If you read what I said carefully, you’ll see that my only reference to a boycott had to do with taking a particular legal position, namely that the law doesn’t protect against discrimination. Nobody was suggesting boycotting Saks, and nobody would boycott Forever21, simply for denying the allegations against them.
“The only claims at present are brought under the New York State and New York City Human Rights Laws, and the latter expressly protects trans people, while the New York courts have held that the former covers discrimination against them through its prohibition of sex discrimination.”
Exactly. Forever 21 cannot use their religious belief as a defense in New York.
I didn’t even know they expressed their religion on their shopping bags because I’ve never even gone into a Forever 21, let alone buy something in one of their stores.
“Because they’ve never been asked by actual people with actual faces and feelings. Just reporters with an agenda.”
Were they forced to give an interview? I’m assuming they agreed to be interviewed. They could have easily told the reporter to go pound sand, but they didn’t. I think they were happy to be interviewed and proud to tell the world they wouldn’t serve pizza at a gay wedding.
I was brought up Catholic, so I know about Catholicism. You know what else is forbidden? Divorce and remarriage. And yet, Catholic bakeries somehow manage to make wedding cakes for divorcees despite their disapproval. I have no sympathy. They don’t have to officiate the marriage, sign the license, or even go to the wedding. All they have to do is bake a darn cake. Baking a cake doesn’t mean the bakery approves the wedding. It just means the bakery is a bakery that sells cakes.
That’s not the point. They haven’t actually declined to serve any gay person or to provide pizza for a gay wedding. It’s a little bizarre to go ballistic on someone for something that they haven’t actually done (not you, Emily).
I could tell that you have no sympathy. that’s pretty clear. However, you are talking about some bakeries, not necessarily the specific baker who lives his or her life in complete accordance with the Church’s teachings. There actually are some people who do that. Admittedly not many and the few that I know are very elderly, but they exist. I wonder if a baker who refused to bake a cake for any marriage that wouldn’t be recognized by the Church, regardless of who the participants were, would be able to do so because no one group would be singled out. (That’s a theoretical where I’m trying to figure out what the person of true, sincere faith could do to balance competing interests.) Could a baker choose to bake cakes only for couples married in the Catholic Church? Could a Jewish baker only provide wedding cakes to Orthodox couples? Just ruminating.
All this talk about cakes for the gay weddings! We are planning my niece’s wedding to her girlfriend and my sister and I were really sweating it because it looked for awhile like the girls didn’t even want to HAVE a cake, and we really look forward to cake at a wedding! Never even crossed our mind to worry about where the cake would come from!
Nothing to do with what you said, look at #366 and #368.
“n one case, two women went in to get cupcakes for a commitment ceremony. They were sitting in the bakery, trying different flavors of delicious cupcakes, talking with a clerk about flavors and how the cupcakes were to be displayed at the reception when all of a sudden the clerk realized that they were both brides and told them she couldn’t serve them.”
This begs a point. We’ve all been talking about small business owners (florists, bakers).
Let’s say the store owner would have been fine selling cake to this couple, but the store clerk (employee) felt she couldn’t participate in writing up such an order etc without violating her beliefs. Let’s also assume this is a small store - the cleek may be the only one on duty, delivery, etc (so there aren’t 20 other employees standing around who can take the order). Can the owner fire her and if so can the clerk now sue and claims she was being discriminated against for her religious beliefs?
Where does this end - if I walk into Starbucks do I have to present my credentials because this person won’t serve Jews, this person doesn’t serve Muslims, that one doesn’t serve interracial couples, etc? And what about the products - if a Starbucks employee happens to know I’m Jewish, can he refuse to sell me the ham sandwich?
Awnctb, interested in where you draw the line.
Would this be found legal? I doubt it. Discrimination based on religion has been illegal for a long time. The baker might try to argue that they weren’t discriminating against non-Catholics, but only against people not having a certain kind of wedding, which, they might argue, was a legal kind of discrimination. I doubt if that line of argument would succeed. Businesses who try to argue that they’re not discriminating against gays, but only against people having gay weddings, have been slapped down in the courts.
Sorghum, #366 was from MOWC, who was clearly being sarcastic – she’s made very clear that she opposes boycotts for this kind of thing. And #368 says nothing about boycotts.
“That’s not the point. They haven’t actually declined to serve any gay person or to provide pizza for a gay wedding. It’s a little bizarre to go ballistic on someone for something that they haven’t actually done (not you, Emily).”
It is the point. They did not have to grant the interview and admit they wouldn’t make pizza for a gay wedding. You explicitly put the blame on the reporter. The reporters are only doing their job. The pizza shop owner could have declined to be interviewed but they didn’t.
I obviously do not approve of any violence or even threats of violence against anyone no matter what they might say or do, but that does not mean I have to be tolerant of their bigotry.
More to the point, I am getting banner ads for a cupcake delivery company.
“That’s not the point. They haven’t actually declined to serve any gay person or to provide pizza for a gay wedding. It’s a little bizarre to go ballistic on someone for something that they haven’t actually done (not you, Emily).”
It’s even more bizarre to raise your hand and say you won’t bake a gay wedding cake when you’ve never been asked in the first place. I mean, I don’t see bakeries offering up spontaneously that they don’t do porn cakes or swastika cakes.
It’s not bizarre. It is something they are seemingly proud to admit.
And yet, as pointed out, our rights to practice or act according to our religious beliefs are far from unfettered by the laws. Different people just want to apply the fetters in different places.
Opinion piece by Frank Bruni (one of my personal favorite columnists)
I’m not sure where the Dearborn quote came from but I live 5 minutes from Dearborn. I think I know what goes on in my own backyard. There are jackholes everywhere, regardless of religion.
I go to Dearborn frequently. Anyone who thinks it’s some sort of fundamentalist Muslim haven is out of their mind. It’s not anywhere near a Muslim majority or even an Arab majority.
If I was doing the baking and was devout, I’d be feeling conflicted right: keep my hand down, hoping that if I got the customer I dreaded having to turn away they’d have the decency to respect my beliefs, or raise the hand in the hope it would help avoid painful moments all around.
Neither seems a good choice, least not in the cases of the bakery & pizza parlor. CF’s sad little vignette about the cupcakes made even me feel bad and raising your hand guarantees the pitchforks & torches.
I watched the beginning of the Louder with Crowder video. Unfortunately, Crowder doesn’t understand the issue. He says that the Christian bakers would be perfectly happy with providing a cake to a gay couple, but don’t want to provide a “gay cake.” He gives the example of a baker being happy to provide Kanye West with a generic cake, just like the cakes the baker bakes for everyone else, but not wanting to provide some kind of crappy gaudy cake that hypothetical Kanye might request-- the baker, Crowder correctly observes, could say that she doesn’t make that type of gaudy cake, and refer Kanye to the tasteless baker down the street. Equally, Crowder says, a baker could refuse to bake a “gay” cake that was in some way different from the cakes she provides to hetero couples.
But the Colorado baker that Crowder briefly alludes to refused to bake ANY wedding cake for the gay couple. He would supply a certain cake to a hetero couple, but would not supply the exact same cake to a gay couple. The baker would supply cupcakes to a hetero couple at a wedding reception, but would not supply identical cupcakes to a female couple at their commitment ceremony.
Cupcakes and cakes don’t become “gay” by being eaten by gay people. Crowder does not know, but we do, that some bakers assert the right to refuse to make any cake at all for people in same-sex weddings. But in Colorado, in some parts of Indiana, and in many other areas of the US, they do not have that right. Some fundamentalist religious people are up in arms about that-- they want the right to discriminate against gays because gays are yucky. Too bad. They lose, and everybody else thinks they’re jerks.
The laws for Indiana and Arkansas have been changed and there is no more issue.
However, regardless whatever the old laws were, it does not matter.
What really matters is the discrimination that still happens daily in real life. People won’t feel much if they are not the victims. Discrimination against race, origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, religions,… is still an issue in own society.
I still don’t understand the fixation so many of my fellow Christians have on homosexuality. Is it worse than taking the Lord’s name in vain? Stealing? Adultery? Why are these devout people serving adulterers (and particularly in small towns, you know who they are) but not gay people? It’s inconsistent.
I personally want to live in a world where I am free to live my faith, and my right to do so is protected, just as other people have that right. But I also want the government to protect me from the intrusive theology of my neighbors.
Contrary to awctndb’s view, government has a strong position to play in calling the balls and strikes in religious practice. As CF pointed out, if government has no place, then the Boston bomber is free to kill. In more frequent examples, parents who believe in prayer over medicine could allow the death of scores of children every year. Strict disciplinarians who believe in “spare the rod and and spoil the child” could murder their sons and daughter as they used to. To think society could exist without some kind of boundaries around indivual religious practice is not practical or just.