Posted on 03/28/2015 12:23:59 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
By now you’ve already heard about the “backlash” being directed toward the entire state of Indiana over the recent passage of their new religious freedom law. The NCAA is hinting about moving their basketball tournament away. They might even lose their comic book convention. (How much of a “loss” that would be is subjective.) But one of the more interesting threats being made comes from the CEO of online review site Yelp.
Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman isn’t happy. He penned an open letter on Thursday bashing Indiana’s new religious freedom bill, railing against “laws that would allow for business to discriminate against consumers based on certain traits including sexual orientation.”
The Yelp executive didn’t stop with voicing his displeasure, though. He further hinted that he couldn’t see how he could create, maintain, or expand a significant business presence in Indiana or any other state which instituted such policies. In case that requires translation, he’s saying that he will happily punish everyone in the state by removing or intentionally avoiding the creation of jobs. Isn’t that just a positive, helpful message to send?
But if Mr. Stoppelman can’t be associated with businesses which “discriminate” based on certain traits, then one of the core functions of his own business comes into question. Some of the most popular reviews on Yelp are for restaurants, particularly high end ones where diners expect to pay a hefty price but receive top end quality in return. What’s the problem there? Well, many of those eateries have dress codes for the dinner hour and will turn away people who don’t adhere.
Also, restaurants are well within their rights to set a specific dress code and require guests to follow it. If the restaurant is black tie, and you arrive in a t-shirt and jeans, expect them to ignore you. The dress code is considered part of the restaurant’s ambience, and is legally protected. In short, dressing to meet the classification is considered a choice. If you choose to eat at the restaurant, then you must choose to dress appropriately.
But how should we interpret this in the current era of political correctness? If you are turning away those who are not well dressed, they most likely fall into one category of those people of certain traits, specifically those who can’t afford dressy clothes. And in most cities, which people are most likely to be economically disadvantaged? Minorities! So, by the rule of the transitive property, dress codes are discriminatory against minorities so the restaurant owners are racists. Right? So why does Yelp allow people to write reviews for them?
It’s a categorically stupid argument, but I’ve heard far worse being argued in the name of political correctness. The fact is that the Indiana law is going to wind up being an important milestone for civil liberties no matter which way it goes in the end. We have a situation where activists are claiming that some form of discrimination exists against one subset of people (gays) and are perfectly willing to trample of the rights of another, less politically popular group of people (Christians) if it achieves their long term goals. Passing a law intended to correct this imbalance is setting people’s hair on fire in the usual circles, but it’s going to prove to be an instructive test case.
Beyond all of this, however, I have to feel a bit disappointed that the debate ever had to be constructed as one of religious liberty in the first place. True, the religious liberty aspect of it is an important one and the courts need to speak to it. But underneath it all we’re talking about the freedom of private business owners to conduct their business as they see fit. The hard core libertarian argument which underpins this rests on the fact that a private business can’t actually “discriminate” against you in the same fashion that the government can. For one example, the state can’t pass a law refusing to issue a driver’s license to black motorists. The state holds an absolute monopoly on licenses and the black motorist can’t simply go down the street to Bob’s House of Discount Licenses and get one there.
But a wedding cake is no different than any other food item once you remove the gay marriage element from the equation. Businesses who decide to refuse service to various people will be subject to the same market forces which always apply. If there is a market for any given goods or services and one owner chooses not to capitalize on that market, another will move in to fill the vacuum. If you refuse too many customers you will eventually go out of business, but that’s the nature of the business world. Sadly, the courts stopped defending the idea of free markets in cases where political correctness manages to stick its nose under the edge of the tent many decades ago. But the religious liberty aspect of this case gives it additional legs, so it won’t be batted aside as easily.
I’ve looked hard for a Halal butcher shop here to try and order my Easter ham. So far, no luck.
(we’re not very cosmopolitan here, LOL)
“As a businessman I reserve the absolute right to refuse service to any noob I want.”
And that is among the many rights that it displeases Caesar to tolerate any longer.
That right has become a mere government license that permits you to conduct only approved discrimination.
For now that may include permission from Caesar to refuse service to anyone of dress or behavior you find disruptive....but again only to the extent Caesar or his henchmen/urban mobs permit it. That license may be amended or revoked at anytime.
Even now, demand a bare head or uncovered face and when it becomes widely known, see what happens. Put up signs saying transgender facilities not provided and watch the circus come to your door. Put in it your ads and see how fast it happens.
Soon you may be compelled to provide halal or vegan dishes....or even facilities if you hold yourself out as a commercial house?
The objective of the left in all this is not rights for any given group. Group is used to storm group, and in its turn will be destroyed until only Caesar and his mob remains.
In declining order of focused hate on the left’s list for liquidation right now: masculines, whites, Christians, Jews, traditionalists in any form, rurals, free thinkers.
The more subsets you overlap or support, the sooner you will feel the heavy hand of Caesar.
As so often said at FR.
Resist.
The odds don’t matter anymore.
Jeremy is coming across as a real drama queen.
Consider a Gay baker and a Christian caterer in the same town in Indiana..
So the Gay baker is getting married an goes the Christian says I want you to to cater my wedding.. and the Christian declines saying I'll cater other events for you but I just don't do gay marriages it's against my religious beliefs...
the left is outraged and say that should be against the law and should be able to sue the Christian caterer
But now reveres it..the Christian caterer says I want to get just a cake for dinner from the gay Baker ...but the gay Baker says... I will not provide services to you for any thing because I don't like your politics and I'm boycotting doing any services till you change... which is what the left is doing right now with Indiana and they cheer..... how is it different ?..
.... In fact who discriminating more.. the Christian is not demanding the Gay man change...he is willing to do business with Gay.. he just won't service the one function..a gay wedding...
but the Gay man is demanding the Christian man change else he will not do any business with him and provide no services at all unless christian man changes his mind
Not true, for several reasons:
1) it is a high-pressure, perfection-requiring item. As proof of that, bakers usually charge more for a wedding cake than a more ordinary party cake.
2) It is a custom item. Spouses-to-be usually have specfic ideas that they want to have expressed. We still have First Amendment freedom of expression in this country. If an artist does not believe he or she can do the best work because of the sentiment expressed, such as a Ku Klux Klan cake, an NRA cake, an alcohol-infused cake, a porno cake, a DNC victory cake or a gay wedding cake, they should have the right to decline if they don't agree with the sentiment involved.
3) A wedding cake usually requires the chef to enter the premises and set up the cake. Setting up a cake that would disturb the baker's sincerely held religious beliefs would require having his/her truck with its logo parked outside, implying endorsement, and would also coerce expose of baker to many others who may also want a gay wedding cake, also implying endorsement.
In short, it's not a pre-made, pre-packaged standard item like a sheet cake from the grocery on which you can write "Happy Birthday" with your own tube of grocery store icing. It is a custom work of artisanship in which the baker has to invest greater skill, time and delivery effort than standard. Artisans such as bakers, photographers, florists and even tailors and dressmakers should not have to use their specialized skills except by mutual consent with the prospective customer.
If we don't require kosher and halal butchers to butcher pork in order to stay in business, there is not reason to compel anyone else to violate their religious beliefs about marriage.
Thanks for that link. Once my car broke down out of town. The AAA driver recommended a gas station that did repairs. I went for it and we dropped off the car. That night I checked the place on Yelp. All negative reviews. Next day the car was fixed and I mentioned the reviews to the owner. She laughed and said the day after she told Yelp she would pay them no more, her reviews went to hell.
Radical, militant homosexuals will fight like crazed animals at any threat to their gains. They will not sit by for a second at the smallest threat because they know it is a house of cards waiting to fall. They will mobilize every ally they have in the media and politics to fight with them and it will be a bloody mess before it ends. Kudos to Indiana, they have the fortitude that my own state of Georgia does not have.
Why would ANYBODY eat a cake that they had FORCED someone to bake for them......talk about brainless!!!!!
If we don’t require kosher and halal butchers to butcher pork in order to stay in business, there is not reason to compel anyone else to violate their religious beliefs about marriage.
Great point.
I checked some reviews by them a while back for hotels in Hawthorn, NV. I actually ended up staying in the one with the worst reviews because I’d heard of their douchebaggery. A sweet little old Indian couple owned it and it was $40/night. It was for sure “70’s” era design and décor, but everything worked and it was clean.
Stoppelman would reply that a trait is different than your choice of clothes since it’s something you are rather than something you do. The problem with his argument is that a person’s sexual orientation is known to others strictly by their behavior. So when people judge gays, it’s not a “trait” that they’re judging, it’s behavior — which people have a legitimate right to do. This is different than race which truly is a trait.
I might even consider its being a ‘70s time warp a bonus. More interesting than a cookie cutter chain motel.
If Yelp can’t list a business based on products and services offered then they should find another line of work. I wonder what percentage of his customers are from fly over “Clinger” country? The guy is trying to be a bully jackass.
As long as the sheets have been changed some time in the past 30+ years ;’)
Hang on for a tick.
Cake makers are forced to make gay cakes.
This guy must be held to that same standard.
“This guy must be held to that same standard.”
Since he has bad mouthed a whole state I think all of his paying customers in IN are due some recompense.
Keeping and bearing a firearm is a real civil right and those of us who are CCW permitees are sick and tired of states not recognizing our inalienable rights. I don’t see how I could create, maintain, or expand a significant business presence in states like New York and New Jersey that are hostile to my exercise of that right.
Fair is fair, except for one thing: the core issue with supporters of gay rights is support of same sex marriage. This is a “right” without any foundation in human history. In fact, since the dawn of human history, it has been considered an abomination.
Marriage is a covenant defined by God, not a contract defined by man and thus able to be regulated by man’s governments.
Because too many government officials are now hostile to how God defines marriage, government is being used to force me to recognize and even enable “marriage” that God tells me is morally repulsive. Just as we have a separation of church and state, we must now have a separation of marriage and state. When marriage is a private matter, then anyone can enter into any manner of relationship they please, but they cannot use government to impose their definition on others.
There is a restaurant in the SF Bay Area that has figured a way around Yelp’s game. They openly ask their customers to categorize their Yelp reviews as negative, but then post a positive review (if the customer is so inclined) under the low star (or whatever Yelp uses) rating. Apparently Yelp’s algorithms can’t get around this, at least not yet.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.