Hypocrisy of the 'Gay Wedding Cake' Case Ruling

Akkarin wrote:

Goken wrote:

Akkarin wrote: I'm against eating meat, but when I worked at Subway I still served people meat. Can I get a conscience clause saying I can refuse to serve meat to customers? If serving meat is such a problem, why would I put myself in a position where I had to serve meat? If there was something about my job which I couldn't stand, I should learn to tolerate it or find a different job.

In your case that makes sense because you were an employee, but this case, if I understood the OP, was about the business owner's decision not to do it. If the owner said do it and the employee refused I'd be with you. The boss makes the rules, you don't like it then leave. The owner gets to decide how their store is represented.

Doesn't matter what rules the boss makes, if they contradict the law, something has to be changed. In this case the court (and appeal court) both ruled that it was discriminatory.

The judges reasoning was that the bakery 'is " conducting a business for profit ", and it is not a religious group' therefore it cannot use a religious defence against providing monetary transactions.

Except that they didn't contradict the law. There wasn't a precedent on the law pertaining to this particular situation. NOW if they did so, it would contradict the law.

Which is the whole point. Should the company have a say in what they do or do not provide a service on.

I stand against the judge on this particular ruling. If it could have been proven that the reason they were doing so was because the guy was gay, rather than because of the message, this would be a situation that I'd agree with the judge. But it's not.

Like Marta- It's a dick move, and would probably cost them later on, maybe even enough they have to shut down. But it's not like they didn't tell him from the get-go. And if he really wanted the message on there, he could find a friend to ice it on. You get the great cake you want, and you can have a friend really quick put the message on. I see people do that with "Happy Birthday" all the time. No big deal.

Alethea Thompson wrote: ...if he really wanted the message on there, he could find a friend to ice it on. You get the great cake you want, and you can have a friend really quick put the message on. I see people do that with "Happy Birthday" all the time. No big deal.

its possible that what they really wanted was to force someone else to say it

they didnt need "support gay marriage" on a cake at a gay wedding; everyone there already does support gay marriage

what i believe they wanted to achieve was the act of coercion itself

and thanks to the courts, they basically have

I think that in a completely reasonable world, the buyer would have taken the blank cake (or chosen another message), then told all of his friends/family not to use that bakery. End of story.

Leah Starspectre wrote: I think that in a completely reasonable world, the buyer would have taken the blank cake (or chosen another message), then told all of his friends/family not to use that bakery. End of story.

Or the baker would have just done it anyway.

Goken wrote:

Leah Starspectre wrote: I think that in a completely reasonable world, the buyer would have taken the blank cake (or chosen another message), then told all of his friends/family not to use that bakery. End of story.

.

Or the baker would have just done it anyway.

Yes, that would be another perfectly reasonable option.

Brick wrote: I came across this article just now and was wondering what people thought of it?

I'd imagine most Brits will be aware of this story, but I'm not sure how far outside the UK and Ireland (if at all) its spread so I'll provide some background:

A homosexual man named Gareth Lee went into his local, family-run bakery (that he has used many time in the past) and asked them to ice a cake for him. The message he wanted them to put on the cake was 'Support Gay Marriage'. The McArthur family, who own the bakery, said that they could not ice that message on the cake as it went against their 'religious beliefs' as Christians. Mr Lee took them to court.

Mr Lee argued that this was homosexual discrimination (in the UK and Ireland it is illegal for a store to refuse a customer based upon their race/gender/religion/sexual orientation etc) and that the McArthurs refusal of his request was therefore illegal.

The McArthurs said that they were not discriminating against Mr Lee's sexuality as they had served him many times in the past and insisted that they would continue to serve him in the future. What they took issue with was the message, which they argued was a political message that they did not agree with and by icing it on the cake, their bakery would effectively be endorsing that message. They argued that to force someone to write a politic message that they did not agree with was undemocratic.

Mr Lee won the case. And the following appeal.

The result has caused a bit of an uproar in certain parts of the UK and Ireland as its set a legal precedence. An example of this effect would be, were it in the USA, that a Democrat would be legally forced to write a message saying 'Vote Trump' and vice-versa.

What are your thoughts? Is it a great victory in the fight against homophobia or is it just a great victory for SJW that has resulted in an undemocratic and unjust precedent?

I'm sure they got a lot of free press over this.

Rickie wrote: I'm sure they got a lot of free press over this.

Oh for sure! It would be interesting to see how this effects their business. No matter what specifically that effect is it will say a lot about their community. This is really a prime example of how different certain communities can be even when they live in the inter-connectivity of today's world. I continue to be amazed when people so vehemently oppose ideas such as that of gay marriage. However; all those people are really doing is upholding the belief and traditions that have been passed on to them, right?

And while I personally think its a tad silly that the owners wouldn't write on the cake from my point of view; the article does bring up a good point in that this could lead to a risk of freedom of expression.

Morally I completely disagree with the owners. However I do not know if they need to be "silenced" or rather forced to act outside of their own moral values in this way. Now, this instance does ride the line when it comes to denial of service due to discrimination. And honestly I am not sure if I am versed enough in law and morality to clearly break this down and determine wither or not this was ruling was inherently "right".

But I can say this. I believe that even those people who do not agree with me morally or philosophically still deserve to right to express their beliefs. As someone who is currently going to University it truly pains me to see the way that groups such as republican students are treated on, American, campuses. Do I agree with what they stand for? Eh, most of the time not too much. However when I see things happening such as their private events being shut down by a mob of protesters it does worry me. All opinions, even "negative" ones need to be heard. After all, if an idea or moral is never met with its opposite... never opposed, how is it supposed to be examined and changed?

I am a firm believer in that morality and ideology are ever evolving and living things that must. Be. Challenged. I do not at all like the silencing of any group. Now in this case I suppose that the ruling does not inherently shut down these people's views. They are not forced to act as though they accept gay marriage on a daily basis or proclaim formally that they do, all they had to do was ice a cake. But I do believe that people need to take instances like this into serious consideration before jumping right into agreeing with the side they tend to agree with. It can be incredibly easy to just shut out those one does not agree with and inherently say that they are wrong. But remember that they think the exact same way about you. These kinds of situations need to be handled with discussion and perhaps even compromise, else both sides are in danger of falling to blind acceptance and unwillingness to challenge themselves.

At least in my opinion.

I think here (in Australia) if you run a registered business then you have to follow the law, and in regards to discrimination law its really only churches who get a free ticket in part, in that regard.

It's about money being the great equalizer, and a business is allowed to operate to provide goods or services for money if it follows the law. The benefit is they get the money, they are allowed to do so if they agree to follow the law, and clients get the opportunity to exchange money for it.

So, if the owner does not want to bake cakes for some part of the community for reasons that fall within discrimination then they should stop thinking they can run a cake business legally and perhaps consider a new line of 'work', and do it for a hobby where they can pick and choose who they want to interact with. Otherwise its creates fractious tensions in society, which is the very thing governments and laws are designed to minimize - hence why discrimination law exists.

Adder wrote: I think here (in Australia) if you run a registered business then you have to follow the law, and in regards to discrimination law its really only churches who get a free ticket in part, in that regard.

It's about money being the great equalizer, and a business is allowed to operate to provide goods or services for money if it follows the law. The benefit is they get the money, they are allowed to do so if they agree to follow the law, and clients get the opportunity to exchange money for it.

So, if the owner does not want to bake cakes for some part of the community for reasons that fall within discrimination then they should stop thinking they can run a cake business legally and perhaps consider a new line of 'work', and do it for a hobby where they can pick and choose who they want to interact with. Otherwise its creates fractious tensions in society, which is the very thing governments and laws are designed to minimize - hence why discrimination law exists.

So when I came to your country one of the things I noticed in the welcome packets me and my shipmates got was a healthy list of brothels we could visit. Would you be willing to apply the same judgment here to those workers? Would you be willing to have a judge tell the worker you will go back and have sex with that man even if you do not want to? *edited to clean up my meaning*

Also are you ok with the government telling you that you will abide by its morals or starve? Because a government telling you that you will follow some rules or you cant make a living is doing just that.

Adder wrote: ...if the owner does not want to bake cakes for some part of the community for reasons that fall within discrimination then they should stop thinking they can run a cake business legally

but they were happy to bake the cake; they had no problems with baking a cake for the wedding and if they had only been asked to bake the cake this would never have happened