Justice Dept. sides with baker who refused to serve gay couple

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I don't believe anyone any private individual should be forced to provide a service directly related to any wedding.

FTFY

Clearly any government employee who issues wedding licenses or performs civil marriages must do their job.  Also any government facility that allows itself to be used for weddings must allow weddings to be held there regardless of the genders of the two future spouses.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

On the one hand, forcing businesses to provide services to EVERYONE is problematic.
On the other- the mere notion of someone being denied service for his race/sexual orientation is repulsive and definitely against the principles we should have as democratic nations. Also, if one lives in a town where all bakeries won't provide him service because he's black or because he's gay- that is a terrible thing and he should be able to get service.
In conclusion- add sexual orientation to anti-discriminatory laws that already include race etc. LGBTQ people should be just as protected as people of color. A business should be able to deny service if the customer is being mean or violent- but if a baker wants to deny services because the customer is gay or black, which are exactly the same in terms of the lack of choice a person has over his birth, then let the damned baker pay a nice fine. A wedding gift, you could say.
Also, Wulfric-
You're making weird exceptions. Why is it just ok to deny services for a wedding and not ok otherwise? This is extremely weird. And lastly:

No Business should ever be allowed to discriminate based on race, religion, or sex (that's just sex, not sexual orientation or gender identity, although I do support some CSR protections for those groups.).

So now you're making an exception for sexual orientation or gender identity? Ok to discriminate based on it, but not on sex or race? This is worse than weird, this is bizarrely bigoted.

Helping with a wedding is basically indicating one's full approval of a relationship coming into existence. No other occasion or service rises to that level.

Okay, hypothetically, should a devout Catholic cashier be able to refuse to sell condoms? Or maybe just refuse to sell them to gay couples?

If a Catholic were to refuse to sell condoms on the basis of sexual orientation, I'd think it would be to straight couples since for them it would be unallowed birth control.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The thing is, my progressive friends, what we have here is a classic example of how different people view rights. Do they view them as negative rights, where only those actions which can cause tangible harm are regulated by government or as positive rights where government regulates more broadly to in some sense maximize societal good and government decides issues such as whether the personal insult suffered by a particular baker who refuses to make a wedding cake for a particular couple but is forced to do so against their beliefs outweighs the personal insult suffered by a particular couple who is refused service by a particular baker.

For any one particular incident of this type, all that's involved is personal insult, not tangible harm. For those who view rights via the lens of negative rights, then civil rights laws that impact the ability of private individuals to decide what commerce they engage in are justifiable not by the existence of occasional bigots engaging in actions but whether collectively there are enough bigots to make it materially impactful upon others trying to engage in actions such as obtaining a wedding cake. While we've certainly heard multiple stories of this type, I have yet to hear of a U.S. homosexual couple being unable to obtain a wedding cake at all, just not from the particular baker they'd hoped to procure it from. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted at a time when there was such a multitude of bigots not only refraining from engaging in commerce with minorities, but acting to prevent others from doing so that even under the narrow lens of negative rights, the law could be easily justified as needed. That's not the case for wedding cakes for gay couples.  Any justification for requiring bakers to bake cakes they don't want to bake will need to be found under the doctrine of positive rights.

The U.S. Constitution doesn't address positive rights. I would argue that under the 10th Amendment, issues addressed by the doctrine of positive rights are up to State governments to decide, so long as they don't impinge upon the negative rights protected by the U.S. Bill of Rights.

Since the law in question is a State law, overturning it in Federal court will require showing a tangible harm that would be done the baker by forcing him to bake the cake, which I doubt can be done. Hence, while I think the law could easily be struck down under the 10th Amendment were it a Federal law, as a State law I don't see a Federal Case to be made against it. It's well within State powers to weigh the relative merits of the two potential personal insults. Both this State law and a State law giving bakers the precedence in such cases are both valid under the U.S. constitution.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Your disagreement with the Court's legal reasoning on the Constitutional issues in Obergfell is an issue for a separate thread. You asked how church teachings against homosexuality represent a danger to society. The harm to society occurs when those groups demand that their religious beliefs and prejudices be codified into law to be imposed on all. You tried to analogize this bigotry to other groups who do not behave that way.

Is not a law requiring private individuals who engage in the profession of baking to make wedding cakes for anyone an imposition of a belief and prejudice? Just because it's a belief you hold doesn't make it not a prejudice.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

If a person's religious belief that gay sex is a sin is bigotry, is that also true for religious beliefs that drinking alcohol is bigotry?

Social liberalism is getting more and more extreme.

Sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic of a person. Choosing to drink alcohol is conduct.

You sound as if you have zero experience with alcoholics or other addicts.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

If a person's religious belief that gay sex is a sin is bigotry, is that also true for religious beliefs that drinking alcohol is bigotry?

Social liberalism is getting more and more extreme.

Sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic of a person. Choosing to drink alcohol is conduct.

You sound as if you have zero experience with alcoholics or other addicts.

Sadly that is not the case. But I wasn't aware we were talking about alcoholics. The question was about "drinking alcohol" and whether or not disapproval of such was morally equivalent to bigotry against homosexuals. Did I miss something?

Your words implied that alcohol consumption is a choice in much the same manner as some would say that whether homosexuals have gay sex is a choice.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I don't get the purpose of suing to have the right to give your money to someone that hates you.

I don't get this either. Why would one do business with a company that rejects them for being gay? What good is there in giving them your money to help them turn a profit and stay in business?

Because if enough people feel entitled to do so, you end up getting kicked out of the market for who you are, and then that's a problem.

Where is this true of? There's probably a very tiny subset of situations where you have a gay couple in a rural area where there's only one bakery in town and only that bakery makes cakes and denies them service.

For the most part there's other options available.

And for those who don't have those options? Sucks for them? What if we were talking about Jim Crow laws? Would you say the same?

Who are these people who don't have options and why? Is it cuz they live in an extremely small town isolated rural area where there's only one bakery in town who won't serve them? I highly doubt these people couldn't just go to the media and either force the Baker into making them one or get enough press coverage to make a gofundme to pay somebody to come into town to bake them their own cake. Giving that person money is a far better endeavor then giving money to some homophobic douchebag dontcha think?

Also LOL at comparing this to black people and Jim Crow. Holy sh*t that comparison is beyond stupid.

Not getting some dumb cake for a wedding from a local Baker has got to be one of the whitest of white bread, first world middle class problems a federal circuit court has dealt with in American history. It's like snobby San Francisco hippies found a pet issue to play with and it escalated out of control.

Listen, I've treated you respectfully, and I expect the same from you. I'm not about to engage in some high school melodramatic exchange of ad hominems. Calling a comparison stupid because you lack depth in the subject, and the comparison actually being stupid for reasons that you enumerate are very different things.

Sure, it starts with a cake, which appears to be inane, but then another business owner of a more vital service decides not to provide that service for the same reasons as well, say, car tow services. Eventually, you have people feeling empowered enough to take it to the next level. So on, so forth. If you let stupidity like this roam free, it'll eventually get to the point where it gets out of control.

I don't want to have to worry about getting services somewhere because my very existence offends someone's religious sensibilities. The same kind of crap argument was used in all other forms of discriminatory actions in the history of the U.S. Stop with the apologist acts and minimization. We've seen enough of it.

Not getting your preferred cake of choice =/= Jim Crow.

Sigh... Are you done whacking that straw man? I'm saying in the bolded parts that it can and (given U.S. history) will get to that point in certain places because of "religious liberty;" one of the same reasons that were used to push forward Jim Crow laws. If you don't get that, then there's no breaking through. You are attempting to rationalize yourself out of the point.

There are large parts of the U.S. today where there is no legal recourse for being refused the sale of a wedding cake because who is being wed, yet I have yet to hear of any case where people who wanted a wedding cake were unable to obtain one from a different source than the one they'd originally intended to get it from.  The idea that we're in any danger of Him Crow laws where wedding cake bakers have to have separate sales counters for straight and gay couples or similar Jim Crow-esque legislation is ludicrous in the extreme.

The reason for focusing on wedding cakes isn't because it's a serious problem, but because it's a photogenic yet minor aspect of a larger problem, much like the why the WWF uses a panda for a logo because it's cute and cuddly instead of some icky creature which would cause a greater impact on the world's ecology if it were lost from the wild.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

It's interesting how people who have never actually ran a business view this issue.  If someone has a verbal/written contract to bake a cake it would be bad business to refuse to make it after agreeing to make it.  But you can't force a business to perform a service, that is a dangerous precedence.  Ideally yes we should all be "cold capitalists" to the point we should make a cake for anyone that is willing to pay.  But if someone doesn't want to bake a cake for you why would you patronize their business?  The only reason you would use the legal system in this case would be to force your world view on others.  A rational adult would simply go to another baker.  After all, businesses refuse jobs for a multitude of reasons, anyone who has been a contractor knows that.  

How about all of those rational black people who could have just eaten at another lunch counter?

And that precisely is the difference that justified the Civil Rights Act of 1965's interference with private actions. Bigotry was so pervasive in some areas of this country that it made a material difference in the ability of some people to work, travel, and shop. I have yet to hear of a single one of these wedding cake cases in which the couple had difficulty in obtaining one from a different source.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

It's interesting how people who have never actually ran a business view this issue.  If someone has a verbal/written contract to bake a cake it would be bad business to refuse to make it after agreeing to make it.  But you can't force a business to perform a service, that is a dangerous precedence.  Ideally yes we should all be "cold capitalists" to the point we should make a cake for anyone that is willing to pay.  But if someone doesn't want to bake a cake for you why would you patronize their business?  The only reason you would use the legal system in this case would be to force your world view on others.  A rational adult would simply go to another baker.  After all, businesses refuse jobs for a multitude of reasons, anyone who has been a contractor knows that.  

How about all of those rational black people who could have just eaten at another lunch counter?

And that precisely is the difference that justified the Civil Rights Act of 1965's interference with private actions. Bigotry was so pervasive in some areas of this country that it made a material difference in the ability of some people to work, travel, and shop. I have yet to hear of a single one of these wedding cake cases in which the couple had difficulty in obtaining one from a different source.

But that wasn't the rationale used at the time (or in the courts). Instead, they pointed to the offense to the dignity of black people who might have been able to (or preferred) to patronize a black-friendly lunch counter but were being pushed out of a service provided to others.

And this is consistent with how we treat such things today; surely today, black people are not refused service at most lunch counters (or bake shops), yet it would still be clearly illegal to refuse them service at one.

The CRA is on the books, and while personally I doubt that there would be much refusal of public accommodation to blacks (ethnic groups perceived as foreign would be far likelier to be subject to refusal), a conservative approach to the law argues in favor of not changing it, especially since there are other parts of the CRA that could easily be justified even with my hands-off approach to what the law should be.

There's also the separate matter that I don't consider every form of commerce to fall under the umbrella of "public accommodation". Selling custom-made baked goods is not providing a public accommodation.