Local bakery owner refuses to make gay couple's wedding cake

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gracepoole said:
There is no constitutional right to arbitrarily discriminate against customers. Advertise services to the community and you then have to provide services to the community. All of it.
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Where did I say there was? There is nothing arbitrary here. The situation is specific. The baker who regularly serves gays on a day to day basis chooses not to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. That isn’t arbitrary. That is religious free exercise. It is freedom of association. It might be wrong, and clearly a stupid business decision, but it isn’t arbitrary, and it isn’t violating the gay couple’s rights.
 
gracepoole said:
It would be. The bakery could choose not to make wedding cakes for anyone but it can’t decide not selectively make wedding cakes for some customers and not others.
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Right, we agree on that (you and I and some of the other posters on CAF). But the thing is, a bakery is not legally obliged to offer this figurine as an option:

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dvdjs said:
This is pure spin.

The civil rights legislation began with two bills singed by Eisenhower late in his administration, followed by several landmark bills signed by Johnson. All bill were passed by a Congress in which both houses were controlled by Democrats. Lyndon Johnson was the Senate leader during the last years of the Eisenhower administration. He led these bill to passage, knowing full well the effect it would have on the party’s electoral prospects. Strom Thurmond then a Democrat, afterwards a Republican, filibusterd against the 1957 bill. After Eisenhower, the Democrat held fiibuster-proof majorities. Southern Democrats continued to resisted. Overtime, since that era, the deep south, once solidly Democratic, became solidly Republican - apart from the first Cater election. I don’t doubt that it was, as you suggested, a reaction to progressivism - things like equity in voting rights, housing rights, educational opportunities, etc.

Through the FDR years, Democratic party affiliation among blacks was steady at ~42%. During the Truman and Eisenhower years it jumped, but for the most part remained steady at about 56%. In 1964 it had jumped to 82%; in 1968, 92%. That era of hard-fought and hard-won landmark legislation was clearly the turning point that ushered in the era a Democratic party affiliation among blacks in vast majorities.

Your narrative is not compatible with the facts.
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It is absolutely the facts. The Dixiecrats remained Democrats, all but one.
There is no big shift. The era of hard fought civil rights was done by republicans and opposed by democrats.
 
JonNC said:
Where did I say there was? There is nothing arbitrary here. The situation is specific. The baker who regularly serves gays on a day to day basis chooses not to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. That isn’t arbitrary. That is religious free exercise. It is freedom of association. It might be wrong, and clearly a stupid business decision, but it isn’t arbitrary, and it isn’t violating the gay couple’s rights.
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The bakery makes wedding cakes for all others except homosexuals. Arbitrary.
 
gracepoole said:
No, that’s not “their choice.” They’ve been licensed to serve the public equally, not privately decide against whom they want to discriminate.
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Hi gracepoole,
I think the license would be a license to operate a business.
I did find dvdjs’ query about artistic expression interesting. Can people be forced to use their artistic ability to create art which is in violation of their aesthetic? I wonder if the issue of cakes won’t eventually be treated as an artistic commission. Or if, perhaps, those strenuously opposed to making such cakes, won’t eventually choose to opt out of the wedding business in their bakeries.
Perhaps, down the line we shall hear of the development of an underground economy for heterosexual wedding cakes.
 
JonNC said:
Where did I say there was? There is nothing arbitrary here. The situation is specific. The baker who regularly serves gays on a day to day basis chooses not to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. That isn’t arbitrary. That is religious free exercise. It is freedom of association. It might be wrong, and clearly a stupid business decision, but it isn’t arbitrary, and it isn’t violating the gay couple’s rights.
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I ask myself: Would I think it is OK for a bakery to refuse to make the exact same cake for me as for their other customers because I’m Catholic and they believe Catholic marriages are invalid? Or because I’m marrying a black man and they believe interracial marriages are contrary to Divine Law? No, in the same place, I simply don’t believe that baking a cake that could be going to a dog-cat wedding is “participation.”

Having said that, I have a lot of sympathy for the position. If the Supreme Court decides that certain professions having to do with weddings are a personal expression of art or a tacit approval of the marriage the customers are entering into and therefore enjoy certain priveleges of conscience on those grounds, fine. I don’t see them doing that, any more than I think they’ll tell me that I have to find a bakery that makes wedding cakes for Catholics when I’m not asking for any overtly Catholic imagery on the cake.
 
I did find dvdjs’ query about artistic expression interesting. Can people be forced to use their artistic ability to create art which is in violation of their aesthetic?
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With all the decadent do-gooderisms, it’s possible.
I wonder if the issue of cakes won’t eventually be treated as an artistic commission. Or if, perhaps, those strenuously opposed to making such cakes, won’t eventually choose to opt out of the wedding business in their bakeries.
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That is a solid point.
Perhaps, down the line we shall hear of the development of an underground economy for heterosexual wedding cakes.
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Maybe. A lot of people already blindly go with whatever the :cool: trend is.

Sky’s pretty much the limit now.

And the left and its defenders even in the Catholic Church will have their microwaveable, angry excuses at the ready…
 
EasterJoy said:
I think they could refuse to put figurines on cakes, refuse to put names on cakes. I don’t think they can approve figurines that depict couples they approve of but not figurines that are identical except for the kind of couple depictced or accept male-female names but not male-male pairs or female-female pairs.
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In this situation I’m envisioning, it would not be a question of *approving *but of carrying.

If you’re thinking of a bakery having a policy that the customers can bring their own figurine (that they either made themselves or bought elsewhere) to the be placed on the cake, but it must meet with the baker’s approval, then … well that could get sticky. But I’m thinking of a policy that says that *no *customers (regardless of gender, race etc) can supply their own figurines, but can only choose from ones that the bakery has in stock.

I can’t see that being illegal.
 
JonNC said:
It is absolutely the facts. The Dixiecrats remained Democrats, all but one. There is no big shift. The era of hard fought civil rights was done by republicans and opposed by democrats.
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Baloney.

Looking a some Dixiecrats, you are deflecting to trees and missing the forest.

Likewise your statement on Blacks moving to the democratic party under FDR, while technically true, misses the point about the massive majority shift in the '60’s. People know who were partners in the fight.

Your comment about Nixon is, well, just peculiar.

As to the legislation:
it is certainly fair to say that Republicans were on board, and the legislation could not have passed without Some Republican support. But the Republicans were in the minority, and in later years, a tiny minority. The turning point was the decision of the Democratic leadership the Democrats to move this legislation forward against the opposition of Southern Democrats, knowing the cost that it would have on their electoral prospects in the south. That risk was made more clear by the move of the Republicans led by Barry Goldwater toward the reactionary states’ rights posture - a position that Goldwater, much to his credit, regretted later in life.

And that has set the stage for where we are now. Blacks vote in huge majorities for Democrats, and Southern whites, now vote in great majorities for Republicans 0 ad continue their work, as judged by our courts, to suppress minority voting.
 
Peter_J said:
In this situation I’m envisioning, it would not be a question of *approving *but of carrying.

If you’re thinking of a bakery having a policy that the customers can bring their own figurine (that they either made themselves or bought elsewhere) to the be placed on the cake, but it must meet with the baker’s approval, then … well that could get sticky. But I’m thinking of a policy that says that *no *customers (regardless of gender, race etc) can supply their own figurines, but can only choose from ones that the bakery has in stock.

I can’t see that being illegal.
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Just remember that 25 years ago, most never even thought of so-called gay “marriage”.

Now we have people using the force of law in places like Canada to basically recognize more than 2 genders.

The wheels are coming off pretty quick.
 
dvdjs said:
Baloney.

Looking a some Dixiecrats, you are deflecting to trees and missing the forest.

Likewise your statement on Blacks moving to the democratic party under FDR, while technically true, misses the point about the massive majority shift in the '60’s. People know who were partners in the fight.

Your comment about Nixon is, well, just peculiar.

As to the legislation:
it is certainly fair to say that Republicans were on board, and the legislation could not have passed without Some Republican support. But the Republicans were in the minority, and in later years, a tiny minority. The turning point was the decision of the Democratic leadership the Democrats to move this legislation forward against the opposition of Southern Democrats, knowing the cost that it would have on their electoral prospects in the south. That risk was made more clear by the move of the Republicans led by Barry Goldwater toward the reactionary states’ rights posture - a position that Goldwater, much to his credit, regretted later in life.

And that has set the stage for where we are now. Blacks vote in huge majorities for Democrats, and Southern whites, now vote in great majorities for Republicans 0 ad continue their work, as judged by our courts, to suppress minority voting.
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What Goldwater saw was the successes the civil rights act had on society. The reason for his opposition, AFAIK, he never regretted, that being that while government had to provide equal protection, equal access, requiring the same if private citizens was outside any constitutional power to force unwanted associations. That is a constitutional conservative position, which support hands down.

As for Nixon:nixonfoundation.org/2017/01/rn-mlk-and-the-civil-rights-act-of-1957/
 
JonNC said:
What Goldwater saw was the successes the civil rights act had on society. The reason for his opposition, AFAIK, he never regretted, that being that while government had to provide equal protection, equal access, requiring the same if private citizens was outside any constitutional power to force unwanted associations. That is a constitutional conservative position, which support hands down.

As for Nixon:nixonfoundation.org/2017/01/rn-mlk-and-the-civil-rights-act-of-1957/
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I am not quite sure of your point. But here is a nice reflection in the National Review about Goldwater’s mistaken opposition (with many other Republicans) to the 1964 legislation and its reverberation into present times.

nationalreview.com/article/229953/rights-civil-wrongs-ramesh-ponnuru
 
JonNC said:
What Goldwater saw was the successes the civil rights act had on society. The reason for his opposition, AFAIK, he never regretted, that being that while government had to provide equal protection, equal access, requiring the same if private citizens was outside any constitutional power to force unwanted associations. That is a constitutional conservative position, which support hands down.

As for Nixon:nixonfoundation.org/2017/01/rn-mlk-and-the-civil-rights-act-of-1957/
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:clapping:
 
Brendan said:
Not quite true. If a homosexual man was marrying a lesbian woman, the baker would most likely bake that cake…
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A homosexual man does not marry a lesbian woman, just as a heterosexual man does not marry a lesbian woman.
 
JonNC said:
it is a contractual arrangement between two parties.
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The contractual arrangement at issue here is not the one between the baker and the customer, it’s the one between the baker and the agency that granted her a business license. The baker agreed to not discriminate against gay people. She chose to violate her contractual arrangement and discriminate against gay people knowing what the consequences will be.
 
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