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.
I don't know why you believe that. You haven't produced any evidence for it. And it's not clear that you care enough about the distinction for your opinion on that technicality to remain uncontaminated by your disapproval of Phillips' unwillingness to help celebrate transitioning.
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.
It's called the "Masterpiece Cakeshop", for crying out loud! You don't go there because you want food. If you want a cake that isn't an artwork you can get one a ton cheaper at a Safeway.
This is a simple two color cake with no symbolism other than a perception of what those two colors mean.
It's not a "perception". The customer
told him what the symbolism was, in the customer's language, same as if the customer had told him he wanted some innocuous-sounding words because they were actually an ethnic slur in the customer's language.
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,
Oh, for the love of god! Are you even
trying to make sensible arguments? I said "And the cake in question is an artwork". I didn't say, "All cake is artwork because it's cake." Woolworths amounted to an assembly line; it employed cooks in the food business. Phillips is an artist in the art business. The fact that he specializes in edible party decorations rather than house decorations no more makes him a non-artist than the fact that Jorn Utzon specialized in buildings rather than house decorations made him a non-artist. In contrast, if the Woolworths lunch counter sold cake it was undoubtedly as generic as a Safeway cake.
And if that distinction is too subtle a nuance for you to accept, the SCOTUS does not share your disability. There's a line of cases where they upheld artists' rights against one or another state claiming something wasn't art.
And all that's on top of the fact that Woolworths was discriminating against a type of person, not a viewpoint.
and abused by the other customers?
Okay, now you've just gone off the deep end.
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.
It's a custom cake, ordered from an artist. It's not even off-the-shelf. If you hired a professional artist to paint a mural for you, then even if what you requested was a simple circle on a uniform background you're going to lose if you later argue in court that it isn't art.
Bakeries bake and sell cakes to be eaten. Art galleries produce art to be sold.
If Scardina takes that argument to the SCOTUS it will be rejected.
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.
If she takes that argument to the SCOTUS she'll need to produce concrete evidence that Phillips isn't discriminating against a viewpoint, but against a type of person. If she says, "I believe that Phillips is discriminating against a type of person, and is doing a very poor job of trying to cover that up.", that won't do the job.
