People have the right to discriminate based on most things of their whim but not on certain specific things.
The context is in 'wedding' cakes, not cakes of other origin. Wedding cakes are adorned with expressions, symbols and sacraments of matrimony. Such cakes are art forms or expressions of spiritual values. Hence, they are specialized to the occasion and are not subject to coercion, legal or otherwise.
A customer of a cake maker cannot specify to the cake maker what is to be made. That is up to the designer, producer and creator of the cake. A customer can only choose what is offered. For example, a customer cannot demand that a cake be Kosher if it is not offered. A customer cannot demand a musical group play satanic music that hails Satan and condones murder.
And what constitutes an 'offer' in business is subject to the wide interpretation of the producer who may restrict any offering based on religious tradition or artistic inspiration.
Of course there must associate a reasonable basis for restricted offers. For example, refusing to serve a regular meal to a family of African ethnicity, a 'black family' based on the reason they are black is not reasonable in the eyes of any court of law. Refusing to serve a black family or any family or any person a pork sandwich inside a kosher restaurant is reasonable. Even if the kosher restaurant has a separate kitchen for preparation of non-kosher products, it would be unreasonable for any customer to demand that the non-kosher product be prepared in the kosher kitchen.
A Wedding is a religious rite and is therefore protected under the First Amendment and this includes participating producers to the performance and enactment of weddings.
A homosexual group cannot demand and threaten a religious producer to perform that which goes against the tenets of their faith. Laws of civil rights are based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, where:
Terms “because of sex” or “on the basis of sex” include, but are not limited to, because of or on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions; and women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, ...
http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm
Civil rights laws do not include sexual orientation as a type of discrimination that is prohibited by law:
http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/index.cfm
Proposed amendments to civil rights laws to include 'sexual orientation' as a prohibited type of discrimination fail legal tests under first amendment protections.
Well said. Of course an argument for trial.
The analogy which works for me is you couldn’t force any minister to perform the wedding; how can you force someone to make the cake?