Thinking of how this case might play out fills me with rage for the wealthy, white gay men and the carnival freaks like Milo who stumped for Trump.
âArtists shouldnât be forced to express what the government dictates. The commission ordered Jack to celebrate what his faith prohibits or to stop doing the work he loves. The Supreme Court has never compelled artistic expression, and doing so here would lead to less civility, diversity, and freedom for everyone, no matter their views on marriage,â Kristen Waggoner, the Alliance Defending Freedom who is representing Phillips, said in an email.
While this argument does have some merit and, perhaps, should be explored on some level, my question would be where would it end, realistically? What about artisan wine? Artisan cheese? Landscaping? Home restoration (which involves varying levels of artistic interpretation and talent)? Pet grooming? The list could be quite large, theoretically â and, I suspect many in the alt-right religioso groups, thatâs their intent. Be careful, Neil Gorsusch â as this might very well backfire and many otherwise nice folks in the marketplace "find (some sort of) religion, if you get my drift.
That said, we all know how this is going to coming down. Such a fucking friend to the LGBTQ community your daddy, eh, Ivanka?
Discrimination wrapped up in the mantle of âReligious Freedomâ is a slippery slope. What if youâre an obese diabetic, and you go in for a refill on your insulin prescription, and the pharmacist is a biblical literalist? Would it be within his constitutional right to âReligions Freedomâ to deny you your insulin because sloth and gluttony are listed in the bible as 2 of the 7 deadly sins?
1 Timothy 2:11-12: âLet a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.â If a University dean invokes âReligious Freedomâ can he not hire any female teachers? How about all the busty women FOX âNewsâ likes to use on their showsâŚcan they all be canned under âReligious Freedomâ if the network decided that their not being silent was against the networks strongly held religious beliefs?
This isnât about a stupid cake! This is about one thingâŚwhen you open a business to the public, you canât discriminate randomly against the public. Why as a business owner you would is beyond me. Anyone is welcome to buy the products my company sells, because money is money.
Iâd be willing to bet that weâll hear some argument along the lines of âIf a Christian baker can be forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding, then can a gay baker be required to bake a cake for the Westboro Baptist Church that says âGod Hates Fags?â Can a Jewish baker be forced to bake a cake in the shape of a Swastika for a gathering of NeoNazis?â
Of course those are obnoxious comparisons and itâs insulting to the LGBT couples to compare their desire for a wedding cake that celebrates their love for each other to neo-Nazis or WBC who want a symbol of their hatred towards others. But Iâm not sure exactly where the line would be drawn and on what objective basis.
I suspect the coupleâs attorneys have an answer to this challenge, though I donât know if that answer takes the form of a suggestion for where to draw the line and why, or whether they will just say that the court doesnât need to rule on that in this case, and it will have to be addressed if or when those situations occur and someone sues.
Meanwhile, as a practical matter, I wouldnât eat any cake baked by someone under duress. Not unless I was closely observing them every second. For obvious reasons too gross for me to want to describe here.
âThe Trump administration is supporting Phillips in his argument that he canât be forced to create a cake that violates his religious beliefs.â
So religious discrimination is a Constitutional right of any business that serves the public?
Well, then, I guess we can look forward to signs in shop windows that read:
âKikes not served.â
And:
âEvangelicals need not apply.â
Or:
âNo Ragheads or Papists.â
Generations of patriots whirl in their graves.
Exactly. Nowhere in âThe Holy Bibleâ does it say you canât piss or spit or ⌠into the cake batter youâre using to bake for your enemy.
Heaving into a brown paper bag.
Itâs a fucking CAKE, not âartâ, nor an instrument of faith!
People are such hateful, ignorant assholesâŚ
This makes a lot of sense to me:
The lawyers should have made clear: Jack has the right not to bake a cake with a rainbow flag on it. But he doesnât have a right to refuse to sell the same cake he bakes for everyone else because the couple is gay. Former would be compelled speech; latter is public accommodation.
â Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) December 5, 2017
Interesting. That would seem to solve the (hypothetical) problem of âwould a Jewish baker be required to bake a cake in the shape of a swastika (or decorate it with one) if thatâs what their neo-Nazi customer asked for?â
In the thread where that tweet comes from, thereâs some dispute about what exactly the betrothed couple were insisting on, and what the baker was refusing to do.
I havenât been following the case closely enough to know the answer. Perhaps someone here does. Did the baker refuse to sell them a wedding cake â any wedding cake â because it was for a same-sex marriage? Or did he say heâd sell them a cake but refused to decorate it in some way that he claims violates his beliefs?
At first blush, the idea of drawing the line between the âexpressionâ of cake-decorating and the âpublic accommodationâ of selling wedding cakes sounds like an appropriate attempt to balance competing rights.
But Iâm not sure how well that would hold up to real-world scenarios. If the cake shop says âsure, weâll sell a cake to anyone, and if you want, weâll put the names of the bride and groom on the cakes, and little bride and groom figures on top, but we wonât put two male figures or two female figures on top and we wonât put the names on if both names seem to be the same gender,â then Iâm not sure how the same-sex couple is getting the same service from the public accommodation.
Another approach would be, sell them the cake and put whatever they want on it, but donât force a particular employee who objects on religious grounds to do the work. However, thereâs the practical issue of a shop with just one employee (or owner-operator), or where all the employees share the same religious beliefs / bigotries. And then even if they hired someone from outside to do the task they donât want to do themselves, theyâre still hiring them, and would likely argue that goes against their belief because theyâre still participating (and the question again would be "can the Jewish baker be compelled to hire someone to make the swastika cake if they wonât do it themselves). But it wouldnât be their own âartistic expression,â so it would be a different argument.