At risk of offending people, I cannot see how this particular service, which is having discussions with a same-sex couple who are getting married, making a wedding cake per their instructions, and transporting it to the wedding reception, must be provided based on the rights of the bakery owner to practice their religion.
If someone comes in and says “I don’t agree with your religion, in fact, I vehemently am against several principles of it which are basic to your beliefs” and then says “okay, now make me a wedding cake”, could the baker say “no, I can’t make you a wedding cake”?
I think LGBTQA people should have all the rights of anyone non-LGBTQA person, but having one particular bakery make you a wedding cake is not a right, is it? Or is the bakery receiving federal funding or another government benefit (SBA loan?) where they have to comply with all anti-discrimination policies?
The only defense for this decision is “slippery slope” where if someone can be denied a wedding cake, just wait until they are denied medical services or a loan, etc. etc. etc.
We were denied housing due to gender while in college, but that was legal somehow, but not providing goods and services of this nature is illegal?
Right decision, IMO. If you open your business to serve “the general public,” you can’t cherry pick “the public.” Unless someone disrupts your business, you can’t refuse to serve them.
Court decisions like this one have implications beyond access to cakes… Other courts will look at this decision and use it to support their reasoning in similar cases dealing with access to services versus someone’s personal desire to exclude someone from serving them…
Is this really analogous? The objection to a gay wedding cake is based upon religious belief, whereas the objection to an interracial cake is not based upon a similar Constitutionally-protected right.
A better (but not perfect) analogy might be a Muslim butcher shop refusing to cut up the wild pig you just shot. Can the government force the butcher to do it if eating pork is against his religion?
Are Muslims allowed to touch pork? I don’t think a kosher butcher could butcher pork in the shop and still have a kosher shop.
The it’s-against-our-religion bakers don’t have to close the shop after baking the cake. Their religion doesn’t say the shop is contaminated by a cake baked for a gay couple.
The Muslim butcher is clear he is cutting up pork.
The it’s against our religion bakers won’t know the purpose of the cake unless someone makes it known.
The shop owner is supposedly in the business of baking.
It’s a compliment to him that the couple wants his talent at baking. It’s flour, eggs and sugar, just like any other cake.
If the owner were smart, he would make a special line of cakes for same sex couples and charge whatever he wants.
We have a local bakery that specializes in the tackiest ideas for cakes. Some are really bad. In the end, they get eaten.
It’s a cake. Business is business. Money is money. Either sell the cakes to everyone, or don’t sell them at all.
Replace the analogy with an interfaith couple. The baker might object to baking a cake for them out of a belief that it is wrong to marry a person of another faith.
Or if you don’t like that, consider a Catholic baker and a Catholic bride planning to marry a divorced groom in a civil ceremony – a marriage that is considered invalid by the Catholic church.
Not really analogous because a bakery that bakes cake would bake cakes, whereas a kosher or halal butcher would not have pork on the premises. It’s not a matter of refusing or not refusing to do something different than what your mission is, it’s whether you can refuse to do for one what you do for others. I don’t think a cake shop would be sued for refusing to make a croque en bouche for a gay wedding if those are not part of their shop’s services.
Where I am curious is about refusal for other reasons. My church has done commitment ceremonies for as long as I can remember and has done gay marriages since they were legal, but our pastors are allowed to and actually do refuse to marry people for reasons specific to those couples. I wonder what would happen if one of those unsuitable couples happened to be gay. Or if a bakery refused a gay couple for reasons other than religion, such as I personally think you are the biggest jerk in the world and would rather eat worms than bake you a cake for any occasion.
The pork analogy doesn’t work for me, because a Muslim butcher is not discriminating against his customers, he is making a decision not to work with pork. Therefore a Jew, a priest and an imam could each bring in a lamb, and the Muslim butcher should treat them the same. And if the imam should bring in a pig, the butcher would likewise refuse to cut it up. It’s a substantive difference. The law doesn’t force you to provide all services, the law just says that if you’re in business to provide certain services, then you may not offer those services to certain groups of people but not others.
Think of it the way the law developed for blacks. When black people drove through towns back in the 50s and 60s, they couldn’t find places to go to the bathroom. You could say the law shouldn’t force businesses to offer those services to everyone. Yet if all restaurants and gas stations make that decision, the effect on the black traveling public was devastating.
Enlarge that to LGBT folks for businesses other than bakeries (because why should bakeries have special rules). If all or even some pharmacists refuse to provide medicine to them because of religious beliefs, where are we? How about grocery stores?
Yes, if the no-gay-cakes religious exemption flies, then this one would too, I think. The religious objection has to be legitimate; it can’t be made up.
Does the bible say anything about marriage licenses? Or weddings?
The baker is doing the same as the Muslim butcher, though. He is not saying I won’t sell gay customers some fresh baked bread or a birthday cake, he just does not want to work with wedding cakes for same sex couples.
The thing is, “baking a wedding cake” is not the same as selling someone a box of cookies or a cake off the shelf.
The implication, and it is strong, is that the baker has to consult with the couple, learn about their likes and dislikes, offer them suggestions, have tastings for particular flavors, then after all is settled, make the cake, and generally bring it to the venue.
An analogy I can think of is if devil worshippers wanted to buy a cake from that bakery. It would be pretty clear, without the bible specifically mentioning it, that dealing with devil worshippers is probably pretty frowned upon by many churches. Would the bakery have to make a wedding cake for devil worshippers?
(yes, pharmacist CAN refuse to fill a prescription based on personal beliefs)
See page three of the last link - apply it to wedding cakes, much less important (to most people, LOL) than prescriptions, and you’ll see the problem.
The ACLU says “it is bad public policy” for pharmacies to not fill birth control prescriptions based on personal and/or religious beliefs. That does not have legal standing.
I don’t see how baking a cake goes against their religion. They are not personally marrying someone of the same gender. They aren’t performing the ceremony for a couple. They are not attending the wedding. They are simply providing a product to a customer that they sell to everyone else.
You can sell a product to anyone without condoning their beliefs, orientation, religion, race, etc. If you don’t have to sell them a cake because their actions are against your religious beliefs, what is to stop someone from refusing to provide any service or product to someone whose religious or sexual orientation, etc. behaviors don’t agree with your own?
My point is that it is not just “baking a cake”. Everyone I know who had a wedding cake baked for them did not order it in one step and pick it up in one step. It is a process where the baker gets involved with the couple - wedding cakes could be over a thousand dollars.
Can you make a Jewish rabbi marry a Catholic couple in a Catholic church according to Catholic tradition? Can you make a Catholic priest marry an atheist couple because they think the church is pretty?