Discussion for article #238204
“Phillips argues he has no problem serving gay people at his store, but he says that making a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding would violate his Christian beliefs.”
Phillips argues he has no problem serving gay people at his store, but he says that making this argument could prove lucrative on Go Fund Me or other donation source because the RWNJ Christian bigot fascists love a good false martyrdom.
FIFY
And BTW, there’s a real easy solution to this argument, which was clearly cooked up by an attorney trying to find a loophole in the law for them to exploit and turn into a “right” to discriminate: flood these bakeries to buy and eat cake they serve IN THE SHOP while celebrating and calling it your wedding cake. See how the homophobes react to THAT.
What’s next? Cakes made with holy water and blessed with a rosary? Maybe a little “excuse me, but this is a Christian lunch counter, so we’re going to have to ask you to please say grace, eat this eucharist wafer and then refrain from holding hands or gazing lovingly at each other or you’ll have to leave.”
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The claims that selling a wedding cake to same-gender couples means you are participating in said wedding is laughable.
I don’t think “conservatives” have thought that through.
Adopting that argument/principle means that a gun store owner is participating in a murder if one of his customers uses a gun that he sold him in a crime.
This is all simply a rear-guard fight in a war that’s been lost. But like those clichéd Japanese soldiers left on some remote islands who refused to believe the war was over long after WWII ended, we will have to dig these clowns out of their caves one court case at a time.
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he should know that your religious rights extend only as far as your nose beyond that it effects everyone else…he also knows that their are laws against discrimination on the books if he cant follow the rules…he doesn’t need to be in business
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But he didn’t say that did he…you made it up…attributed it to him then berated him for it. That’s just bullshit…even when you do it.
Huh?
Sniffit quoted the article then sardonically translated to what it means (the GoFundMe scamming like the Indiana pizza take-out joint).
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Again…and this time its a private sector guy…do you think a man…that is truly devout…believes in God and accepts his word in the Bible…should be forced to violate that Faith and in his view Sin?
Granted the guy may be just :hating on the gays" and using Jesus as cover and I think a lot of that is going around. But if that man believes making that cake is providing support for a Biblicaly condemned Sin…do you think he should be made to do it? And if you were one of the guys in that couple…would you want to do this to him?
Its wrong to discriminate I agree. But this man may be following God’s Word ( maybe not too ) and he’s protected in doing so.
First, nothing is wrong when I do it. Please file that away.
Second, I’ve been an attorney…and a good one…for long enough to recognize words fed to some asshat by his attorney in order to thinly veil ulterior motives. The argument that they’re making is specifically designed to try to slip through what they believe to be cracks in the public accommodations precedent set by the SCOTUS. It should and hopefully will fail, but they see an opportunity because of the composition of the Court.
Third, the whole “FIFY” meme is exactly that…unpacking someone’s bullshit to say what you think they really mean. You can disagree with my translation all you want, but engaging in the “FIFY” game on a comment board is fair game and par for the course. This guy is trying to be a martyr-hero for “the cause” and earn himself accolades and wealth by being the one who saves the Christian right’s “religious freedom” to discriminate from the big bad mean people who are telling them to treat everyone equally. He’s no different, an certainly no less self-serving, than the pizza shop bigots or the fucktard who’s been running around trying to get rich by emulating Geller.
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No…that’s not what he did. He fabricated a motive…then used a belittling tone to berate that motive.
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I think we’re getting a bit grey area here.
Why is this in court? Why not just go to another baker for a cake? Sure you can expose this probable bigot for what he is, but I don’t think there is an inalienable right to have a cake made by whosoever you choose clause.
Sounds more like picking a fight just to pick a fight.
Not when it comes to the realm of public accommodation and business law which includes non-discrimination provisions as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The bigots who refused to serve black people at the lunch counter in the 50s and 60s may have genuinely thought that doing so violated the religious and moral beliefs. In fact the Civil Rights Act was challenged all the way to the SCOTUS on that argument. And it rightly lost.
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Whatever. If you can’t read it for what it was, that is your hang up, so be it.
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So if the couple is already married how is baking the cake participating in the ceremony? Wouldn’t the current situation be just the same as he purports for having 'no problem at all" serving gay customers?
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You should drop analogy…you are very bad at it. No one said they are being forced to “participate” in the wedding…what that have said is providing the cake…is providing material assistance to an act that is condemned as a mortal Sin in the Bible.
To make you gun store analogy work you would have to have a salesmen forced to sell to a known assassin. The guy not want to sell a weapon to a man he knows is likely to murder with it because he believes murder is a crime and a Sin. If made to sell the weapon…he would be made to do that which he objects to.
Keep punching out bigots - in court. They’re gonna lose and lose and lose. And sure, permanent martyrs will join the GOP or whatever that jihad is called these days. Dead. Enders
Why not go to a different lunch counter that serves darkies?
(rolls eyes)
This case, like the one here in Portland is in court because the bakers broke the law. The Sweet Cakes baker here in Oregon specifically violated Oregon 659A.403 which reads:
Except as provided in subsection (2) of this section, all persons within the jurisdiction of this state are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of any place of public accommodation, without any distinction, discrimination or restriction on account of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, marital status or age if the individual is 18 years of age or older.
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At some point, I’d like to see these people explain exactly how this violates their religion differently than if they serve adulterers, divorcees, and people who have premarital sex. I’m quite sure they can’t or they’d have done that by now.
And that’s my big problem with all this. If someone has genuine religious beliefs about this sort of thing which they follow strictly, I’d have a problem forcing them to violate their religion. But when people pick and choose their religious beliefs, and can’t even point to a specific text to defend their position, that’s bullshit and not how religion works. And what they’re wanting is religion to be a Get Out of Jail Free pass so their beliefs are more valid than other people’s beliefs and can be whatever they want.
And of course, the real problem for them is that you have a right to your religion, but you don’t have a right to run a business in violation of the law. So if you don’t want to bake gay cakes, then don’t bake cakes at all. It’s that simple.
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The problem with your argument is that all of these people suddenly found their religion when they were no longer allowed to discriminate against people against whom they have a clear record of animus. If this baker had been known for years as an fundamentalist who turned away people of other religions, people who had sex before marriage, people who were divorced, etc then there might be more sympathy. But in that case he should also not take credit cards since they involve borrowing money at interest… and a whole host of other sins. So the question is, if we open up our laws to say that a “sincerely held belief” can allow every individual to personally override anti discrimination legislation then that legislation is meaningless because each person can claim that they have a sincerely held religious belief rather than mere animus against a protected class.
An easier solution would be for this baker to move to a state with no civil rights protection for gays. There are many of them for now. It’s a similar solution to what they proposed to gay people when we only had the right to marry in certain states.
Dear TPM -
It’s not a Gay wedding cake. It’s a wedding cake.
Thanks.
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That’s the entire fucking point though. This has absolutely nothing to do with what he believes and cannot be allowed to be about subjective belief if we want a functioning, egalitarian society. I could go out and find you 100 Christians who believe precisely the opposite…that he’s violating everything Jesus taught and that even the Pope, based on his past statements, would tell him he is wrong and that conducting your business to serve ALL the public is not a violation of “God’s word.” What then?
Shall we tie the laws surrounding “religious freedom” to the official dogma of these religious institutions such that the person’s beliefs have to be accurate interpretations of their religion’s official tenets or should we just allows everyone to come up with whatever brain-fartery they can invent? Should everyone be allowed to go to a church in their insular little community and start inventing whatever bullshit they want as their “interpretation of God’s word” to provide it with the false semblance of religious belief and then claim “religious freedom” to allow themselves to act upon it? How fast do you think we’d have churches teaching that “n—gers are inferior and subhuman, and their existence is an affront to God” in that situation? Hmmm? Don’t tell me never, because we all know it would happen within a week.
As a point of comparison: None of this foolish “religious freedom” nonsense came up when the ACLU supported people being denied services by Muslim cab drivers because they had a guide-dog with them or had purchased duty-free alcohol in the airport. Nobody gave a flying fuck about “religious freedom” in that context because it was abundantly clear that leaving blind people or other stranded at an airport because of the petty idiosyncratic whims of the person providing the public service was totally unacceptable. It’s totally unacceptable here for the same reasons. Don’ like it? Don’t drive a fucking cab or become a baker.
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