Where is it all going to end? There is a point where it’s sort of nuts. Why would anyone want to buy a cake from someone who doesn’t want to make it for them? How would they know if they will do as good of job on those cakes they don’t want to make as they do on the ones that they do? Cake baking is subjective. Maybe a little less vanilla or sugar? Why risk it for your wedding?
@soozievt’s point is spot on. I really get fed up and really tired of everyone from politicians to bakers spouting shallow and frequently (excuse the pun) half-baked religious views. Blustering radio hosts who have been married 3 times yelling against gay marriages because it’s an affront to the sacred nature of marriage. Politicians insisting that Christian beliefs be enshrined in our laws, meanwhile they’re both married to others while having an affair with each other. My fellow church member going on and on about abortion, interspersed with rank gossip about one of the elders. Could deal with it better if more of the loudest voices truly studied and understood their own views, but I don’t seem a lot of evidence of it. I don’t want our laws bowing down to the theology of people who think the first commandment is only about using bad words, or that the immaculate conception described the birth of Jesus.
I know I’m ranting, but if I could wear a button, it would read “Let’s deal with our own logs first”. And since I have a house-worth of my own logs, I’ll shut up now.
It’s not the cake baking. It is working with the couple and delivering the cake and setting up the cake, which makes it more like the musician analogy.
Of course someone should not be allowed to not sell someone a product. But it is not just a product. If you went to Shop-Rite and bought a wedding cake, that’s different than going to a bakery.
" A lot of colleges now have gender neutral rooms. Anyone can room with anyone else."
A lot? Name them. Rutgers put in one gender neutral dorm.
And that was in the 1980s, that we were denied on-campus housing. We didn’t have the money to sue, and we didn’t want to jeopardize our college careers by complaining.
As for interracial couples, is that forbidden in the bible or not? I didn’t think so, I thought it was an extrapolation of the children of Noah etc.:
http://www.christianbiblereference.org/faq_interracialMarriage.htm
vs.:
http://www.christianbiblereference.org/faq_homosexuality.htm
namely, homosexuality is “banned”, that is, there is written evidence that someone who discriminates based on that practice (no matter what rational people think), it is following their religion.
http://www.campuspride.org/tpc/gender-inclusive-housing/
“Why would anyone want to buy a cake from someone who doesn’t want to make it for them? How would they know if they will do as good of job on those cakes they don’t want to make as they do on the ones that they do? Cake baking is subjective. Maybe a little less vanilla or sugar? Why risk it for your wedding?”
Because they have the right to choose who they want to purchase a cake from businesses who make wedding cakes.
“It is working with the couple and delivering the cake and setting up the cake, which makes it more like the musician analogy.”
Yes, so what? They are not participating, in any way, in the marriage ceremony. They are hired to bake a cake, nothing more, nothing less. If they don’t want to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple they can stop baking them for everyone.
Musicians probably aren’t as stupid to turn down jobs using that excuse, but I don’t see why they would be granted an exception either, if they turn a gig down based on religious reason. They can be sued just like the baker.
There is no consistency in claiming it has something to do with their religion, rh. In reality, that’s an excuse, pure and simple.
So if I owned a pet store and someone told me they were purchasing animals for religious sacrifice would I be legally required to sell them?
Per alh’s #43, as more churches approve same-sex marriage, then fewer bakers and people in general will have any religious basis upon which to object to providing them goods or services. The Catholic Church seems to be a strong hold-out in this area. Are any of the objecting bakers Catholic?
“Why would anyone want to buy a cake from someone who doesn’t want to make it for them?”
Why would anyone want to sit at a lunch counter at a Woolworth’s where they don’t want to serve them? Why would anyone want to take a room in a hotel where they’re not wanted?
“So if I owned a pet store and someone told me they were purchasing animals for religious sacrifice would I be legally required to sell them?”
Is sacrifice of animals legally allowed in the US? I have no idea.
I’d think most states would have statutes prohibiting cruelty to animals.
Is the gay couple atheist? Another religion? How is it that the couple is against the owner’s religion? How does he know that? Did they tell him?
Well then, I hope these bakers are discriminating against people who have had affairs, not honored their mothers and fathers, divorced, etc. No cherry-picking of which sins they can discriminate against.
Somehow, I feel differently about the band than the bakery. For me, it comes down to whether or not the act in question could be reasonably construed as an expressive act. I don’t care whether the baker has to spend five minutes or five hours with the couple, or whether she has to show up to the wedding site to deliver the cake or not – it really isn’t plausible to claim that selling the exact same cake to a gay couple that one would have sold to a straight couple is an endorsement or promotion of gay marriage. It is simply providing a service on an equal basis.
I think a band is more integrally related to the celebration of an event. Sure, when the bandleader says “and now let’s welcome the beautiful couple,” no one really thinks he is passing a genuine personal judgment on the nuptials, but his typical shtick probably is going to contain statements that in some sense “endorse” the wedding. In addition, unlike a bakery that just happens to be owned by a Christian couple, there are plenty of Jewish (or, I imagine, Christian) themed wedding bands. Given that these people are already catering to a particular clientele, and that the issue isn’t as likely to come up as frequently as it might in a bakery, I could certainly see a reasonable person thinking that an Orthodox Jewish band’s presence at a gay wedding signified something about its members’ own personal beliefs.
This seems to be the crux of your objection–that spending extended time with someone whose behavior violates your religious beliefs is a violation of your right to practice your religion. We’re not talking here about the baker’s church having to accept a same-sex married couple as members or worshippers, let alone conduct their wedding at the church. We’re not even talking about who the baker chooses to socialize with, or who the baker allows his/her children to socialize with. This is about carrying out the usual types of interaction that are part of life in modern society and those of running a business in that society.
I was actually thinking not of college housing but of rental properties in the general community–your experience confirms my point. College dorms have different restrictions than typical rental apartments, even thirty years after our time in college. But yes, there are a growing number of colleges that allow mixed gender roommates in campus housing. From http://www.collegeconfidential.com/admit/male-female-roommates/ :
I can discriminate in all sorts of ways – legally – against customers. I simply can’t discriminate in ways that are prohibited under civil rights laws/rulings.
And the “forced to fraternize with people who violate your religious beliefs,” argument was the same argument used to keep black children out of white schools. The religious argument was also raised by Senator Bilbo from Mississippi: "purity of race is a gift of God . . . . And God, in his infinite wisdom, has so ordained it that when man destroys his racial purity, it can never be redeemed.” Allowing “the blood of the races [to] mix,” according to Bilbo, was a direct attack on the “Divine plan of God.” There “is every reason to believe that miscengenation and amalgamation are sins of man in direct defiance to the will of God.” HT to http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/02/26/3333161/religious-liberty-racist-anti-gay/
It isn’t an argument with which I’d like to be associated.
Imagine if a baker designs a wedding cake and then the day of the wedding, learns that the bride is pregnant with a baby conceived out of wedlock and that is against the baker’s own religious groundings? I mean,where does it end??
I also don’t think I want to say much on the topic brought up about “fraternalizing” with the same-sex married-to-be-couple. You can socialize or have a business meeting with someone who holds very different beliefs than yourself without condoning or supporting their beliefs or actions. Hopefully you can, right? Imagine the work place (or society as a whole!) if we only fraternalize with those who agree with our own belief system!
I, for one, am grateful for the laws of our country against discrimination and that uphold civil rights. I have to admit that I find it deplorable that some would want it to be otherwise.
It’s a mistake to open this thread, for me anyway. Here I thought, my favorite thread, I like food btw, but it’s not about cake.
People buy both products and services. And often we buy things that are partly service, partly product. Should people be allowed to discriminate when providing a service in a way that would not be acceptable if they were just selling a product?
My family has a Jewish last name. If the asphalt contractor who paved my driveway last week didn’t like Jews, would it have been OK for him to refuse to pave my driveway for that reason, just because what he’s selling is more of a service than a product? What if all the asphalt contractors in my area felt the same way? Am I supposed to go without a driveway?
I’ve always been an advocate for gay marriage, but I’m having trouble with the musician thing. A ceremony musician is an integral part of the actual ceremony, and the band can be in the company of attendees at a wedding for five hours. I’m not super comfortable with coercing either of those things. However, my denomination takes marriage very seriously and absolutely does refuse to marry couples at the pastor’s discretion, so I come from the history of always knowing that every couple would expect to earn the privilege of being married in the church and be required to follow all rules and regulations. Of course, earning that privilege has nothing to do with who or what the prospective couples are.