Should bakers be forced to make gender transition celebration cakes?

[laughing dog]

] Phillips could have ignored it, but he didn’t. He decided to butt in with his bigoted views.

Withholding your labour is not 'butting in'. People should be able to withhold their labour (or their money) from whatever they want.* Some people don't work for certain corporations because they feel it's an ethical conflict for them. Other people don't buy certain products or products from certain regions (like people who support BDS). Why are they not assholes?

Don’t know because you are not making any sense to me.

 

[Metaphor]

] Phillips could have ignored it, but he didn’t. He decided to butt in with his bigoted views.

Withholding your labour is not 'butting in'. People should be able to withhold their labour (or their money) from whatever they want.* Some people don't work for certain corporations because they feel it's an ethical conflict for them. Other people don't buy certain products or products from certain regions (like people who support BDS). Why are they not assholes?

Don’t know because you are not making any sense to me.

Okay.

 

[Bomb#20]

Unless there is some sort of special "gender transition" cake that requires special ingredients or extra work that no other cake does, this baker is out of line. In fact, if Scardina had not said what the cake was celebrating, there'd have been no issue whatsoever.

If Scardina had not said what the cake was celebrating, there'd have been no cake whatsoever -- she wouldn't have gone into the shop in the first place. She didn't want a cake; she wanted a lawsuit.

Moreover, she was transparently lying about what she'd have celebrated with it if against all odds she'd actually gotten a cake. She wouldn't have celebrated her transition. She'd have served it to her activist friends and celebrated crushing her enemy, seeing him driven before her, and in her head hearing the lamentation of his women. (She and her guests probably wouldn't even have eaten it -- they'd just have taken selfies while holding plates of cake, and then thrown them in the trash, taking for granted that Phillips had probably spit in it.)

So the baker is out of line and being an asshole. I don't know if he is violating Colorado law or not. But I have no sympathy for him whatsoever.

And that's relevant because? What, are you one of those folks who decide what other people should be forced to do based on whether you feel sympathy for them?

 

[laughing dog]

Unless there is some sort of special "gender transition" cake that requires special ingredients or extra work that no other cake does, this baker is out of line. In fact, if Scardina had not said what the cake was celebrating, there'd have been no issue whatsoever.

If Scardina had not said what the cake was celebrating, there'd have been no cake whatsoever -- she wouldn't have gone into the shop in the first place. She didn't want a cake; she wanted a lawsuit.

Moreover, she was transparently lying about what she'd have celebrated with it if against all odds she'd actually gotten a cake. She wouldn't have celebrated her transition. She'd have served it to her activist friends and celebrated crushing her enemy, seeing him driven before her, and in her head hearing the lamentation of his women. (She and her guests probably wouldn't even have eaten it -- they'd just have taken selfies while holding plates of cake, and then thrown them in the trash, taking for granted that Phillips had probably spit in it.)...

While you are free to indulge in grotesque fantasies, no one is required to accept them as relevant or deal with your asinine accusations.

 

[Bomb#20]

If he is violating state or federal law, then he has no one to blame but himself.

Not necessarily. If he's violating state law but not federal law and the state law is unconstitutional under the federal Constitution, then he has someone besides himself to blame: the state.

 

[Bomb#20]

To really make the case it should have been handled differently:

Have someone else go order the exact same cake but with a different explanation, or no explanation.

Then go order it specifically to celebrate transition.

If the first order works and the second doesn't the discrimination is much more clearly shown.

True; but the discrimination that that would more clearly show is message-content discrimination and end-use-purpose discrimination, not gender-identity discrimination. The SCOTUS is unlikely to find message-content discrimination and end-use-purpose discrimination to be illegal.

 

[Bomb#20]

The Woolworths lunch counter protest happened in 1960, six years after Brown v. The Board of Education. There was no law that required Woolworths to only serve whites at their lunch counter.

So, you believe a baker refusing to bake a cake celebrating a gender transition is somehow equivalent to Woolworths refusing to serve black customers at the same counters it served white customers?

Yes, I believe they are analogous incidents of discrimination in the public food service industry, why do you not?

There are two differences that make the incidents not analogous, legally. Phillips is discriminating against a viewpoint, not against a type of person. And the cake in question is an artwork; a cup of coffee at Woolworth's lunch counter is not an artwork. Art is protected under the First Amendment. That's the Constitution; all the laws against discriminating in private business are merely statutes, which means they rank lower. So if this ever makes it to the Supreme Court, Scardina has little chance of winning.

 

[KeepTalking]

No. I have stated my opposition to that several times now, please stop intentionally misrepresent

Of course you believe it. You've said so many times. You think Phillips ought be compelled to have baked the two-tone cake with the colour symbolism that represented gender transition celebration, as Scardina specified.

(Edited). <Edited>

 

[Elixir]

So this guy goes to the doctor and asks for smart pills. The doc pokes and prods a little then gives him a bottle of pills and says "take one of these every day".
A week or so later the guy shows back up at the doc's office and says "I don't feel any smarter!" Doc says, okay, I'm upping the dosage - take it three times a day.
A week or so later he shows up again and say "Doc, these pills taste like rabbit pellets!"
Doc says "NOW you're getting smarter!"

(edited) .

NOW you're getting smarter!

 

[KeepTalking]

Yes, I believe they are analogous incidents of discrimination in the public food service industry, why do you not?

There are two differences that make the incidents not analogous, legally. Phillips is discriminating against a viewpoint, not against a type of person.

I disagree. I believe that Phillips is discriminating against a type of person, and is doing a very poor job of trying to cover that up.

And the cake in question is an artwork; a cup of coffee at Woolworth's lunch counter is not an artwork.

A cake is not artwork. A cake is food. No one decorates their home with cake. This is a simple two color cake with no symbolism other than a perception of what those two colors mean.

Are you contending that if the protestors at the Woolworths lunch counter had been attempting to purchase cake instead of coffee, then it would have someone been just fine for them to be refused service, and abused by the other customers?

Art is protected under the First Amendment. That's the Constitution; all the laws against discriminating in private business are merely statutes, which means they rank lower. So if this ever makes it to the Supreme Court, Scardina has little chance of winning.

This isn't art, and is not being sold as such. It is a cake that is being sold to be eaten, it is food. It does not even have any artwork on it, it is simply two colors, like damn near any cake ever made to be eaten.

Bakeries bake and sell cakes to be eaten. Art galleries produce art to be sold. Even if this was art, if this strange Art Gallery/ Bakery was to refuse to sell same "artistically designed two color cake to a transgender that they would have sold to a cisgender, then they would be engaging in illegal discrimination as well and should be forced to stop doing so, or go out of business.

 

[ideologyhunter]

The religious freedom crusade is off the charts obnoxious, and with the current SCCCCCOTUS (the extra C's are for Conspicuously Catholic Crazyass Conservative), we're going to deal with it for decades. And there are far more egregious cases than Masterpiece Cakeshop. There are pharmacists who don't want to give out birth control. There's that Kim Davis, I think, in KY, the county court clerk who's a divorcee but wants to impose Biblical marriage definitions on all citizens. And somehow the sensibilities of Catholic bishops (not the Catholic congregations, who defy the church's birth control teachings by a majority of about 90%) are always deemed more important than women's autonomy and reproductive health decisions. In the Hobby Lobby case, the Court's majority didn't care that plaintiff's definition of abortifacient was erroneous, and they also contended that their decision was limited only to one small instance. Fat chance.
We're in for tons more of this First Century malarkey.

 

[KeepTalking]

To really make the case it should have been handled differently:

Have someone else go order the exact same cake but with a different explanation, or no explanation.

Then go order it specifically to celebrate transition.

If the first order works and the second doesn't the discrimination is much more clearly shown.

We don't know that did not happen. The news articles presented so far have only presented one side of the story. But as you can see in the first reply to your post, some people have dug their heels in to the point that they won't even allow themselves to see very obvious discrimination that the above tactic would reveal.

 

[laughing dog]

And the cake in question is an artwork; a cup of coffee at Woolworth's lunch counter is not an artwork.

A cake is not artwork. A cake is food. No one decorates their home with cake. This is a simple two color cake with no symbolism other than a perception of what those two colors mean.

If cake is art, then serving _____ (you fill in the blank) is performance art. Which would mean under #Bomb20's interpretation, refusing to serve _____ to someone would be protected under the 1st amendment.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

To really make the case it should have been handled differently:

Have someone else go order the exact same cake but with a different explanation, or no explanation.

Then go order it specifically to celebrate transition.

If the first order works and the second doesn't the discrimination is much more clearly shown.

It wouldn't show anything of the kind.

It is illegal for Phillips to refuse to serve a trans customer on the basis of their trans status.

It is not illegal (as far as I know) to refuse to make and sell a cake celebrating a gender transition.

No--to refuse the cake based on what it's going to be used for is discrimination.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yes, I believe they are analogous incidents of discrimination in the public food service industry, why do you not?

There are two differences that make the incidents not analogous, legally. Phillips is discriminating against a viewpoint, not against a type of person. And the cake in question is an artwork; a cup of coffee at Woolworth's lunch counter is not an artwork. Art is protected under the First Amendment. That's the Constitution; all the laws against discriminating in private business are merely statutes, which means they rank lower. So if this ever makes it to the Supreme Court, Scardina has little chance of winning.

Disagree. This was a simple color combination, not artwork. Artwork requires creative skill, none was involved in this. I do believe an artist should be free to refuse any commission they don't want, but there's no artist here.

 

[TomC]

Yes, I believe they are analogous incidents of discrimination in the public food service industry, why do you not?

There are two differences that make the incidents not analogous, legally. Phillips is discriminating against a viewpoint, not against a type of person. And the cake in question is an artwork; a cup of coffee at Woolworth's lunch counter is not an artwork. Art is protected under the First Amendment. That's the Constitution; all the laws against discriminating in private business are merely statutes, which means they rank lower. So if this ever makes it to the Supreme Court, Scardina has little chance of winning.

Disagree. This was a simple color combination, not artwork. Artwork requires creative skill, none was involved in this. I do believe an artist should be free to refuse any commission they don't want, but there's no artist here.

Phillips didn't refuse to make the cake due to the color combination. He didn't want to make the cake because Scardina insisted on making it clear that this was a legal challenge. It wasn't a cake at all. It was Scardina doing performance art, of the legal sort. Her medium is poorly written laws.

Apparently, she expected to make some serious money. Maybe not directly, with her lawsuit. But just becoming a famous lawyer has serious advantages. She obviously didn't need a cake, 99% of all bakeries would have just taken the order and made the cake. Frankly, I could have made her such a simple pastry. But she didn't want that.


What she wanted was to force someone into being part of her performance piece/advertising campaign. Phillips was an obvious target for an unscrupulous lawyer like her.

I sincerely hope that karma bites her in the ass. She's earned it.
Tom

 

[Bomb#20]

And the cake in question is an artwork; a cup of coffee at Woolworth's lunch counter is not an artwork.

A cake is not artwork. A cake is food. No one decorates their home with cake. This is a simple two color cake with no symbolism other than a perception of what those two colors mean.

If cake is art, then serving _____ (you fill in the blank) is performance art. Which would mean under #Bomb20'slaughing dog's interpretation, refusing to serve _____ to someone would be protected under the 1st amendment.

FIFY.

 

[laughing dog]

If cake is art, then serving _____ (you fill in the blank) is performance art. Which would mean under #Bomb20'slaughing dog's interpretation, refusing to serve _____ to someone would be protected under the 1st amendment.

FIFY.

I applied your reasoning in a consistent manner. You did not fix anything, but it does confirm what I suspect - you really do not think cake is art.

 

[Bomb#20]

No. I have stated my opposition to that several times now, please stop intentionally misrepresent

Of course you believe it. You've said so many times. You think Phillips ought be compelled to have baked the two-tone cake with the colour symbolism that represented gender transition celebration, as Scardina specified.

That's it, you can't stop lying about what I have said, so i done here. <Edited>

"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

Metaphor isn't lying; the two of you are merely applying contrary definitions of "compel". In your usage, the state wouldn't be compelling Phillips to make the cake because he'd be allowed the alternative of no longer being permitted to sell cakes to the public. In Metaphor's usage, being threatened with loss of state permission to do business counts as being compelled. He was not attempting to misrepresent your position; he appears to have simply not noticed you use a different definition of "compel" from his. Now shake hands and be friends again.

For what it's worth, the SCOTUS ruled in Wooley v. Maynard in favor of Metaphor's understanding on this conceptual point. In what may have been the greatest irony in the history of propaganda, New Hampshire attempted to make the state-granted privilege of operating a car conditional on the owner submitting to the state's requirement to display the state's slogan on the car, that slogan being, wait for it, "Live Free or Die". The SCOTUS ruled that this was compelled speech and therefore unconstitutional.

 

[Bomb#20]

FIFY.

I applied your reasoning in a consistent manner. You did not fix anything, but it does confirm what I suspect - you really do not think cake is art.

That was me being polite. If you had any sense you'd have accepted the gentle remonstration and dropped the matter. But like an idiot you're doubling down. So this time I will not be polite.

What you wrote in post #133 was a strawman. You deliberately misrepresented my position. And then you did it again in post #138. What you wrote was unethical. If you cannot conduct yourself in a civilized manner then you do not deserve to be included in adult conversations. Stop behaving like a child. You should be ashamed of yourself.