Supreme Court allows web designer to refuse service for same-sex weddings
politico.com
politico.com
We are not talking about someone serving us at a restaurant or other things that have nothing to do with our sexuality.
Making a thing for a wedding is tied specifically to being LGBTQ. You can't ignore it while working on the service.
I just don't understand why we decided that we need to try to force people to make things for us when there are plenty of people (including those within our own community) which will happily do it. Do you really want someone to make something they don't want to make? The quality is not going to be as good. I would much rather someone just say they don't want to do it.
Now tact is also an important part of this and how they say no. But if someone just says no we shouldn't be pressing for "Why" since that just leads to the confrontation.
This just bothers me so much especially given the current political issue that something as small as a cake is the hill that we decided to die on instead of making sure trans people can get medical care or the crap going on in Florida.
I just can't shake the feeling that we focused so much on the wrong things and got our little "victories" that we celebrated and well... here we are now going backwards on things that actually matter.
It doesn't matter what you call them, it just matters whether the Supreme Court protects them.
> do not represent Christianity in any way
Hence the phrase "a new religion".
If I walk into your restaurant and you refuse to serve me for lunch because I was gay. That is no ok. Me being gay has nothing to do with you serving me lunch. I don't care about your beliefs.
If I were to ask you to cater my wedding, thats a different story since you are actively partaking in something. I am fine with that.
I just really want to make sure that this is not misconstrued.
Why not? Cooking is as much of an art as baking a cake and ergo they should have the right to deny serving you food under their right to free expression.
This is literally the exact argument that has been used in both of these cases. Well, except in this case the site was literally made up and the supreme court fell for a fake case with zero standing.
Except it wasn't.
If you know the cake case, they ruled that there was nothing wrong because they offered to sell them an off the shelf cake, they just refused to write a message they didn't support.
> Masterpiece's owner Jack Phillips, who is a Christian, declined their cake request, informing the couple that he did not create wedding cakes for marriages of gay couples owing to his Christian religious beliefs, although the couple could purchase other baked goods in the store.[0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
Then why are you making up facts of the case to try and pretend it's going to lead to restaurants banning gay people?
"allowing you to dine in my restaurant is normalization and tacit support of homosexual lifestyles, so i will not serve you."
"giving you medical aid means i have to come in contact with you, so you'll need to find someone else."
what happens when your bank no longer wants to support gay communities and closes your account? when your bus driver is homophobic and doesn't want gay people on their bus?
Same situation here, they can refuse to custom design a website, but can't refuse off the shelf work because of their gender/orientation.
Please justify this claim
So the hill-being-died-upon isn't the cake or website, but the more general distinction of whether anybody can just make up a reason to discriminate. In this particular case, they went out of their way to fabricate an instance, specifically for the purpose of drawing a distinction where previously there was none -- with the intention of expanding that distinction.
That is, of course, a slippery slope argument, except for the fact that it is a conspicuous and deliberate plan to head down that slope. The Court could, theoretically, interrupt that descent. But this decision is a signal that they will not.
And yes, that's precisely going backwards on things that actually matter. It sends signals that the courts will also back all of the crap going on in Florida, using similar reasoning.
I realize from a legal standpoint we don't have a good way to define this. My issue is also not this specific case.
But we have been talking about people providing services for gay marriages for 10 years now? Including a few court cases.
What bothers me is that those earlier things ever made it to court in the first place and it didn't just end with "well ok I will find someone else".
Like what did fighting about this minor thing get us other than making people (conservatives) angry?
Thats my problem and concern here. We spent so much time talking about this stuff that doesn't matter, while making the conservative base angry, and I can't shake this feeling that it's biting us in the ass now.
What things are you willing to find someone else for? A different doctor? A different lawyer? A different water fountain?
Why didn't Rosa Parks simply start a more inclusive (business savvy) bus service and put the bigots out of business?
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty"
if we don't fight about "minor things" then they'll continue to strip away rights until all the "minor" things together are a major thing.
it surprises me that you have such a dismissive attitude towards the fight for equal rights since you self-identified as gay (i am also gay).
It never has. Maybe in 10-20 years when people stop giving a shit than sure, we can say they are clearly in the minority and we can have a different discussion. But we are not there.
At best talking about this stuff is a distraction at worst it is actively moving us backwards.
And I fear that we are on the worst side of things considering how drastically things have changed in the other direction in the last few years.
The fact is we have to look at why after making so much progress we are regressing and I refuse to put all of that blame on the opposition when we picked the stupid battles like cakes.
Frankly at this point in time I don't give a rats ass about someone baking a cake or making a website when trans kids can't get the healthcare that they need and we have schools across this country trying to erase queer identities. Also the issues with many of the racial books being removed from school.
This is not the issue we should be talking about and never was.
The fact that you're blaming the victim of the case is really quite absurd. You can't fathom that each of these smaller actions comes together to make a body of argument against the rights of minorities to exist. They're already doing this to excise transgender healthcare by claiming that they have a free speech right to not treat them.
And again I encourage you to actually read this case before you respond, though I doubt you will. The people that brought this case forward literally made up a gay couple so they could have an argument against needing to serve them [1]. This isn't us picking a bad argument, this is systematic dismantling of our rights by bad faith actors.
[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/173987/mysterious-case-fake-...
Especially given that I mentioned cakes. The cases involving people not baking cakes or a photographer to the best my my knowledge were real cases. So while we can explain this one away we can't explain those other cases away unless you can tell me those were fake also. I can't find proof that they were.
I am simply saying that something happened. Something caused things to go so far in the other direction after a lot of progress.
We can stand up and say "trump", "desantis", or whatever else other thing that will make make us be able to point the blame somewhere else but that isn't helpful!
If we don't actually look at this and recognize possible mistakes along the way we are doomed to fail. That isn't vicim blaming.
We are in a horrible situation right now and we are continuing on a worse trend, we cannot afford to not have these hard discussions.
That's not really true though, in the USA there are no rights being denied to either group. This has been the case since the Supreme Court ruled for marriage equality in 2015.
We need to get to a point where people citing their religion isn't an excuse to pick and choose how and which laws apply to them. Forget cakes, forget LGBT or anything else, just think about how this framework is already being abused.
We've already seen cases where county clerks have decided not to issue wedding certificates because of their religion. We've seen pharmacists refuse to issue drugs because of their religion. The slope is here and the SC is signaling "it's ok not to do your job if you're a bigot".
So what's next? Doctors that refuse to treat "gay" diseases like HIV? Where's the line? Can a school teacher refuse to teach a child how to read because it's against their religion to let women read? Should we allow biology teachers to refuse to teach evolution because that's against their religion?
This isn't just about gay rights, never was. This is about how much power saying "it's my religion" can grant you and protect you from being a bigot moron.
That's already in the works:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/arkansas-governor-sign...
Should we allow biology teachers to refuse to teach evolution because that's against their religion?
That too:
https://www.eenews.net/articles/okla-bill-targets-existing-s...
What we've not seen is the SC case to make this a national standard rather than just a state only standard.
All it will take is someone getting fired and then suing (If that hasn't already happened, might just be making its way through the lower courts).
> We are not talking about someone serving us at a restaurant or other things that have nothing to do with our sexuality.
> Making a thing for a wedding is tied specifically to being LGBTQ. You can't ignore it while working on the service.
> I just don't understand why we decided that we need to try to force people to make things for us when there are plenty of people (including those within our own community) which will happily do it. Do you really want someone to make something they don't want to make? The quality is not going to be as good. I would much rather someone just say they don't want to do it.
Another "as a gay man" here, I fully agree. I also don't want to support them if they don't want to do the job. I'd rather take my money elsewhere to someone at least ambivalent enough to my sexual orientation / politics to not care that it's M+M rather than M+F.
I've had people make snide remarks of my sexuality before surrounding big decisions, and they basically made my mind up for me with them. (Ex: Car dealer trying to push me to a Prius on the lot because "your kind like them." I just left that dealership and shopped elsewhere.)
I just honestly don't get it why this is what "we" focused on.
Does it really stop there, though? Under this ruling, what's to stop discrimination against Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and atheists? Or Christians, for that matter. This could backfire against them.
> when there are plenty of people (including those within our own community) which will happily do it.
Will there be plenty of options in the future, though, now that discrimination is legalized?
Nah, don't be under this delusion. This is a "heads I win tales you lose" situation. You can pretty much predict that if someone is a minority religion all the sudden religious rights have natural bounds we need to follow. But, if they are christians, then all the sudden there are no bounds to what can be argued.
That's where we are at. Welcome to Gilead.
We had a similar one in the UK, which went all the way to our Supreme Court: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/10/uk-supreme-c...
The judges agreed with your view too:
> The bakers could not refuse to supply their goods to Mr Lee because he was a gay man or supported gay marriage, but that is quite different from obliging them to supply a cake iced with a message with which they profoundly disagreed.
Which seems to me also a very reasonable line to draw, in terms of freedom of expression.
This is the first step. This court is just getting started.
> Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance - Gorsuch
This is why the USA needs term limits for the house and senate. Those politicians are too lazy to make any laws or not willing to hurt their re-election potential that they are passing legislation to the judicial branch.
This makes the Supreme Court the ultimate arbiter on matters, which causes the president and Senate to pack the court with biased judges.
What makes things different between personal choice and "participation in the public square" or however a difference in treatment gets justified? When a business license is issued? Corporation formed?
It's such an authoritarian position. It's not like refusing selling already made cakes to selected customers. It's about being forced to create something against your will.
Three liberal justices on the court right now are just blinded by the ideology. I have quite liberal views on social issues and disagree with conservatives on most issues but it's hard to see how one side is a reasonable one here and the other just pushes an agenda and that's not the agenda anyone valuing creative freedom should get behind.
What the fuck happened?
So in practical consequences it kinda doesn't matter which side won. It's not like anyone would want to get such a website made anyway.