Could a Catholic bake a cake for a gay wedding?

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I would say that the baker is stating, “I believe that it is not immoral for me to profit by assisting at this function.” In the case of the Little League team, this would obviously be true, but providing goods or services for an event one considers to be immoral is problematic. Would you provide a cake for the celebration of a new abortion clinic, for example?

That said, I’m not sure what I’d do. I’ve proofread articles with immoral content; ought I not do so? Perhaps. However, the law should not compel me to proofread such articles if I decide that doing so is morally unacceptable, and the law should not compel bakers to bake cakes for events that they believe immoral. Indeed, a devout Hindu or atheist ought not to be compelled to bake a cake for a Christian baptism, if they believe such an event to be wrong and they to be wrong in helping make it happen.
 
heidi_storage said:
However, the law should not compel me to proofread such articles if I decide that doing so is morally unacceptable, and the law should not compel bakers to bake cakes for events that they believe immoral. Indeed, a devout Hindu or atheist ought not to be compelled to bake a cake for a Christian baptism, if they believe such an event to be wrong and they to be wrong in helping make it happen.
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Yes! True!! I agree!!!

Sorry. I couldn’t “more than like” that comment so I reposted that part.
 
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Prodigal_Son said:
You are also misunderstanding what I was saying. I was talking about a generic case. It doesn’t matter what the person has a moral objection to – I could have had the case be about racism, and refusing to sell condoms to an interracial couple.
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Teek said:
this works if you said “a person that presumably had no moral objection to condoms, but objected to homosexual marriage.”

That person has to sell the condoms because they aren’t a part of celebrating a false Sacrament.
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If you sell condoms, you have to sell them to anyone. If they become a part of a religious ritual that is a part of someone else’s faith, and you cannot participate in that ritual because of your beliefs, then you should not and do not have to, morally speaking.

Legally speaking, it might not matter much longer because they are trying to take the right to conscientiously determine your own level of participation away from you.

If good people join those who are attacking your rights, and defend their right to take your rights away from you, we are in a whole lot of trouble.

It isn’t about whether you agree with the cake baker’s reasons.

It is whether you agree that they have the right to reason at all.
 
I would not go into a devout Jewish artistic metalworker’s shop and demand that he make me a metal sculpture of Jesus tossing the temple tables and driving the Jews out of the Temple.

That is not respecting his beliefs. That is actually radically disrespectful of his beliefs. And then to take him to court for refusing?!? I would have already known, in general, what he believed. To choose him is a direct assault on his beliefs.

My actions would have flown in the face of any goodwill or mutual respect to disagree morally.

If I didn’t know that, but he told me when I came in to his shop with my plans, and then I was offended, how is that respectful?

The same is in operation here.

There is a recent work of art that paints Our Lady of Guadeloupe, but substituted the artist for Our Lady and many feel it is exceptionally sacrilegious. Especially after the artist explained that she meant it to be. (Clutching a snake, stepping on an angel…)

If someone came into an artist’s shop who paints portraits, and wanted their portrait painted as Our Lady of Guadeloupe, would the artist have to do it? It would be, as a poster above related, an expression of the person ordering the portrait, but not necessarily of the artist.

I would say no!!’ Resoundingly NO!!! They should not have to!!

If we force any artisan to go against their conscience, we would open the door to force all of them to.
 
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Yolanda Lopez, Portrait of the Artist as the Virgen of Guadalupe,1978.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

This was just praised publicly by Father James Martin on Twitter. “Mira! Look at these beautiful images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, reimagined as contemporary women. Remember that Our Lady lived a real life in Nazareth.”

(Edit: i posted this along with a previous argument asking: if an artist was asked to paint a person in the image of Our Lady of Guadeloupe, should they be forced to? Second edit: not to paint Our Lady, but to paint someone else’s portrait to replace Our Lady in the image of Guadeloupe.)
 
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StephenButler said:
I have yet to see a sin-free marriage. Still, it is a cause of love.
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Any two people can love one another in varying capacities and live together for a lifetime. Brothers and sisters sometimes do it. Friends. Lovers also do it, gay or straight.

The union of a man and woman is a unique expression of love, what has been called “marriage” for centuries.
The point is not that gay people are incapable of love. The point is that man/woman is unique and due to the profundity of that union, it should be recognized as unique for the good of humanity.

Whether or not any two people sin does not change what is real. We all sin. That’s a moot point.

Jesus would not deny what is real for a false sense of inclusion. Christ is the “Logos” of God, God’s intelligible Word.
Expecting Christ to act unreasonably is not true to who Christ is.
 
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Fair point. I do agree that the law should recognize an out for someone who feels they can’t, in good conscience, make the cake. But I do think the baker has an “out”, because they can always reason it out as “these aren’t my personal sentiments, and no one is going to misinterpret them as my personal sentiments. Everyone understands that I’m just writing in frosting whatever the customer asked for.”
 
Not necessarily, I just haven’t read any articles were Catholic bakers have been expressing that they do not wish to bake wedding cakes for a gay marriage, or gone to court over it…
 
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Prodigal_Son said:
No one here has claimed – and few people, however liberal, have claimed – that bakers should be forced to sell same-sex wedding toppers.
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I wonder what people think about that. Would it be a form of unjust discrimination against homosexuals for a shop servicing the wedding “industry” to sell heterosexual toppers but not homosexual?
 
Rau said:
I wonder what people think about that. Would it be a form of unjust discrimination against homosexuals for a shop servicing the wedding “industry” to sell heterosexual toppers but not homosexual?
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Yeah, my answer would be no. And I would be totally fine with a shop selling only homosexual cake toppers too.
 
Of course not…

Sinfulness no matter what form it is in is nothing to celebrate.
 
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Who thinks it’s ok to force a person to do something that goes against their conscience?
 
sainteriksrose said:
Who thinks it’s ok to force a person to do something that goes against their conscience?
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If your conscience tells you it’s wrong to serve black customers, I’m fine with forcing you to, or telling you to close your shop. If you conscience tells you that Jews should be treated as second class citizens on an airplane, I’m fine with forcing you out of the airline business.

Some consciences are not worth respecting.
 
Your comparisons remind me of those who try to excuse the baby killing business of the abortion industry by hiding behind the violent crime of rape.

They simply do not equate, because you are comparing apples to oranges. Flaunting ones sex practices in public no matter what they are is actually always inappropriate and unacceptable. Even Hollywood is trying to purge itself of the monsters it helped to create. The pendulum has swung back…

Keeping in mind that there IS always hope for all of us no matter what our problems might be. Which IS the message of hope in Christ.
 
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People who think that pharmacists should be forced to sell contraceptives as such even if the pharmacist believes and is against God’s law. Same goes for doctors prescribing abc.

People who think that pro-life places which help pregnant women must provide information about abortion or where abortuaries are located.

People who think midwives and other medical personnel must be involved with abortion as part of their training.

And the list goes on…

I do not think that the issue of providing a cake or other service for a same-sex marriage can be equated with civil rights.

First, the failure back then was to serve people of African descent at all. Refusing to bake a wedding cake for an event which until very recently was not even legal is not at all the same sort of thing.

Secondly, interracial marriage and same-sex marriage are two completely different things, esp considering that one exists is reality and the other exists only in the minds of some people. Interracial marriage in no way violates anything about marriage, it is in Accord with marriage. The other is a fantasy, an attempt to mimic something they want and are trying to obtain by pretend.
 
sainteriksrose said:
Your comparisons remind me of those who try to excuse the baby killing business of the abortion industry by hiding behind the violent crime of rape.
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I wasn’t comparing those examples to gay marriage, at all. For about the 10th time in this conversation, you’ve lost the dialectical thread. When I brought up those cases, we weren’t talking about gay marriage at all.

We were talking about whether there could EVER be a case where it would be OK to force someone to violate their conscience.

Please be careful and attentive when responding to posts. Otherwise, I don’t see what the point is in having a conversation, at all.
 
Hmm…

Well, the way moral decency has been allowed to rot within society, if the time ever comes when thieves are considered to be just doing what comes naturally to them in order to feel good…,

I just wonder how shop owners would take to being told that they shouldn’t allow these poor misunderstood people to suppress their urges to shoplift?
 
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So then…

Because some people are ok with sinfulness, every one is suddenly expected to cooperate with it? Like a bullying dictatorship that forces people to act against their will? And comparing it to refusing to serve people because of race is bulloney too.

Learning to take no for an answer is something we should all start getting used to before we’re in kindergarten.
 
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