Thoughts on the gay cake case

[shockerfan]

I think we do need legislation to prevent discrimination. People applying for business licenses need to legally agree to certain rules and regulations. The state does have the responsibility, for the protection of both consumers AND business owners, to create laws and impart enforcement.

If a person is unwilling or unable to meet those requirements then they cannot get a license to do business.

However, a business owner does have the right to state which goods and services they will provide. If a printing states they do not print shirts with ( list of cuss words and body parts) on them, clearly and up front I think that is fair. Or a photographer to state they do not take photos of pets. However, if a bakery provides wedding cakes they do not have the option of choosing whom they sell the cakes too. They may opt not to sell wedding toppers of a particular variety, or state upfront they cannot make cakes that have more than three tiers, or purple frosting. That’s their option, the type of good or svc, but not whom they will serve.

Unless there is actually some particular good “homosexual wedding cake” and it can be clearly defined you cannot refuse to make a wedding cake because you don’t agree with the people’s choice of partner.

I cannot refuse to sell an item on my shelf to you because I suspect I don’t like the way you will use it.

What about the couple in Idaho that own a for-profit wedding chapel, yet have moral reservations regarding same sex ceremonies…should they be forced to officiate against their will?

 

[minkymurph]

There is a wickedly delicious irony at play here.

No fault divorce is basically the oxymoronic ruling that two individuals who freely enter into a contract with each other, can, legally speaking, unilaterally breach that contract at any time for any reason.

According to you, the judge was using contract law involving a cake to force the baker(s) into living up to a contract which, in basic principle, forces the baker(s) into accepting, against better judgement, a tacit undermining of contract law where marriage is concerned.

I can’t really criticize the judges reasoning and I would have hated to be the judge as the issue is highly politicized.

As I understand it, the bakery voluntarily entered into the contract, but then sought to be released for reasons of conscience. The judge ruled their reasons for seeking to be released from the contract were discriminatory and thus unlawful. Had they refused to bake the cake in the first place…

Had the contracting party also wished to be released from the contract and there was mutual agreement, breach of contract would not have been in play.

In otheir words, the judge was forcing the bakery owner(s) to act against their beliefs that a marriage contract is a grave and serious enterprise between a man and woman by appealing to the sticky principles of contract law where something as innocuous as cake is concerned. That is the epitome of delicious irony - with a very perverse coating of sugar.

A “revision” of what a marriage is - if it means anything - is most certainly a further crippling of how two people are bound together in “marriage” under the law.

A further irony is that the judge seems to think that protecting a contract involving a cake is much more crucially important to society and to the state than a contract between a man and a woman where the lives, well-being and futures of those children they bring into existence are at stake. Cakes are much more important than the lives of children to this judge, apparently, since he is far more willing to protect contracts involving cakes than those where children are in jeopardy. Good thing the judge has his priorities in good order.

Justice, it does seem, is truly BLIND - and with a sweet tooth, it seems - in such matters.

I like the metaphorical language but I don’t think we can say the judge, who incidentally was female, was seeking to protect a cake than a contract between man and woman. Had the same judge ruled on an issue involving children…we don’t know.

That said, I can understand your sentiments as in my view ‘Justice’ often does an excellent job of protecting the guilty at the expense of the innocent.

 

[CthgeDelendaEst]

Far from converting anyone, that kind of behavior only drives people further away from the Church. One of the ways Christ won people over was simply by being cool enough and non-judgmental enough to dine with outcasts in the first place. These bakers are deliberately alienating huge masses of people by acting like holier-than-thou, sell-righteous jerks.

So when Christ was calling the Pharisees “brood of vipers” and “blind guides” he was being cool and non-judgmental? Got it.

This isn’t about a cake. There is absolutely no shortage of gay and gay-friendly providers for any and all things wedding. It’s about exterminating the last vestiges of Christian decency in the West.

The beauty of a free and open market is if there is a profitable market to be served, someone will step in and do it. There is no need to resort to coercion, which is essentially involuntary servitude. If a business owner decides they do not wish to serve gays (or blacks, or Christians, or whomever) that is their right, at least it would be in a sane society. If they have made a miscalculation, they will pay a financial penalty because whatever group they have offended is free to try and rally others to boycott them.

Supporting all things gay is popular and trendy right now. If the vast majority of people feel this way, using the hammer of government is not necessary. The market will put the offenders out of business. But that’s not enough, because as I stated at the beginning this isn’t about a cake.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

Again, so many issues arise with your inability to grasp that laws have to be grounded in sound ethical thinking.

“Sound ethical thinking” according to WHICH ethical system? Because it would be very naïve to think that there is only ONE ethical system.

 

[Peter_Plato]

“Sound ethical thinking” according to WHICH ethical system? Because it would be very naïve to think that there is only ONE ethical system.

You keep making unsubstantiated claims. Why would it be “very naïve” to think there is only one good or best ethical system? Granted there might be many ethical systems that could make claims to being functional or passable, but that does not automatically make all the principles within each system correct, morally speaking. Neither does the most number of subscribers to a system make it, ipso facto, the best.

Sure, the question is an open one, but that, in itself, does not show it is “very naïve to think that there is only ONE ethical system.”

 

[cena]

With respect, I think you have missed my intentions entirely and the issues I was raising as you appear to be of the impression I am arguing the ruling in this case denies individuals freedom of thought conscience and religion.

My intention was to prompt a discussion on the relationship between unregulated capitalism, Contract Law and legislating against discrimination.

This is what I asked for a response to -

** In terms of contract, should there be a law that individuals should be able to avail of services irrespective of their sexual orientation or not? Should you be compelled to enter into a contract with an individual to provide a service if for reasons of individual conscience you do not want to? If not, does that uphold the individual right to avail of services irrespective of sexual orientation?

Do those that support unregulated capitalism also think a commercial business is free to discriminate in terms of contract? If so, what of the rights of the individual? If not, then do we need legislation regarding discrimination? If so, can the state determine the commercial conscience?**

In a nutshell and in order to bring the thread back on track , do you think:

We should legislate for discrimination, or should individuals be free to refuse to enter into a contract with another individual or group of individuals irrespective of the reason?

Yes or No?

No one is advocating to refuse selling normal cakes to gay people. Christians should not have to participate in a ceremony that goes against their beliefs.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

You keep making unsubstantiated claims. Why would it be “very naïve” to think there is only one good or best ethical system? Granted there might be many ethical systems that could make claims to being functional or passable, but that does not automatically make all the principles within each system correct, morally speaking. Neither does the most number of subscribers to a system make it, ipso facto, the best.

Sure, the question is an open one, but that, in itself, does not show it is “very naïve to think that there is only ONE ethical system.”

Did you actually READ what I said? I doubt it. There was not one word in my post about “good” or “best” ethical systems. It was your assertion that “laws have to be grounded in sound ethical thinking”. “Sound ethical thinking” is an empty phrase unless you elaborate “which” ethical system do you refer to - precisely because there are so many.

You keep on bringing up the word “morally”, which is another undefined category. “Morally” according to WHICH ethical system?

People consider something “moral” if it agrees with their own value / ethical system. That is all. According to your ethical system, sex outside marriage is “immoral”. In my ethical system, it is amoral. I don’t accept your ethical system, and you do not accept mine. So what? The conclusion is simple: there is no such thing as objective morality. It you disagree, bring up arguments for your disagreement.

Since you seem to shoot from the hip, without actually reading what I wrote, I already substantiated my position. There is no objective moral system, because you and I disagree on the “morality” of a certain act, and there is no “referee” who could bring a verdict about the disagreement. If you would like to point to the church as an arbitrator, I will not accept it. If you would like to posit God as the arbitrator, I will demand that God himself would come forward and render his verdict.

 

[schaeffer]

Suppose, Bob, non-Jewish and anti-theist, decides to hold a “secular” Bar-Mitzvah ceremony for his son because he likes the idea of this kind of right of passage. He further plans for a celebratory meal and orders a Bar-Mitzvah cake from the local Jewish bakery.

 

[jonathan_hili]

Far from converting anyone, that kind of behavior only drives people further away from the Church. One of the ways Christ won people over was simply by being cool enough and non-judgmental enough to dine with outcasts in the first place. These bakers are deliberately alienating huge masses of people by acting like holier-than-thou, sell-righteous jerks.

I’m not sure that’s correct. A better analogy would be a priest attending a same-sex wedding to try to convert a couple. However, baking a cake for the wedding or taking photos for the wedding is actually complicity because you are assisting in the activity taking place. Jesus didn’t open the money bags for tax collectors as they defrauded people or warm the bed for prostitutes. Yes, we need not be jerks about it but nor should we be forced (by the law, for instance) to be directly involved.

 

[Rau]

As I said before: no judge can regulate what you think and what your religious convictions are. They can only prohibit to ACT on those beliefs. Freedom of thought does not equal to freedom to act on those thoughts.

On the contrary, various “acts” are tolerated on just such grounds. These include the building of (conspicuous) Churches, the gathering in groups for religious worship (sometimes in public), the declining of military service and so on.

 

[Peter_Plato]

So WOMEN are excluded?

…and TEENAGERS are also excluded?

You do understand that “man,” as used traditionally by the Church and in Scripture, is the shortened form of “mankind,” meaning “adult human,” correct?

Teenagers are not excluded, but are included to the extent they are capable of responsible moral decision-making and exercising freedom of will in activity.

You do understand that in Catholic moral thought, moral accountability has three dimensions, do you not? Which means moral culpability is mitigated by the competency of the moral agent. It also means that immoral acts are immoral for moral agents because of what it means to be a moral agent. There is no such thing as an immoral act separate from the agency of moral beings. Moral or immoral acts are quintessentially the acts of moral beings.

Therefore if a being (human child, for example) is not a full-fledged member of moral society, the acts of such a being are not, to that extent, moral acts.

But it is, because certain activities - like masturbation or lying or theft - are supposed to be intrinsically “evil”. The word “intrinsically” means that regardless of the person; her age; regardless of the circumstances, the activity ITSELF is “evil”. At least that is what the church says.

Besides, if the “floating” age of reason is used as the dividing line, by that time the education / training / indoctrination process is pretty much over, so there is no evidence that there was some nebulous, unobservable “chisel and hammer” to have the moral laws engraved on the person’s “heart”. The training process is a sufficient explanation for everything.

How come that no one argues that Catholicism is “etched or inscribed” unto the human heart, and those who are not catholics simply disregard the ingrained, inborn, “natural” desire to become catholics?

Just like people’s moral compass is the result of their upbringing, their religion is also the result of their environment, and there is nothing surprising about this fact.

The behaviours you specify above are only “evil” when committed by competent and accountable moral agents. A chimpanzee that “steals” an object or food from another is not thereby doing an evil deed. A male prairie chicken that mates with hundreds of females is not an adulterous fornicator. The reason these have specific moral weight with regard to human behaviour is because of the kind of being humans happen to be.

As to “people’s moral compass” being the result of their upbringing, there is a difference between “influenced by” upbringing and “caused” (necessarily and sufficiently) by that upbringing. You completely discount individual responsibility and treat human beings as if we are programmed by our upbringing - a notion that is simply false, even though it is a convenient belief that millions subscribe to under the false impression that simply by holding it they are thereby absolved from all responsibility. My guess is those same millions will be unpleasantly surprised when they are called to give account for their behaviour and that excuse is immediately disallowed as flatulently vacuous for any moral being to even think of using as an escape clause to avoid the demands of being a morally responsible being in the first place.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Did you actually READ what I said? I doubt it.

I can’t help it if you write under the same rubric as you claim to think. (Cf. your "religious affiliation”)

Apparently, what you write is just as Greek to me as how you think.

There was not one word in my post about “good” or “best” ethical systems. It was your assertion that “laws have to be grounded in sound ethical thinking”. “Sound ethical thinking” is an empty phrase unless you elaborate “which” ethical system do you refer to - precisely because there are so many.

You keep on bringing up the word “morally”, which is another undefined category. “Morally” according to WHICH ethical system?

The question, a la Euthyphro, is whether some ethical systems are better than others because they demonstrate sound ethical principles or are they “ethical” and, therefore, equally as valid as any other merely by exercising a claim to be, in some sense, systemically “ethical.”

Is there no way or ways to distinguish a good ethical system from a bad one? Were the moral systems of the Roman Empire or of German National Socialism better or worse than Confucianism or Christianity. I say it makes perfect sense to claim ethical systems can be weighed and found wanting, which means your alluding to “systems” as a means to avoid differentiating between good and bad ethical systems is a ruse and a waste of time.

People consider something “moral” if it agrees with their own value / ethical system. That is all. According to your ethical system, sex outside marriage is “immoral”. In my ethical system, it is amoral. I don’t accept your ethical system, and you do not accept mine. So what? The conclusion is simple: there is no such thing as objective morality. It you disagree, bring up arguments for your disagreement.

The argument is a very simple one and in plain English (not Greek.)

If a claim is to be made that rape or child molestation is wrong, what that means is that rape or child molestation is wrong for all moral agents regardless of the “system” they espouse. If you attempt to counter with a proposal that any such moral claim merely implies that rape or molestation is ONLY wrong for those who adhere to a moral system that claims them to be, then YOU have just made a meta-ethical claim that, morally speaking, rape or child molestation are not really morally wrong at all. That meta-ethical claim has now become your new ethical system, one which overrides and supercedes all ethical systems, implicitly condoning any ethical systems which claim rape or molestation to be morally licit as those systems which make the counter claim that these are morally wrong.

Once you make the claim that objective morality does not exist for you that becomes your moral system and is tantamount to claiming what the Nazis did to the Jewish people in the Holocaust was not really “wrong” in any objective sense, but, rather, you are giving moral permission and equal legitimacy to those who think such acts were not morally wrong at all.

Since you seem to shoot from the hip, without actually reading what I wrote, I already substantiated my position. There is no objective moral system, because you and I disagree on the “morality” of a certain act, and there is no “referee” who could bring a verdict about the disagreement. If you would like to point to the church as an arbitrator, I will not accept it. If you would like to posit God as the arbitrator, I will demand that God himself would come forward and render his verdict.

This is a typical dodge.

 

[Rosebud77]

They have announced they are going to appeal the judgement. See Irish news online

 

[friardchips]

Life is theology.

 

[friardchips]

They have announced they are going to appeal the judgement. See Irish news online

The Ashers were set up. It was an anti-Christian attack. Those responsible for the provocation are the ones who should be sued for discrimination against religious freedom.

Let’s hope the Ashers win their appeal.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

The behaviours you specify above are only “evil” when committed by competent and accountable moral agents.

In other words, the “acts” themselves are not INTRINSICALLY “evil”. The word INTRINSICALLY means that the act considered alone, decoupled from the perpetrator, the circumstances, and the result - is always “evil” - NO MATTER WHAT. (The culpability is a completely different question.) That is what the church teaches… are you familiar with it?

As to “people’s moral compass” being the result of their upbringing, there is a difference between “influenced by” upbringing and “caused” (necessarily and sufficiently) by that upbringing.

How do you measure the difference? And how do you measure which part of their ethical system is due to their upbringing and which part was etched upon their “heart” by that magical chisel and hammer when their “soul” was formed?

My guess is those same millions will be unpleasantly surprised when they are called to give account for their behaviour and that excuse is immediately disallowed as flatulently vacuous for any moral being to even think of using as an escape clause to avoid the demands of being a morally responsible being in the first place.

Ah, instead of an argument comes the usual “scare tactics”. How convenient!

The question, a la Euthyphro, is whether some ethical systems are better than others because they demonstrate sound ethical principles or are they “ethical” and, therefore, equally as valid as any other merely by exercising a claim to be, in some sense, systemically “ethical.”

Nice circular usage of the word “ethical” this time. Way to go!

Is there no way or ways to distinguish a good ethical system from a bad one?

Present the epistemological method to make that distinction. Without an epistemological method your words are empty claims.

If a claim is to be made that rape or child molestation is wrong, what that means is that rape or child molestation is wrong for all moral agents regardless of the “system” they espouse.

It is simply hilarious that you always move the goalposts. I was referring to consensual sex outside marriage, which you find “evil”. Instead of staying with the problem you bring up rape, child abuse, the Holocaust, etc. Tells me something about your intellectual honesty (or lack of it).

If you attempt to counter with a proposal that any such moral claim merely implies that rape or molestation is ONLY wrong for those who adhere to a moral system that claims them to be, then YOU have just made a meta-ethical claim that, morally speaking, rape or child molestation are not really morally wrong at all.

There is no “really” moral. Your personal ethical system reflects what you believe, and so does mine. The fact that there is a significant overlap is due to the similarity of the societies where we were raised. But that does not make the agreed upon “rules” absolute.

Once you make the claim that objective morality does not exist for you that becomes your moral system and is tantamount to claiming what the Nazis did to the Jewish people in the Holocaust was not really “wrong” in any objective sense, but, rather, you are giving moral permission and equal legitimacy to those who think such acts were not morally wrong at all.

Nope, I do not give “moral permission” or “legitimacy” to anyone, because I do not have the power to do so. If I had the power, I would impose my ethical system on others, and if they would ask me, on what ground do I force my ethical system on them, I would shamelessly say: “because I have the power, and according my personal principles I consider my system the best”. Unfortunately I lack the power. If I had, it would be a “lightweight” system, based upon the simplest of all principles - the concept of reciprocity, the golden rule. Using another phrase: “the right of your arm ends where my nose begins”. Other than that, you are free to do whatever you want.

Ask a neo-Nazi white supremacist who asserts that the Nazis did not go far enough in exterminating the Jews, and try to convince him that he is wrong. If you would have an epistemological system, which could measure the “value” of an ethical system, you might succeed. But you don’t have one, and cannot have one, since ethics is not about what IS, rather about what SHOULD BE.

This is a typical dodge.

Aha. When you are unable to answer a question, it becomes a “dodge”. Nice cop-out.

 

[Peter_Plato]

In other words, the “acts” themselves are not INTRINSICALLY “evil”. The word INTRINSICALLY means that the act considered alone, decoupled from the perpetrator, the circumstances, and the result - is always “evil” - NO MATTER WHAT. (The culpability is a completely different question.) That is what the church teaches… are you familiar with it?

I thought I was familiar with what the Church teaches, and your version just seems wildly in error.

It isn’t possible to “decouple” an act from the perpetrator, the circumstances and the result because moral acts are always acts of some agent (perpetrator,) within a specified set of circumstances and always with a result. That is simply the content and nature of EVERY moral acts.

Please give an example of an act which is definably a moral one which does not involve a moral agent within a given set of circumstances with some result. It simply isn’t possible to have such a “moral” act.

No, intrinsically evil acts are those where no possible motives, circumstances or ends could justify the act. It is that simple. The evil of an intrinsically evil act will never be warranted under any circumstances, motives or resulting good ends. I submit that you simply don’t understand what intrinsically evil acts are.

The death of a person is only intrinsically evil when no possible motives, circumstances or ends could possibly justify it. However, the death of a person brought about unintentionally without premeditation; to protect the innocent or from self-defense; where the end result of the death of the victim was not the intended end makes a killing not intrinsically evil. Murder is intrinsically evil precisely because the motives for willing the death of the victim, the manner in which the death was brought about and the intended end of death all come together to make the act of murder “intrinsically” evil. That determination concerning the intrinsic nature of the evil CANNOT possibly be made - as you claim - “decoupled” from precisely those three dimensions which make moral acts determinably moral - that is, acts carried out by determinably moral agents.

You are simply wrong that the three dimensions only relate to culpability, since manslaughter, negligent homicide and murder are distinct and definable moral acts which depend completely for their classification upon those very determinations of motive, circumstances and end results.

 

[Rau]

To speak of “an act alone” (as Pallas used the phrase) often introduces confusion because it leads one to think the act is sufficiently captured by some sterile description of it - such as a few frames of video and so on. We then lose the ability to “see” the act and the moral object to which it is ordered. Eg. Surgery is not distinguished from mutilation, and so forth. We need to know as the surgeon knows to see the act properly. It is human acts of which we speak, not mere artefacts. Knowledge of Intentions and circumstances may help us, as observers, to understand what is going on, though they don’t make bad acts good.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Ask a neo-Nazi white supremacist who asserts that the Nazis did not go far enough in exterminating the Jews, and try to convince him that he is wrong. If you would have an epistemological system, which could measure the “value” of an ethical system, you might succeed. But you don’t have one, and cannot have one, since ethics is not about what IS, rather about what SHOULD BE.

Apparently you missed the articles I cited in the thread on natural law that you started.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=12997572&postcount=17

“Old” natural law theorists such as Aristotle, Aquinas, Oderberg and Feser do propose a metaphysical system which grounds a cogent ethical system and they would contend the is-ought dichotomy of Hume is not as compelling as many, including you, seem to think.

The “new” natural law theorists such as Robert George, John Finnie and R.J. Snell, on the other hand, accept Hume’s argument, but claim, in Snell’s words…

Principles of practical reason are not derived from factual claims about nature or metaphysics, not only because Hume was correct on that point, but because first principles are not derived from anything—they are entirely underived. Neither are they innate, although they are self-evident; grasping them entails “no process of inference” but rather an “act of non-inferential understanding.”

Now, you may not accept Snell’s claim, but your MERE ASSERTION that the values in any ethical system must be proven or derived from evidence has not been proven nor derived from evidence either. How can you “prove” that values must be evidenced or derived without just presuming they must be? Your own position falls to the same critique you would launch against the “new” natural law theorists.

Feser, on the other hand, proposes a complete metaphysics (epistemological system) which he and Thomists generally would agree does provide adequate grounds for a very solid ethical system.

 

[Peter_Plato]

To speak of “an act alone” (as Pallas used the phrase) often introduces confusion because it leads one to think the act is sufficiently captured by some sterile description of it - such as a few frames of video and so on. We then lose the ability to “see” the act and the moral object to which it is ordered. Eg. Surgery is not distinguished from mutilation, and so forth. We need to know as the surgeon knows to see the act properly. It is human acts of which we speak, not mere artefacts. Knowledge of Intentions and circumstances may help us, as observers, to understand what is going on, though they don’t make bad acts good.

Self-defense, for example, does not “make killing good,” but the circumstances, motives and ends completely change the nature of the act precisely because the act is defined by the circumstances, motives and ends intended by the moral agent involved in undertaking the act.

You are quite correct that a “sterile description” of an act is not sufficient to “capture” or define it. This is a separate issue from culpability, but culpability depends upon a proper grasp of all three dimensions of any moral act, which is definably one done by a moral agent, not an “act in itself” or one decoupled from its three dimensions.