Could a Catholic bake a cake for a gay wedding?

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I found a blog post from Huffington Post which talks about that cake baking case with the gay couple.

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4476307

My question is, would we (Catholics) be allowed to bake a cake for a gay wedding?

Note* if the blog post conflicts with the forum guidelines. Please tell me and I will be sure to remove it
 
I don’t see why not. A baker is not approving of a wedding because they bake a cake for it. He is not determining whether the marriage is going to happen, whether it’s legal or even if it’s moral. He is just baking and decorating a cake.

Now, per the court case, I don’t think a baker should be forced by the government to decorate a cake in a way he doesn’t want to. He should not be able to refuse to sell a cake to a gay couple, that is the law, but he should not be forced to use his creativity and provide service for a purpose he finds noxious. I would sell them a cake and let them decorate it themselves.
 
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A cake is a cake. My cake is neutral. If they want two dudes or women on top I’ll say we’re out. Making food isn’t sinful. The message your cake is conveying could be! Therefore, a neutral cake for everyone to eat hardly seems sinful. However, if I didn’t want bothered I would simply say our list is full and we cannot take anymore orders.
 
We need to use a lesson that the US military learned from the forced labor of POWs.

The key thing is to maintain a unity between one’s intellect, one’s will, and one’s body.

The enemy loves to drive fissures between what’s in our conscience and what one ends up doing.

So the goal is always interior unity.

Our intellect (through an act of the conscience, a judgment reached by the intellect about the goodness or badness of some action) tells us that some action is wrong.

The government forces the baker to bake a cake for an event which is abhorrent to our intellect/conscience.

If the baker complies there is a disunity/a disruption between one’s intellect/conscience and one’s actions.

We cannot allow this…it leads to all sorts of problems…guilt, lowering of standards, etc.

So if we’re going to be forced to do something against our conscience…we must use our intellect and creativity and other faculties that God gave us…to maintain a unity between our conscience (which sits in our intellect…remembering that our conscience is not a feeling…but a decision reached) and our will and our body.

So one example would be to: Bake the cake barely badly. Build a small defect in it. Creatively done, but defective. This sort of action helps to maintain unity interiorly.

If it’s noticed, shrug, let them write a bad yelp review. So what. Your interior integrity is more important.

POWs often would leave some detail undone, or barely defective.

We should do the same.

Barely bad cakes and a shrug.

Lest someone tell me that to deliberately work badly is a sin, I will remind them that justice isn’t required when one is forced to work against one’s free will, effectively a slave. If they force you to do something…you don’t owe them perfect work. It’s not stealing…they aren’t “entitled” to anything if they’ve forced you to work against your free will.
 
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If the couple were my friends or relatives, and I was throwing them a shower or bringing something to their party, then sure, maybe I’d make them a cake.
If I ran a bakery and a person or couple came in and bought a cake off the shelf, then I’m not going to ask if they’re gay and do they want it for a wedding or for a housewarming present for their mom, etc. I’d just sell them the cake off the shelf.
However, I would not want to be in the business of designing cakes and flowers and so forth for gay weddings on a regular basis. That would make me uncomfortable, especially if I were making money off it.
 
So is the argument from the bakers standpoint rightous?
 
I say NO.
Why?
Easy:
You’re supporting a false view of marriage by catering it with your service.

Now, a “gay man” wants some cake? Sure, feed them.
A “gay woman”?
Feed her!
A satanist?
I’ll even give you food!
But I will not cater a satanist get together.
Nor will I cater a false wedding like this.

Assuming full knowledge, of course.
 
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With all due respect, I don’t believe the way that picture looks is…appropriate…
 
Joe1 said:
So is the argument from the bakers standpoint righteous?
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In the United States, one should not be forced to enter a contract to use one’s creative skills towards a cause they personally do not support. I don’t care whether it’s gay marriage or the One Man, One Woman Christian Convention or the KKK. We have freedom of speech and freedom of contract. That includes the freedom to NOT speak and the freedom to NOT contract.

This is a strictly legal grounds argument. We do not have to even reach the man’s religious convictions here since it is a custom item. That’s my opinion. We’ll see what the Supreme Court says.
 
Can a Catholic do this in good conscience? Sure. Similarly, a Catholic could serve caviar at a meeting of world powers who are deciding to kill innocent people, or a Catholic could sell napkins to a strip club. None of these constitute material or formal cooperation with any sin.

Is it morally permissible for a Catholic to refuse to bake such a cake? Probably. It’s certainly morally permissible for them to refuse to sell cake toppers, to refuse certain designs, etc. I’m not sure what a baker’s rationale would be for refusing to bake a cake altogether for a gay couple, though – and it strikes me that the baker might be cutting it close to discriminating, at that point. I wouldn’t say it’s wrong to refuse, but I can understand someone claiming it is immoral to refuse.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
We have freedom of speech and freedom of contract. That includes the freedom to NOT speak and the freedom to NOT contract.
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But here’s my worry. Suppose you’re a store that sells condoms, and you oppose gay sex. Could you refuse to sell condoms to a gay couple? If so, that sounds like invidious discrimination to me.
 
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1ke said:
To that end, baking a cake does not rise to formal cooperation, at best it is remote material cooperation.
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I would think not any kind of material cooperation. Selling a wedding ring may be material cooperation, or furnishing the minister, or even printing the marriage contract. But the cake is just utterly irrelevant to the actual event.
 
Do they come in wearing a sandwich board saying, “Hey, we’re gay and we’re gonna use these on each other tonight”?

For that matter, as a Catholic I’m not supposed to support birth control, so why do I have a store selling condoms in the first place?

I’d rather just not sell the dern things and avoid all doubt
 
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So if I was a baker and a gay couple came in and asked me to bake a cake with a design that showed a romantic image of two men. What, as a Catholic should I do?
 
Tis_Bearself said:
For that matter, as a Catholic I’m not supposed to support birth control, so why do I have a store selling condoms in the first place?
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I’m not talking about a Catholic. I’m talking about someone who has no objection to contraception, but an objection to homosexuality.
 
I said “at best”.

I think that the argument could be made you are contributing to the act, if you apply that term broadly to include the reception as part of the overall act.
 
Joe1 said:
So if I was a baker and a gay couple came in and asked me to bake a cake with a design that showed a romantic image of two men. What, as a Catholic should I do?
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Say no, nicely.

Are you asking whether it would be permissible to sell it to them, in such a circumstance? I’m not sure. It seems like the sin of scandal, but no other potential sin.
 
Why ask me? I’m not that person.

If you’re asking me from a strictly legal, let’s pretend we’re an atheist homophobe, POV, then the shop owner needs to sell them the condoms. There is nothing custom-made about a condom. It is an item in general commerce. Even the baker’s lawyer has conceded (right in the oral argument last week) that such items must be sold to anybody who walks in and asks for them, or at least any adult.

It’s the same reason why the baker would have needed to sell the couple a non-custom cake off the shelf. Item in general commerce.
 
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