Could a Catholic bake a cake for a gay wedding?

[Rau]

So, your argument is that if gay people hide in the closet it is okay to do business with them? So long as the baker is comfortably ignorant, all is well?

No. My argument is that Catholics seek to be excused from cooperating with the evil (as he/his religion sees it) of another. We ordinarily grant persons reasonable freedom to live in accord with the principles of their religion. We don’t assume evil, nor do we pry to discover it it is afoot.

Love is always valuable.

Yes, it is, but we are not talking about just love, but of the sexual relationship of two men, which many religions consider immoral.

Insisting on the right to persecute a minority is not freedom. It is the definition of tyranny.

Not wishing to take an assignment in the circumstances at hand is not an example of persecution. It arises from a disagreement over morality. Compelling a minority to take the assignment over their religious convictions (held by Christianity for 2000 years) sounds like tyranny to me.

Increasingly, while the ones seeking to engage in the immoral behaviour are a minority by one measure, so too are the ones seeking to be excused from cooperating with it, by another measure. The latter are being persecuted. “We don’t care about your religion, you MUST provide service, we’re going to sue you if you don’t; your kids must attend the new expanded Sex Ed classes…”

 

[SuperLuigi]

Insisting on the right to persecute a minority is not freedom. It is the definition of tyranny.

It’s not persecution to refuse someone service. Stop blowing with the wind.

Love is always valuable

It is not love to reinforce a bad idea just to make someone feel good. It’s lying.

 

[SuperLuigi]

So, your argument is that if gay people hide in the closet it is okay to do business with them? So long as the baker is comfortably ignorant, all is well?

Strawman and ad hominem.

Besides, I thought Western liberals were supposed to be for the working class.

One, the baker can choose to make a selfish choice, choosing his own comfort and his Christian rules, to use his faith as an excuse for cruelty

What if the baker is Muslim?

Two, the baker can make a selfless choice, step outside of his comfort, and choose to treat his gay neighbors with the same kindness and decency they would offer to any of us.

False assumption and generalization.

 

[normdplume]

Since the Catholic Church considers the wedding to be invalid, I don’t see it as a sin to bake a cake for the couple. From a Catholic perspective, it’s simply a celebration that the participants happen to call a “wedding”. Like civil weddings. Or Protestant weddings. Or Jewish weddings. Even though the government recognizes such weddings as equivalent to Catholic weddings from a legal standpoint, no one is forcing Catholics to recognize them as Catholic weddings. Bakers are, however, a public business and are prevented from discriminating by law. Otherwise we reopen the doors to “whites only” businesses and other forms of discrimination. If they consider baking a gay, civil, Protestant or Jewish wedding cake to be sinful, they can stop making custom cakes for everyone.

 

[ATraveller]

One, the baker can choose to make a selfish choice, choosing his own comfort and his Christian rules, to use his faith as an excuse for cruelty.

A Christian is to obey God. That is the first commandment. A choice that is selfless. Caving into trends is selfish.

Two, the baker can make a selfless choice, step outside of his comfort, and choose to treat his gay neighbors with the same kindness and decency they would offer to any of us.

Conversely, maybe some gay couples should make a selfless choice and not drag confessional or creedal Christians into court over a cake.

There is no moral ambiguity. We have a duty to be good neighbors in a secular society. We do not have a duty to shun people who love differently than we do.

Being good doesn’t mean facilitate and accommodate everything and anything 100% of the time. And if ‘shunning’ is defined as refusal to sell a wedding cake, it shows how petty our culture has become.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Frankly LOL, I think any person who has issue with gay couples should have the manners and decency to keep their opinions to themselves. Catholics are called to love their neighbour and to walk with him. NOT to pass judgement in God’s place.

Luce, if a 50 year old man came to you with his 14-year-old bride-to-be (this is legal in some states), would you happily bake a cake for them customized to represent their quite disproportionate bodies? Would you think it was unjustifiably judgmental to refuse? What about if a man wanted a cake for his marriage to his father?

I am NOT trying to compare these cases morally. Gay couples aren’t doing something like those two examples, at all. However, I just want to make the point that at some point you have to draw a line. Do you agree, or would you make a customized cake for any of these circumstances?

 

[Gorgias]

For a gay wedding to be sinful, the engaged parties must know gay marriage is wrong

I think you’re trying to say “for a wedding of two homosexuals to be a mortally sinful act…”, since even in the absence of knowledge, it would still be a grave sin, even if only venially sinful.

 

[Rau]

You misunderstand the point. That the wedding is not Catholic is irrelevant. The issue is about being compelled to cooperate in a meaningfully direct way with immoral acts. [And baking a cake may well not rise to that level of cooperation - the discussion is on the principle, not the specifics.]

 

[Edward_H]

We must always work toward the greatest good.

Baking a cake - supporting the coupling action (not a wedding) of two of the same sex is not the greatest good we could do with our time.

We are not doing good when we put our labor to this task. End of story.

 

[sainteriksrose]

As Catholics we shouldn’t be baking cakes or selling items that offend our Lord.

 

[sainteriksrose]

So you are referring to Protestant Christisns?

 

[sainteriksrose]

Why would anyone want to force another to do something against their will? Like a bully?

 

[SuperLuigi]

Bakers are, however, a public business and are prevented from discriminating by law.

What if their schedule is full?

Also, discrimination happens all of the time and isn’t always a bad thing. It can be very, very good.

If they consider baking a gay, civil, Protestant or Jewish wedding cake to be sinful, they can stop making custom cakes for everyone.

So in other words, follow your rules or else.

What if there was a law forcing GLAAD to have members of the Westboro Baptist Church on their board?

 

[SuperLuigi]

People have already admitted this about revenge on Christians----or more accurately straight, white Christian couples.

Minority businesses get a free pass because in the end, it’s not really about equality.

 

[sainteriksrose]

Its very existence is sinful. Which apparently is of no concern to some people.

 

[SuperLuigi]

Rights are also legal. Do you see catholic doctrine prescribing state laws?

More importantly do you think state laws can be overidden by catholic doctrine?

Does this include helping the poor and foreign aid? I always hear from the left how that’s a moral obligation…

Really when did you become God?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

As Catholics we shouldn’t be baking cakes or selling items that offend our Lord.

My point was not using the example of a Catholic, so I don’t get your point. I was talking about a person that presumably had no moral objection to condoms, but objected to homosexual activity.

 

[Teek]

It seems like everyone focuses on WHAT the Church teaches about homosexuality, more than WHY the Church teaches it.

It’s not that it’s wrong, because the Church says it’s wrong. It’s not “disordered” because the Church defines it as disordered. What the Church teaches about sexuality actually never had anything to do with homosexuality. Or birth control.

Everyone seems to forget this. The Church’s teaching about sexuality is older than the Church. It goes back to the Creation of man. It doesn’t have anything to do with what is right and wrong with regard to sexuality. It is entirely about what sexuality IS. The definition exists, and then the classifying of what fits the definition begins. Which look like rules.

It is about what God created and ordained. :

Genesis 1:27-28; 2:24
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Male and female, equal and different, to be one, and to be fruitful.

Marriage is the Covenant that echoes this unique relationship. It is not defined the way it is in order to exclude anyone! It is defined as what it is because of what marriage actually is. It is between one man and one woman, for unity and procreation.

Relationships that do not fit this description are relationships that do not fit this description. They are therefore not a marriage.

It isn’t just a matter of semantics. Change what it means and we can call whatever we want a marriage—that isn’t how it works. It is a matter of what the word MEANS—and for the Church, the definition of the nature of human sexuality given by God in Genesis is what it means.

If a man is hurt in an accident, and can no longer consumate a marriage, but wants to enter into a marriage with the woman he loves because they want to be faithful to one another and live their lives together, it does not fit the definition of a marriage because it cannot be procreative. Is that cruel? Yes it is. Do we all wish we could change it? YES! But in order to call that a marriage, marriage would have to be redefined and it is not our definition: it is God’s.

I heard this explanation, I think it was from Father Michael Schmitz. This analogy helped me (see next post)…

 

[Teek]

(Continued…)

What if we were playing a game of baseball, and someone came up and asked to play. You say, “Yes.”

The person says,”OK, but I don’t want to use a bat, and I want to have two bases, not three, and no one can have mitts.”

You say, “But that isn’t baseball. We are playing baseball.”

The person says, “That isn’t fair. I want to play baseball! You are saying I can’t play because I don’t want to use a bat or mitts or the same bases as you! You are excluding me!”

You say, “We want you to play! But we are playing baseball, and this is how baseball is played. We don’t want to exclude you! But you don’t really want to play ‘baseball.’ You are wanting to play something else.”

You can probably imagine the fallout.

I think that is a good representation of what went on for the Church with the question of gay marriage.

Any sexuality that does not consider all of what God Defined sexuality to be is against God’s plan. As God defined it.

The Church is not against people who want to be responsible in the growth of their family. However, birth control distorts the nature of the sexual act—it is no longer fruitful-and so it doesn’t fit the Divine definition of healthy sexuality.

Homosexual acts are neither unitive nor procreative. They are not unitive because the conjugal act does not form a complete biological reproductive system. Every other human organ system is sufficient to fulfill it’s purpose individually. The circulatory system circulates. The digestive system digests. But the reproductive system does not form a unity, a reproductive system that reproduces, unless it is complimentary—one man, one woman.

Yes, these definitions generate a lot of dos and do-nots. There are many, many relationships that do not constitute a marriage by this definition. In the Church, that definition is binding. God is God, and we are not.

 

[sainteriksrose]

Was not aware anyone outside the Church nixed using condoms.