Should bakers be forced to make gender transition celebration cakes?

[ZiprHead]

What is the difference between a special order used for a gender transition and an existing cake used for one?

The baker's knowledge of the implied message.

Let's consider two scenarios.
1) Your best friend tells you "Hey, I'm going to drive out to the middle of nowhere with my girlfriend, and I'd like you to come along".
2) Your best friend tells you "Hey, I'm going to drive out to the middle of nowhere with my girlfriend so I can kill her and hide her body, and I'd like you to come along".

In both scenarios, your friend intends to kill their girlfriend. But in one scenario, you do not have knowledge of that fact. Your decision and your choice of action is dependent upon that knowledge.

I previously provided a scenario that is substantially similar to the Phillips case:
1) A customer calls in and orders a chocolate cake with white icing.
2) A customer calls in and orders a chocolate cake with white icing to celebrate his promotion to grand dragon of his local KKK unit, where the white icing symbolizes the supremacy of the white man over the black man, as symbolized by the chocolate cake.

You previously took the position that the baker should be allowed to refuse to bake the cake that will be used to celebrate bigotry... but he can only make that choice because of his knowledge of the use to which it is being put. In the first situation above, the baker does not have that knowledge - he knows only that it's a chocolate cake with white icing, which is a fairly common combination. It is explicitly because of the knowledge given to the baker regarding the purpose and message of the cake that would allow him to refuse it in the second scenario.

You've used the KKK/Nazi argument several times here. Members of the KKK/Nazi party aren't in a protected class. You been told this several times and you have never acknowledged it.

 

[repoman]

Didn't Jews invent protected classes to oppress Nazis like me?

Not fair

 

[Emily Lake]

You've used the KKK/Nazi argument several times here. Members of the KKK/Nazi party aren't in a protected class. You been told this several times and you have never acknowledged it.

It's irrelevant to the point being made.

I chose neonazis because it's something that we all agree is abhorrent. None of us are going to insist that racism is good - we all share the same belief with respect to white supremacists. And because we all share the same belief, I expect that we would all feel that it should be the baker's right to refuse to bake a cake celebrating something that he (and we) truly and deeply believe is abhorrent. Additionally, there is no written message on the cake, there is only a symbolic color scheme.

It gives us a baseline scenario with which to establish whether a scenario exists in which the convictions of the provider of a service justifiably allow them to refuse service to a customer on the basis of those convictions.

 

[Bomb#20]

Perhaps so. Let's find out. The post where you revealed yourself to apparently favor Policy 3 was this one:

Post #560

You defended an Arab baker having the right to refuse to service a customer who wanted him to write "Judea and Samaria are Eretz Israel", with an argument so transparently specious it can't possibly have been your underlying motivation.

Now your turn. In which post did I favor letting my ingroup get to make my outgroup say things they don't agree with, but not letting my outgroup get to make my ingroup say things we don't agree with?

Yes, under the point of not publishing libel not slander.

You here state that my argument was "transparently specious and cannot have possibly been my underlying motivation."

Good to know that in addition to being a great reader you are a great MIND reader too.

Not posting harassing or threatening speech has always been a position I have stood on here.

In the event that this precise point were ever to be litigated, the court would take judicial note of the painfully obvious fact that writing "Judea and Samaria are Eretz Israel" on a cake is not libelous, is not slanderous, is not harassing, and is not threatening.

It is therefore also painfully obvious that your delusional belief that it is these things is the result of an emotional reaction against the viewpoint of the message, most likely brought on by a religious conviction that Zionists are an oppressor class and Palestinians are a victim class. I.e., you support Policy 3.

 

[ZiprHead]

You've used the KKK/Nazi argument several times here. Members of the KKK/Nazi party aren't in a protected class. You been told this several times and you have never acknowledged it.

It's irrelevant to the point being made.

I chose neonazis because it's something that we all agree is abhorrent. None of us are going to insist that racism is good - we all share the same belief with respect to white supremacists. And because we all share the same belief, I expect that we would all feel that it should be the baker's right to refuse to bake a cake celebrating something that he (and we) truly and deeply believe is abhorrent. Additionally, there is no written message on the cake, there is only a symbolic color scheme.

It gives us a baseline scenario with which to establish whether a scenario exists in which the convictions of the provider of a service justifiably allow them to refuse service to a customer on the basis of those convictions.

It's a shitty argument.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I learned something new today: We are merely offended by Nazis. There can't be anything else to it.

 

[Bomb#20]

Person A: Christianity is to them simply constraints on their freedumb that are dangerous because God instructs them to refrain from doing something they want to do.

Person B: There's no such thing as God.

Person C: People killing their neighbors is an actual problem and rules against it require enforcement. Just because you do not like the idea of not being allowed to kill your neighbor does not make it less real as a solution to a real problem. People killing their neighbors is bad because blah blah blah...​

Wow. Talk about failure to grok.

You are claiming that social contracts are not a thing, just some idiotic hand-waving to coerce you into some outcome or behavior.

I am claiming social contracts are not a thing. I am not claiming they are coercing me into some outcome or behavior. That would obviously be a self-contradiction -- everything that coerces anyone is, evidently, a thing. Stop putting words in my mouth. In fact, just stop attempting to paraphrase other posters -- you aren't any good at it.

The problem with this claim is that social contracts, I this context, create utility that you benefit from and which you actively claim.

No they don't. They don't exist; therefore they don't create anything. Social contracts are fictional characters in children's stories.

This benefit is real, and because we all have real interests in the benefits, we all have real interests in enforcement.

See, here's the thing. Rules are real; enforcement is real; rule enforcement creates benefits. Having rules and enforcement obviously does not require gods or social contracts, since those aren't real. But since you are as ideologically committed to your social contract mythology as Person C is to his god mythology, you choose to interpret all the input you receive through a distorting filter, so that when somebody tells you he doesn't believe in your stupid mythology, you refuse to take seriously the possibility that it's your stupid mythology he rejects, so instead you make up a stupid fantasy in which you choose to believe, in direct opposition to the evidence of your senses, that he just told you he rejects whichever real things you give the credit for to your mythology.

I pointed this out to you in my earlier post -- Person C is an imbecile because when he hears "There's no such thing as God." from Person B, he imagines that what Person B actually said was "I don't like the idea of not being allowed to kill my neighbor". So you have no excuse for not understanding this. And yet here you are again, still trying to put your words in my mouth.

There is a force that pulls people down. We call it gravity. There is a property that gives all more for conformity to a structure of behavior. We call it "social contract".

There is a property that saves all from death by telling us not to kill. We call it "God". Peddle your stupid religion to somebody else.

You are just as bound by the physics, and the metaphysics, of this situation as anyone else.

So that would be: 100% bound by the physics and 0% bound by the metaphysics.

 

[Jarhyn]

I am claiming social contracts are not a thing. I am not claiming they are coercing me into some outcome or behavior. That would obviously be a self-contradiction -- everything that coerces anyone is, evidently, a thing. Stop putting words in my mouth. In fact, just stop attempting to paraphrase other posters -- you aren't any good at it.

The problem with this claim is that social contracts, I this context, create utility that you benefit from and which you actively claim.

No they don't. They don't exist; therefore they don't create anything. Social contracts are fictional characters in children's stories.

This benefit is real, and because we all have real interests in the benefits, we all have real interests in enforcement.

See, here's the thing. Rules are real; enforcement is real; rule enforcement creates benefits. Having rules and enforcement obviously does not require gods or social contracts, since those aren't real. But since you are as ideologically committed to your social contract mythology as Person C is to his god mythology, you choose to interpret all the input you receive through a distorting filter, so that when somebody tells you he doesn't believe in your stupid mythology, you refuse to take seriously the possibility that it's your stupid mythology he rejects, so instead you make up a stupid fantasy in which you choose to believe, in direct opposition to the evidence of your senses, that he just told you he rejects whichever real things you give the credit for to your mythology.

I pointed this out to you in my earlier post -- Person C is an imbecile because when he hears "There's no such thing as God." from Person B, he imagines that what Person B actually said was "I don't like the idea of not being allowed to kill my neighbor". So you have no excuse for not understanding this. And yet here you are again, still trying to put your words in my mouth.

There is a force that pulls people down. We call it gravity. There is a property that gives all more for conformity to a structure of behavior. We call it "social contract".

There is a property that saves all from death by telling us not to kill. We call it "God". Peddle your stupid religion to somebody else.

You are just as bound by the physics, and the metaphysics, of this situation as anyone else.

So that would be: 100% bound by the physics and 0% bound by the metaphysics.

I see. So you deny the existence of the utility of the semaphore. Got it. That's metaphysics by the way. Models for the way to describe and treat physics problems.

The plain fact of reality is that when you queue for a limited resource, a protocol is necessary to prevent deadlocking and resolve contention. You can deny the reality of the function of the protocol, but that is really transparently stupid.

Just try programming multi-threaded applications without mutexes. I fucking dare you. See how far you get.

You are here denying the reality of social contracts, yet you work in a universe wherein there is a strong reliance on global/system contract.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What is the difference between a special order used for a gender transition and an existing cake used for one?

The baker's knowledge of the implied message.

Let's consider two scenarios.
1) Your best friend tells you "Hey, I'm going to drive out to the middle of nowhere with my girlfriend, and I'd like you to come along".
2) Your best friend tells you "Hey, I'm going to drive out to the middle of nowhere with my girlfriend so I can kill her and hide her body, and I'd like you to come along".

In both scenarios, your friend intends to kill their girlfriend. But in one scenario, you do not have knowledge of that fact. Your decision and your choice of action is dependent upon that knowledge.

I previously provided a scenario that is substantially similar to the Phillips case:
1) A customer calls in and orders a chocolate cake with white icing.
2) A customer calls in and orders a chocolate cake with white icing to celebrate his promotion to grand dragon of his local KKK unit, where the white icing symbolizes the supremacy of the white man over the black man, as symbolized by the chocolate cake.

You previously took the position that the baker should be allowed to refuse to bake the cake that will be used to celebrate bigotry... but he can only make that choice because of his knowledge of the use to which it is being put. In the first situation above, the baker does not have that knowledge - he knows only that it's a chocolate cake with white icing, which is a fairly common combination. It is explicitly because of the knowledge given to the baker regarding the purpose and message of the cake that would allow him to refuse it in the second scenario.

If someone who is a Nazi or a member of the KKK wants to buy a cake, they should be allowed to buy a cake. The baker should not be compelled to make a cake in the shape of a swastika or a burning cross or other imagery (know it when you see it) that can be deemed as offensive, nor is it a design they would sell anyone else!

So enough with the fucking KKK and Nazis when speaking about a LGBT'er. Talk about being obscene.

 

[TomC]

So enough with the fucking KKK and Nazis when speaking about a LGBT'er. Talk about being obscene.

The race card got played way back on the first page.
Tom

 

[untermensche]

I learned something new today: We are merely offended by Nazis. There can't be anything else to it.

Don't fool yourself.

Transsexuals have done just as much harm.

 

[James Madison]

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.

This is something that baffles me. Throughout my life, the biggest supporters of free speech have NOT been white men. It's been religious minorities, ethnic minorities, and women. The people who most uphold freedom of speech have historically been those who need that speech in order to fight for their own rights and equality.

Civil liberties are most precious to those of us who've had to defend them.

Well, he perceives himself as part of a righteous crusade, and as a result, certain freedoms aren’t sacrosanct if they impediments to his righteous crusade.

His view can accurately be summed up as follows: if some action, behavior, conduct, practice, is inconsistent with his views regarding a minority or protected class, then the behavior, conduct, practice, is expendable and to be prohibited.

Unter is an authoritarian, willing to trample on freedom that conflicts with his world view.

 

[Elixir]

Well, he perceives himself as part of a righteous crusade.

You can’t be sure how someone else perceives himself.
What appears as an authoritarian attempt at domination could really be a simple defense mechanism. Or a delusion of intellectual grandeur since none of the evinced certainties about how things “should be” are within their reach of doing anything about them.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I learned something new today: We are merely offended by Nazis. There can't be anything else to it.

Don't fool yourself.

Transsexuals have done just as much harm.

Remember the Bowling Green holocaust perpetrated by the Trans America Organization? People are in denial still.

Also, being a trans person should have been declared a form of terrorism, making it illegal to provide support.

 

[James Madison]

James Madison is playing this stupid game. He's trying to pretend that there is no thing in reality that we can point to and say "this is what wrong and right actually look like."

He is saying that refusal to make a cake for a transsexual is allowed based on the bakers freedom of speech and his right not to have to say things he disagrees with.

The baker could also not want to say that blacks are equal and have the right to marry and refuse to make wedding cakes for blacks.

The baker could also say that Jews are subhuman and refuse to say that it is OK for Jews to marry with his cakes.

The baker would not get away with claiming he doesn't want to say that blacks are equal and should have marriage rights in his cakes.

But today in the world of ignorance created by Christian fundamentalism he gets away with it with homosexuals and possibly innocent transsexuals.

A few points. First, you assume too much. I never commented upon “wedding cakes.” This isn’t to say wedding cakes cannot constitute as symbolic and expressive speech, but instead I’m saying whether a wedding cake is speech will depend on the facts, to which there are no facts involving a wedding cake to discuss.

It is more accurate to say where the cake does symbolically and expressively have a message, the free speech right not to be compelled to speak may be applicable.

Broadly the very core concept of freedom is people get to do things, or refuse to do things, you and everyone else disagree with or find repulsive. The free speech clause encapsulates this concept.

It is why people can burn the U.S. flag, no matter how offended or repulsed people are by such an act. It is why pictures of Obama as a monkey or Trump decapitated is permitted, regardless of offense.

Freedom of speech is why some racists, dressed the uniform of the National Socialist Party of America, to march through a neighborhood whose inhabitants were half Jewish, and home to hundreds of Holocaust survivors, in Skokie, Illinois.

Do I like those messages you reference? No. Are those messages repulsive? Yes.

But unlike you, who has no pretense of being an authoritarian who would suck all the freedom out of this nation like a fire does oxygen in a room, in your tyrannical quest to achieve what you believe to be a fair and just society, I have profound respect for free speech rights, and those rights applying to all people.

 

[James Madison]

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.

Great. You’ve repeated yourself and not answered my question. “Legal principle” to “right to be free from bigotry,” tomato or tomato, potato or potato, what legal text is the “right to be to freem bigotry” found? Or are you just making up rights as you go because they are helpful to your point?

What gives an Asian the right to be served at a restaurant if it is not the right to be free from ignorant bigotry?

What gives a black child the right to go to the same schools as the white children if not the right to be free from ignorant bigotry and it's harmful effects?

Are you saying black people do not have the right to be free from ignorant bigotry in the market place?

Nope. The ability of the “Asian...to be served at a restaurant” isn’t because of any “right to be free from bigotry,” ignorant or otherwise. To be sure, there are legal texts which prohibit a denial of service based on race, thereby permitting the Asian to eat at a restaurant and not be forbidden from doing so because of his race. But those legal texts do not create or recognize a “right to be free from bigotry.”

Simply, there’s no legal text I’m aware of in the U.S. creating or recognizing a “right to be free from bigotry” ignorant or otherwise. And you’ve cited to none.

 

[James Madison]

And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

No, a plain old blind fold and scale mean nothing without all the accoutrements you added to it. Just as the cake means nothing without a person to explain its purpose.

And that’s exactly a point I’ve made. Contextual facts provide the speech, the message.

The contextual fact is that the trans person takes the common features of a cake to be symbolic of the trans person's own message when in the presence of a party that includes a celebration later on. The baker is not expressing him or herself by the cake since no manufacture of a cake by a baker licensed to serve the general public is an endorsement of anything. Bakers also are not wishing Happy Birthday to grammas. They are writing Happy Birthday because it is the job, not the ownership of the expression. It's the same thing as when newspapers charge a fee to print an obituary based on number of words and how many days it is to be printed.

This is the same thing as an obituary notice where it contains a life story of the first black man to legally marry a white woman in some state but the newspaper refuses to print the obituary, not because the political opinion being expressed is theirs but instead because they do not endorse it and want to stop it. They are refusing a service to a customer based on their own religious views thereby limiting equality.

The REAL TRUTH is that the baker AND YOU know the expression isn't owned by the baker, the baker just doesn't endorse the idea. Therefore, he or she is trying to STOP the trans person from having a celebration later on because they are imposing their religious views on a customer. Let's at least be intellectually honest about what is really going on here. The baker and conservatives and libertarians (who are completely different!11!) want to continue to have the elite classes of society be protected by the government to discriminate against others.

After the red herring is destroyed, perhaps we can have a real discussion.

So, having one’s free speech rights protected renders the person as belonging to an “elite class”? Or is it they want the same free speech right not to be compelled to speak like everyone else?

 

[Emily Lake]

You've used the KKK/Nazi argument several times here. Members of the KKK/Nazi party aren't in a protected class. You been told this several times and you have never acknowledged it.

It's irrelevant to the point being made.

I chose neonazis because it's something that we all agree is abhorrent. None of us are going to insist that racism is good - we all share the same belief with respect to white supremacists. And because we all share the same belief, I expect that we would all feel that it should be the baker's right to refuse to bake a cake celebrating something that he (and we) truly and deeply believe is abhorrent. Additionally, there is no written message on the cake, there is only a symbolic color scheme.

It gives us a baseline scenario with which to establish whether a scenario exists in which the convictions of the provider of a service justifiably allow them to refuse service to a customer on the basis of those convictions.

It's a shitty argument.

You're a shitty argument! <raspberry noise>

More seriously, what part of the preliminary premise that I laid out is "shitty"? Do you disagree that there are some scenarios where we, in general, believe that the convictions of the provider justify them denying service to a customer?

 

[James Madison]

Some people also said going to a diner to get a milkshake was unimportant. Yet the COLLECTIVE ACTS of similar incidents and similar things orchestrated by PEOPLE in concert creates a second-class citizenry or caste.

Yes, this could happen. A sensible argument can be made this did happen in the U.S. in the past. One could also argue the federal public accommodation law was in part conceived because of what you described above, and there’s some facts to support your view.

My point is while the public accommodation law may have been conceived to address a de facto second class citizenry, they cannot trample on free speech rights or other rights in the Constitution.

We, or some of us today may not find as palatable where the lines are drawn by the rights of the U.S. Constitution. However, those lines are drawn.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

The contextual fact is that the trans person takes the common features of a cake to be symbolic of the trans person's own message when in the presence of a party that includes a celebration later on. The baker is not expressing him or herself by the cake since no manufacture of a cake by a baker licensed to serve the general public is an endorsement of anything. Bakers also are not wishing Happy Birthday to grammas. They are writing Happy Birthday because it is the job, not the ownership of the expression. It's the same thing as when newspapers charge a fee to print an obituary based on number of words and how many days it is to be printed.

This is the same thing as an obituary notice where it contains a life story of the first black man to legally marry a white woman in some state but the newspaper refuses to print the obituary, not because the political opinion being expressed is theirs but instead because they do not endorse it and want to stop it. They are refusing a service to a customer based on their own religious views thereby limiting equality.

The REAL TRUTH is that the baker AND YOU know the expression isn't owned by the baker, the baker just doesn't endorse the idea. Therefore, he or she is trying to STOP the trans person from having a celebration later on because they are imposing their religious views on a customer. Let's at least be intellectually honest about what is really going on here. The baker and conservatives and libertarians (who are completely different!11!) want to continue to have the elite classes of society be protected by the government to discriminate against others.

After the red herring is destroyed, perhaps we can have a real discussion.

So, having one’s free speech rights protected renders the person as belonging to an “elite class”? Or is it they want the same free speech right not to be compelled to speak like everyone else?

So I accept that you have conceded your ludicrous assertion that the message of the cake belonged to the baker now, and we can actually move on to an adult conversation since your claim was completely frivolously unnecessary to the real political expression argument?