer as trans, recognizing the date of transition, and the cake is a celebration, or as you say a symbolical “approval” of the transition and their identity as a transgender, regardless of whether he approves of the message or not.

And a fundamental principle of free speech is the government cannot compel people to speak (save for maybe govnerment employees acting in their capacity as an official/employee of the government). You want to allow the government to compel messages you deem appropriate, and preclude a right not to speak if the motive and reason to. Or speak is one you personally dislike. That’s not free speech.

I feel as if I am talking to some white racist in 1960 when segregation was legal droning on and on about separate but equal.

Well, this is evidence your “feelings” are wrong. I have brown skin, black hair, brown eyes, and I’m an ethnic minority. So, go screw yourself with your F’d up “feelings” of who I am, conceived, no doubt, in a pool of ignorance as to who I might be and who I am.

The ignorance here is you can’t accept as reality, as a possible fact, that people might disagree with you who aren’t white, who aren’t racists, and who aren’t anything close to segregationists. Hence, your “feeling” of who you are taking too. It’s completely unfathomable to you that some people, yes people who aren’t white, aren’t racists, may just be basing in free speech principles.

Your porous logic would have the Cuban phenomenon in Florida, specifically Miami-Dade county, where Trump’s approval rating increased, permitting a “feeling” they are just like white racists supporting segregation in the 60s, since Trump appears that way to some people. And that would ignore the palpable reality they support Trump because the Dems appear to them as closer to the freedom killing Socialist regime they fled, and not because they favor a white racist
who supported segregation.

You are twisting yourself into a pretzel in support of ignorant bigotry.

These ideas that if it is a cake bigotry is OK will always exist but history will remove them from any consideration involving clear ignorant bigotry in the market place.

The right to be free from bigotry trumps any right the bigot might invent in support of their bigotry.

It's just that this ignorant bigotry is still prevalent and widely supported. US culture is stagnant and Christian fundamentalism is widespread.

Just like the ignorant bigotry of racism was legally supported and prevalent just 60 years ago.

Endorsing and supporting Christian fundamentalism in the market place is a bad idea.

 

[James Madison]

It is immoral because it endorses immorality like the immorality of discrimination based on ignorant prejudice.

Being against ignorant discrimination is not only my morality.

Christian delusion is not morality and no sane court should say it is.

That is one hell of a circular argument.

No it is not.

That is one hell of a bad reading.

You support ignorant bigotry.

You are immoral.

You think some ignorant bigot should have the right to refuse service because they don't want to spread the message that some people celebrate gender transition.

I wonder what kind of person would celebrate a gender transition?

Yes, your argument was circular. Something was “immoral” because it “endorsed immortality” and “immorality” of the “discrimination” at issue here.

That’s circular reasoning.

Now, the ignorance is your resorting to ad hominems, which possibly reflects that you lack anything substantive as a rebuttal or argument/

 

[James Madison]

Phillips isn’t objecting on the basis he is sending a message of approval, at least nothing I’ve read states Phillips’ refusal was because he would be sending a message of approval. Even if this is true, the objection need not rest solely on this as a fact, and there’s another fact his objection can rest upon. The other fact is he is enaged in speech that symbolically recognizes the customer as trans, recognizing the date of transition, and the cake is a celebration, or as you say a symbolical “approval” of the transition and their identity as a transgender, regardless of whether he approves of the message or not.

And a fundamental principle of free speech is the government cannot compel people to speak (save for maybe govnerment employees acting in their capacity as an official/employee of the government). You want to allow the government to compel messages you deem appropriate, and preclude a right not to speak if the motive and reason to. Or speak is one you personally dislike. That’s not free speech.

I feel as if I am talking to some white racist in 1960 when segregation was legal droning on and on about separate but equal.

Well, this is evidence your “feelings” are wrong. I have brown skin, black hair, brown eyes, and I’m an ethnic minority. So, go screw yourself with your F’d up “feelings” of who I am, conceived, no doubt, in a pool of ignorance as to who I might be and who I am.

The ignorance here is you can’t accept as reality, as a possible fact, that people might disagree with you who aren’t white, who aren’t racists, and who aren’t anything close to segregationists. Hence, your “feeling” of who you are taking too. It’s completely unfathomable to you that some people, yes people who aren’t white, aren’t racists, may just be basing in free speech principles.

Your porous logic would have the Cuban phenomenon in Florida, specifically Miami-Dade county, where Trump’s approval rating increased, permitting a “feeling” they are just like white racists supporting segregation in the 60s, since Trump appears that way to some people. And that would ignore the palpable reality they support Trump because the Dems appear to them as closer to the freedom killing Socialist regime they fled, and not because they favor a white racist
who supported segregation.

You are twisting yourself into a pretzel in support of ignorant bigotry.

These ideas that if it is a cake bigotry is OK will always exist but history will remove them from any consideration involving clear ignorant bigotry in the market place.

The right to be free from bigotry trumps any right the bigot might invent in support of their bigotry.

It's just that this ignorant bigotry is still prevalent and widely supported. US culture is stagnant and Christian fundamentalism is widespread.

Just like the ignorant bigotry of racism was legally supported and prevalent just 60 years ago.

Endorsing and supporting Christian fundamentalism in the market place is a bad idea.

Yeah? What legal text might I find this “right to be free from bigotry”?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No worries -- Phillips wouldn't sell a custom celebrate-transition cake to anyone.

Seeing there is no such thing as a celebrate-transition cake, just decorated cakes, your statement is meaningless. If the baker will make that cake and sell it to someone (cake colored one way, iced another color), they should be compelled to sell it to anyone.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You are twisting yourself into a pretzel in support of ignorant bigotry.

These ideas that if it is a cake bigotry is OK will always exist but history will remove them from any consideration involving clear ignorant bigotry in the market place.

The right to be free from bigotry trumps any right the bigot might invent in support of their bigotry.

It's just that this ignorant bigotry is still prevalent and widely supported. US culture is stagnant and Christian fundamentalism is widespread.

Just like the ignorant bigotry of racism was legally supported and prevalent just 60 years ago.

Endorsing and supporting Christian fundamentalism in the market place is a bad idea.

Yeah? What legal text might I find this “right to be free from bigotry”?

Regarding commerce? That'd be The Civil Rights Act (Section 201), and SCOTUS decisions like HEART OF ATLANTA MOTEL, INC., Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, "We find no merit in the remainder of appellant's contentions, including that of 'involuntary servitude.'" (Granted the SCOTUS today might have ax'd the 1964 Legislation)

Yes, the legislation fell more to race at the time, and I realize that it is getting tougher and tougher to find classes of people that are still considered unprotected from bigotry in commerce. The parallels of the intent of the legislation are quite in line to support unrestricted access to commerce. And it can't help but be noticed the stark parallels of the arguments made against LGBT as were being made against African Americans in the 1960s.

 

[Bomb#20]

No worries -- Phillips wouldn't sell a custom celebrate-transition cake to anyone.

Seeing there is no such thing as a celebrate-transition cake,

Show your work.

just decorated cakes, your statement is meaningless. If the baker will make that cake and sell it to someone (cake colored one way, iced another color), they should be compelled to sell it to anyone.

Funny story about humans: we evolved this goofy brain activity we call "symbolizing". We form communities in which systems of arbitrary symbol-to-concept mappings develop and contagiously pass from mind to mind; these we call "languages". Pretty much anything can be a symbol in some language or other: sounds, shapes, hand gestures, dots and dashes, flags; even color combinations. Green and red means Christmas; black and orange means Halloween; blue and white means Hanukkah. Because the mappings are arbitrary and the communities are dynamically shifting subsets of the species, you can get a situation where exactly the same symbols mean one thing in one language and a different thing in a different language. But you appear to be proposing that what qualifies as "that cake", i.e., what determines whether two physically different cakes should be legislated about based on a "legal fiction" that they are the same cake, should be decided by inspection of the uninterpreted physical symbols, entirely without regard to the context -- the language -- in which the symbols are read.

This, it should go without saying, is a complete departure from the usual procedure for legislation about symbols. For instance, in deciding whether it is legal to sell a cake decorated with the symbols "I'm going to kill you.", no court in the land would fail to take judicial notice of the context: of what those symbols mean in English. So you are in effect proposing a special rule just for antidiscrimination law -- that in the event of a discrimination accusation, the court is supposed to put away its dictionaries and its encyclopedias and all its knowledge of anthropology, and just in this one type of case, as it were, turn the judicial decision over to an OCR program.

Have you considered the implications of what you're advocating? Suppose a hippie wokester came into the cakeshop of a gay wokester and requested a well-calligraphized cake saying "4/20", telling the baker it's for his celebration of Weed Day -- at 4:20 on 4/20 he and his stoner friends are going to get high, and get the munchies, and then share the cake. The baker of course happily complied.

The next day a skinhead nonwokester with a swastika tattoo comes into the cakeshop of that same gay wokester and requests a well-calligraphized cake saying "4/20", telling the baker it's for his celebration of Adolf Hitler's birthday -- at the minute of Hitler's birth on 4/20, he and his neonazi friends are going to click together their glasses of Beck's, and drink a toast to the greatest world leader of all time, and then share the cake.

So you're telling me this gay baker "should be compelled" to help those bigots celebrate a man who among his other crimes murdered ten thousand people for being gay.

 

[untermensche]

You are twisting yourself into a pretzel in support of ignorant bigotry.

These ideas that if it is a cake bigotry is OK will always exist but history will remove them from any consideration involving clear ignorant bigotry in the market place.

The right to be free from bigotry trumps any right the bigot might invent in support of their bigotry.

It's just that this ignorant bigotry is still prevalent and widely supported. US culture is stagnant and Christian fundamentalism is widespread.

Just like the ignorant bigotry of racism was legally supported and prevalent just 60 years ago.

Endorsing and supporting Christian fundamentalism in the market place is a bad idea.

Yeah? What legal text might I find this “right to be free from bigotry”?

It is the exact same legal principle as black people being allowed to sit at lunch counters.

Why are they allowed?

Because they have the right to be free from ignorant bigotry.

 

[untermensche]

Yes, your argument was circular. Something was “immoral” because it “endorsed immortality” and “immorality” of the “discrimination” at issue here.

That’s circular reasoning.

Now, the ignorance is your resorting to ad hominems, which possibly reflects that you lack anything substantive as a rebuttal or argument/

You're basically saying I can't answer your question with the truth.

If a person endorses immorality they are immoral.

To be immoral is to endorse immorality.

This is not circular.

I am not defining immorality.

I am saying why the law is immoral.

It endorses ignorant prejudice like the ignorant prejudice opposed to gay marriage.

It gives the rights of the bigot greater power than an innocent consumer who has the right to not be discriminated against.