SCOTUS Sides With Baker in LGBT Wedding Cake Case

[Lady Scylla]

Unless you enjoy being discriminated against I guess. To each their own.

Avoiding the argument because you don't have a leg to stand on I see. Nice. I guess I win the argument by default.

And yes, us homosexuals love being discriminated against(!)

Wouldn't that be discrimination against legless debaters?

(tis a bad joke)

[The New California Republic]

The baker is a douche, but whatever.

Avoiding the argument because you don't have a leg to stand on I see. Nice. I guess I win the argument by default.

And yes, us homosexuals love being discriminated against(!)

Tebuh herself said she was a homosexual.

She is on record as saying she doesn't care about discrimination except racism and sexism, including homophobia and disability discrimination...

[Individual Thought Patterns]

The baker is a douche, but whatever.


Tebuh herself said she was a homosexual.

She is on record as saying she doesn't care about discrimination except racism and sexism, including homophobia and disability discrimination...

Was just saying, amigo.

[Lady Scylla]

The baker is a douche, but whatever.

Avoiding the argument because you don't have a leg to stand on I see. Nice. I guess I win the argument by default.

And yes, us homosexuals love being discriminated against(!)

Tebuh herself said she was a homosexual.

It's almost like, to the irritation of others, there's no homosexual hivemind.

[Individual Thought Patterns]

The baker is a douche, but whatever.


Tebuh herself said she was a homosexual.

It's almost like, to the irritation of others, there's no homosexual hivemind.

Fascinating.

[Lady Scylla]

It's almost like, to the irritation of others, there's no homosexual hivemind.

Fascinating.

Right?

[The New California Republic]

Avoiding the argument because you don't have a leg to stand on I see.

Wouldn't that be discrimination against legless debaters?

(tis a bad joke)

Oh jeez.

[Pandect]

I'm guessing that the real issue is "should there be protected characteristics for people".

After all, if the case was that a man walked into a bakery and asked for a cake to be baked, but the baker refused to serve him "because he looked at me funny" then there'd be no discussion. The customer could say he was about to sneeze, the baker could say the man gave him the stink-eye. But no-one would deny the right of the baker to not serve the customer, for no particular reason other than he felt like it.

The problem seems to be when the customer is refused on the basis of a protected characteristic. In the EU at least these are age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. Suddenly it seems you cannot refuse a customer if they insist that your reasoning for refusal was based on one of these areas.

Should a private business be forced to serve a customer if that customer can prove that the baker didn't want to sell doughnuts to women, or cakes to black people, or loaves to homosexuals? Should we force businesses to sell to everyone whether they want to or not?

This case in particular becomes more interesting because essentially it is one protected characteristic against another: religion versus sexual orientation. Perhaps this is why the case deserves a specific judgement. We're not arguing freedom of speech versus protected characteristic. We're arguing over whether one protected characteristic, sexual orientation, has more protection than another, religion. I would suggest that they are equally protected, and therefore where two or more protected characteristics are in opposition, then the court should judge on an individual case-by-case basis as to what is in the best interests of protecting those characteristics.

In the bakery case, the protection of religion by not baking the cake is more paramount than the protection of sexual orientation by the baking of the cake. Why? Because there are plenty of other bakeries, online cake deliveries and worst case you could decorate a cake yourself. If the case was on a tiny island with no deliveries for months, this was the only bakery in existence and the only place that sold flour and sugar, then perhaps the outcome would be different.

[Vassenor]

I'm guessing that the real issue is "should there be protected characteristics for people".

After all, if the case was that a man walked into a bakery and asked for a cake to be baked, but the baker refused to serve him "because he looked at me funny" then there'd be no discussion. The customer could say he was about to sneeze, the baker could say the man gave him the stink-eye. But no-one would deny the right of the baker to not serve the customer, for no particular reason other than he felt like it.

The problem seems to be when the customer is refused on the basis of a protected characteristic. In the EU at least these are age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. Suddenly it seems you cannot refuse a customer if they insist that your reasoning for refusal was based on one of these areas.

Should a private business be forced to serve a customer if that customer can prove that the baker didn't want to sell doughnuts to women, or cakes to black people, or loaves to homosexuals? Should we force businesses to sell to everyone whether they want to or not?

This case in particular becomes more interesting because essentially it is one protected characteristic against another: religion versus sexual orientation. Perhaps this is why the case deserves a specific judgement. We're not arguing freedom of speech versus protected characteristic. We're arguing over whether one protected characteristic, sexual orientation, has more protection than another, religion. I would suggest that they are equally protected, and therefore where two or more protected characteristics are in opposition, then the court should judge on an individual case-by-case basis as to what is in the best interests of protecting those characteristics.

In the bakery case, the protection of religion by not baking the cake is more paramount than the protection of sexual orientation by the baking of the cake. Why? Because there are plenty of other bakeries, online cake deliveries and worst case you could decorate a cake yourself. If the case was on a tiny island with no deliveries for months, this was the only bakery in existence and the only place that sold flour and sugar, then perhaps the outcome would be different.

"Discrimination is OK if there are other options" is not sound logic.

[Awesomeland]

I don't really see this as different from the store that refused to make the Confederate Flag Cake. If we're going to allow one store to refuse to make a custom article they find offensive, we have to allow all of them to do the same.

[Pandect]

I think it's perfectly sound logic. You have to take the protection of one characteristic against another perfectly equally. You cannot protect sexual orientation more than religion. If you're going to have protected characteristics as part of your law then they MUST be equal. Thus in the case of two protected characteristics in opposition they have to be dealt with in compromise. This would be for a court to decide.

When a court then looks at any specific case, they will have to judge the outcome on which characteristic is more reasonable to protect. If one of the parties has other options then they should use those other options rather than a judgment going against the protection of that characteristic.

If characteristics are equally protected then in certain cases one must discriminate against another, with the court looking at which is discriminated against with the least impact.

The two guys can still get married. The impact on their protected characteristic is slight. Essentially you are arguing that forcing people to do things against their beliefs is of less importance than someone not having cake.

I don't really see this as different from the store that refused to make the Confederate Flag Cake. If we're going to allow one store to refuse to make a custom article they find offensive, we have to allow all of them to do the same.

As per my post above the issue is that Southern-States-Flaginess isn't a protected characteristic. And thus my question as to 'should there even be protected characteristics' and my extrapolation that if there are protected characteristics then they must be dealt with as having equal importance and thus a compromise must be made by the court on a case-by-case basis looking at the impact on each protected characteristic.

[The New California Republic]

"Discrimination is OK if there are other options" is not sound logic.

Yup. Not serving blacks in a certain bar because there are designated black bars as part of a segregation system doesn't suddenly make the discrimination itself OK.

It's like not serving gay people in a bar because "alternatives exist" in the form of a gay bar. It doesn't excuse the discrimination.

If "available alternatives" excuses discrimination, then that logic leads us to some very disturbing places. For example, it would become possible to excuse the Nazis and blame the Jews for the Holocaust, because there was an available alternative: the Jews should have just left....

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

Yes.

Wee, I win!

yay!

[Pandect]

In your example Nazism isn't a protected characteristic. Jewishness is. Thus it wouldn't be two protected characteristics against each other, and the court wouldn't need to find a compromise. Likewise not serving blacks because other bars exist isn't the issue either. It would have to be that a protected characteristic of the barman prevented them from serving blacks. I suggest you read my post more carefully before jumping in with incorrect arguments.

[The New California Republic]

In your example Nazism isn't a protected characteristic. Jewishness is. Thus it wouldn't be two protected characteristics against each other, and the court wouldn't need to find a compromise. I suggest you read my post more carefully before jumping in with incorrect arguments.

If that is the only point in my post that you picked up on, and you picked up on it incorrectly might I add, then you need to read my post more carefully...

[Pandect]

In your example Nazism isn't a protected characteristic. Jewishness is. Thus it wouldn't be two protected characteristics against each other, and the court wouldn't need to find a compromise. I suggest you read my post more carefully before jumping in with incorrect arguments.

If that is the only point in my post that you picked up on, and you picked up on it incorrectly might I add, then you need to read my post more carefully...

See above post.

[The New California Republic]

If that is the only point in my post that you picked up on, and you picked up on it incorrectly might I add, then you need to read my post more carefully...

See above post.

I did. Nope.

[-Ocelot-]

Republicans would systematically kill the LGBT if they could. Doesn't surprise me that the Republican SCOTUS sided with the baker in this case. It's a small thing but a wrong decision nonetheless.

As another user said above, such decisions enable bigots to commit hate crimes against minorities. It will hurt and divide communities, which is exactly what these people want.

[Xelsis]

The baker is a private actor. The government is the government.

Two completely different levels of scrutiny. There are all kinds of discrimination that are perfectly fine at the private level that don't jive at the federal. This is closer to the border of the arguably "Less OK" discrimination, but the difference is quite stark regardless. His discrimination meant they had to buy somewhere else. The government's discrimination meant civil, and potentially criminal, sanction.

Splitting hairs. Saying that one form of discrimination is acceptable while another isn't acceptable just puts us on a path that leads to some very dark places. Attempting to exonerate "private" discrimination just because of the mere fact that it is "private" doesn't really work. You are underplaying what his discrimination meant. It didn't just mean they had to buy somewhere else, just like refusing to serve blacks doesn't just simply mean "they have to buy somewhere else"...

Not at all. Everyone discriminates all the time privately, in ways that would never be acceptable for government work. Heck, let's just go along this kind of scenario.

Theoretical guy Tim is heterosexual. He only sleeps with women. Theoretical guy Joe is homosexual. He only sleeps with men. Both of them are discriminating massively against the same sex for Tim or the opposite sex for Joe. If the government ever brought into policy such blanket sexual discrimination, it would be devastating. If private discrimination is really just splitting hairs from public discrimination, are you going to lock up Tim and Joe for their clear violations?

Private citizens discriminate in everything-who they associate with, who they share their bed with, who they vote for, and who they do business with. All are massively different from government doing the same.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Republicans would systematically kill the LGBT if they could. Doesn't surprise me that the Republican SCOTUS sided with the baker in this case. It's a small thing but a wrong decision nonetheless.

As another user said above, such decisions enable bigots to commit hate crimes against minorities. It will hurt and divide communities, which is exactly what these people want.

This decision doesn't really enable anyone to do anything. Read more than the headlines.

[Pilarcraft]

Republicans would systematically kill the LGBT if they could. Doesn't surprise me that the Republican SCOTUS sided with the baker in this case. It's a small thing but a wrong decision nonetheless.

As another user said above, such decisions enable bigots to commit hate crimes against minorities. It will hurt and divide communities, which is exactly what these people want.

This decision doesn't really enable anyone to do anything. Read more than the headlines.

It does, though. It lets the bigots know that, as long as the service isn't absolutely vital (like, say, medicine, etc.), they can just as easily refuse service and get away with it because the can lawyer their way into pretending it fell under this simple SC ruling (which can be considered constitutional law). The Slope is slippery, and it's fallacious, but it's not a hard reach to assume that, if this line of thought is allowed to continue, it will eventually lead to "just pick another hospital for your emergency surgery", at some point.

[The New California Republic]

Splitting hairs. Saying that one form of discrimination is acceptable while another isn't acceptable just puts us on a path that leads to some very dark places. Attempting to exonerate "private" discrimination just because of the mere fact that it is "private" doesn't really work. You are underplaying what his discrimination meant. It didn't just mean they had to buy somewhere else, just like refusing to serve blacks doesn't just simply mean "they have to buy somewhere else"...

Not at all. Everyone discriminates all the time privately, in ways that would never be acceptable for government work. Heck, let's just go along this kind of scenario.

Theoretical guy Tim is heterosexual. He only sleeps with women. Theoretical guy Joe is homosexual. He only sleeps with men. Both of them are discriminating massively against the same sex for Tim or the opposite sex for Joe. If the government ever brought into policy such blanket sexual discrimination, it would be devastating. If private discrimination is really just splitting hairs from public discrimination, are you going to lock up Tim and Joe for their clear violations?

Private citizens discriminate in everything-who they associate with, who they share their bed with, who they vote for, and who they do business with. All are massively different from government doing the same.

You grossly misinterpreted what was meant by "private" in this context, it doesn't mean just involving one's self, it means anything not covered by government action, so interactions between citizens etc.

Also, saying that sexually preferring one gender over another amounts to discrimination is completely nonsensical, and I believe it is a tad facetious and deliberately cynical on your part...

[Washington Resistance Army]

This decision doesn't really enable anyone to do anything. Read more than the headlines.

It does, though. It lets the bigots know that, as long as the service isn't absolutely vital (like, say, medicine, etc.), they can just as easily refuse service and get away with it because the can lawyer their way into pretending it fell under this simple SC ruling (which can be considered constitutional law). The Slope is slippery, and it's fallacious, but it's not a hard reach to assume that, if this line of thought is allowed to continue, it will eventually lead to "just pick another hospital for your emergency surgery", at some point.

There is no slope. The only reason this ruling happened is because the CCRC was unnecessarily hostile and antagonistic towards the mans religious beliefs. If they had been more impartial and neutral it never would have happened, and that's what the ruling mainly deals with. There's a reason it's a 7-2 ruling and not 5-4, because it's not a big landmark thing.

[The Greater Ohio Valley]

Methinks that if businesses liked money so much then they wouldn't feel the need to discriminate against anyone for stupid reasons.

And that’s why the court judged in his favour. The anti religious bias.

If the baker wasn’t so allergic to money then we wouldn’t have gotten to this point.

[Pilarcraft]

And that’s why the court judged in his favour. The anti religious bias.

If the baker wasn’t so allergic to money then we wouldn’t have gotten to this point.

This is the best analysis of this event I've read yet.