Refusal of service based race, sex, marital status or sexual orientation is not protected speech. It's discrimination. They gave up rights when they went into business.
They shouldn't be business owners if our social contract hurts their feelings. Commerce is a regulated activity.
Should a black florist be forced to make arrangements for a KKK wedding?
Should a Muslim butcher be forced to prepare pork for his customers?
I don't know about you but I wouldn't want to eat something that someone didn't really want to make for me. Can you trust food that was only made under threat of government action? I can't.
The last point, fair. No one said the cake had to be good :P It's just their professional reputation on the line.
The protected populations are rather limited "race, sex, marital status or sexual orientation", there may be additional protections in your jurisdiction + it has to be a product/service you already provide.
If you bake cakes, you can't refuse a cake to a gay couple; you could refuse on any number of other grounds though. If you don't sell pork, you can't be forced to. But breaking our laws because you like a book (legally speaking) is not allowed.
* FYI I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, if you're refusing service to anyone for anything other than business reasons you should double check with your counsel. You could be violating feduciary duty, etc.
I find it silly that a devout Christian can be sued into bankruptcy because he or she doesn't want to photograph a wedding ceremony with two brides.
The law has no regard for silly.
Moreover, you're missing the point. I picked people for my example because we all understand how repugnant those people would find it to be forced to take part in certain actions.
I get it, religious people are a convenient target of scorn and ridicule but the government shouldn't be in the business of coercing people to provide non-essential services to others.
So, a black ER doctor should have to provide assistance to the KKK member who was just shot and a Jewish pharmacist should have to fill the prescription for the neo-nazi's cancer medication.
Those are life and death issues, so they're not the same as someone getting their feelings hurt because someone else didn't want to associate with them.
The first two you listed here are, if it is proven in court that they were discriminating based on sexual-orientation. If the baker doesn't do bespoke decorations, fine. If the photographer doesn't shoot weddings, fine.
If you don't obey the law A) you're not a good Christian B) you don't get to engage in commerce in the United States of America.
Also please show me in your holy book where it says "thou shall not participate in commerce with homosexuals"
Yes, that was the point. I'm talking about the weaponization of the law.
Also please show me in your holy book where it says "thou shall not participate in commerce with homosexuals"
Please show me where I ever said that it was my book.
If they are bankrupt it's more likely they spent all their money on their crusade in the courts + lost IMO.
Just cause you like a book doesn't mean you can ignore the law.
Those devout Christians had no business exchanging services for currency if they can't respect the law. Commerce is regulated per our Constitution.
I have noticed that every time you say this, you conveniently leave out "religion". It's against the law to discriminate against someone because of their religion too.
Commerce is regulated per our Constitution.
Interstate commerce is regulated per our Constitution. Intrastate commerce falls under other laws.
Further in those places, the populations that non-discrimination laws protect need protecting. If it weren't for the law their livelyhoods and lives would be in greater danger.
I'm from the middle of nowhere and so are my gay brothers, one of whom recently got married. I've experienced this. I've fought this. Don't try to feed me this invisble hand solving discrimination and hate crimes horseshit.
Libertarians...
Do you have any evidence for that?
Who exactly has lost their minds here?
There is no such thing.
Honest question: which right would that be? I've never heard about that before.
> The U.S. Supreme Court has said repeatedly that the First Amendment protects an "individual freedom of mind"—e.g., (1943), which affirmed the right not to salute the flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance—which the government violates whenever it tells a person that she must or must not speak. Forcing a photographer to create a unique piece of art violates that freedom of the mind.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/choosing-what-to-photograph...
The government can't order you, as an individual, to bake someone a cake; but if you're a business discrimination is prohibited.
Engaging in commerce is a regulated activity per our Constitution.
EDIT: looked it up, they didn't want to bake a cake with bert & ernie and a pro-gay-marriage slogan.
A more sinister version of the same logic is the argument that states weren't discriminating against gay people by not letting them marry someone of the same sex because technically they could go find someone of the opposite sex and be granted a wedding license for a life of misery married to someone who they could literally never be attracted to instead of the person they were attracted to and loved. It's discrimination in either case.
I agree the states and Congress can regulate commerce, but those regulations are still subject to the First Amendment.
The moment you start a business you adapt an additional role to the one you already have ("private person"). In this role you have specific rights and obligations while you're in that role. It's the same reason that a person who is a police officer is allowed to arrest you while on duty (in his role as a police officer), but not when he is off duty (and in his role as a private citizen).
Folks who fought for Jim Crow laws did not view themselves as willfully evil people who discriminated for no reason. They viewed their own support of segregation as a principled moral stance. That's why they fought so hard.
Among other reasons, what do you do when people start inventing religions to get out of doing things they don't want to? Should the government be in the position of deciding which religions are "real"? Just look at the history of Scientology or modern Satanism for examples.
For me this issue is so frustrating because in the gospels, Jesus repeatedly went out of his way to accept and bless society's cast-offs. He tells his followers to turn the other cheek and be wary of imposing judgment.
Yet today, people who supposedly follow his teachings are eager to do the casting off themselves, based on a few sketchy line readings from elsewhere in the Bible. I just don't understand how someone can read the New Testament and come away with "be mean to gay people" as a priority message.
Perhaps more importantly, the difference between that and a landlord "offering service"?
We talk about the wedding cakes and the photographs, but it's important to remember that less than 50 years ago, blacks were constantly turned away from houses in nice neighborhoods for similar objections.
The "because of their religion" part is demonstrably nonsense.
People don't foster anti-gay feelings because of their religion, they trawl archaic text to justify anti-gay feelings that already exist.
It takes 30 seconds and a copy of Leviticus to disprove. Where's the conservative rage about tattoos (Leviticus 19:28), or oysters (Leviticus 11:10)?
You haven't even begun to consider these issues, yet here you are issuing sweeping proclamations about the contents and motivations of other people's hearts. Dare I say that you are not fostering anti-Christian feelings because of your understanding, but you trawl archaic text to justify anti-Christian feelings that already exist.
Because they don't want to follow that rule, and they see other Christians not following that rule.
Under your interpretation (that Christian attitudes are recieved from the Bible) Christian law would have remained largely static for the past 1600 years since the Bible was compiled, which is clearly not the case. For example, the treatment of adultery and usury have changed unrecognisably.
Having either attended or helped perform mass for half of my life, I can tell you for a fact that most Christians have no interest at all in treating the Bible as 'law' and instead use it for inspiration, comfort, or occasionally a crutch when making tough decisions. They recieve their morality and prejudices from themselves and from their peers.
If anyone was actually interested in treating the Bible as law then Theology would be a legal field not an academic one.
> ... you trawl archaic text to justify anti-Christian feelings that already exist.
Nonsense, I haven't said a single anti-christian word... and my pre-existing feelings are against the rationalisation of bigotry being treated as special, or worthy.
Prejudice (and we all have plenty) is to be examined and squashed, not protected.
> ... how they relate to the New Covenant
This is topical. Jesus teaches "love thy neighbour", and the Good Samaritan, lessons that we could all let a little closer to our hearts in times of wall-building, rejection of refugees, and threats of war.
So given that people's rights would be grossly violated if lots of businesses turned them away, the law must say that no business may turn them away.
Social contract theory ;)
One thing I wonder, though, is: what if the owner or sole proprietor "quits" their business? Are they still criminally/civilly liable after they've "given up" their additional role? And, if something like that'd actually fly, would they ever be able to return to their [line of] business, or would they have to quit forever?
Article I, Section 8, Clause 3: [The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
Several high court rulings have concluded that it includes intrastate commerce. It's wide reaching & has historically been the main tool for combating discrimination.