“A black man shouldn’t be forced to bake a cake for a KKK party. A Jew shouldn’t be forced to bake a cake for a Nazi shindig. A Muslim shouldn’t be forced to bake a cake with pork. A gay man shouldn’t be forced to bake a cake for a Westboro Baptist Church’s “God hates F@gs” party and a Christian business should not be forced to participate in a gay marriage. For that matter, a Christian shouldn’t be forced to bake a cake for an orgy, a Satanist mass or an atheist meeting either.”
The list of things society forces people to do should probably be pretty short. Cake baking doesn’t seem like a candidate.
Sadly, that boat sailed back in the 60s, when we used the power of the state to force racists to change their ways of doing business.
If a motel owner with sincere religious beliefs against “race-mixing” can be forced to rent a room to an interacial couple, and he has been for 50 years, then the state can compel businessmen to provide services to same-sex weddings.
There are only three real rationales for opposing the extension of this principle, assuming you accept the original law.
1. You disapprove of racism but approve of opposition to homosexuality and/or SSM.
2. Race should be a category protected against discrimination, but sexual orientation should not.
3. Personally participating in an event is different from making accomodations available to all. It implies approval.
#1 won’t logically work.
I agree with #2, but I suspect that boat has sailed, and it isn’t coming back.
Any future resistance I believe will need to be based on #3. Not on 1A’s religious freedom clause, but on its freedom speech clause. Artistic expression such as photography or cake decorating is speech. Freedom of speech requires the right to not speak if you choose not to.
Yet, governments discriminate all the time:
Hobos evicted from public libraries.
Tent cities broken up and dispersed.
I suggest hobos and the homeless proclaim and immunize themselves as homosexual.
>>The list of things society forces people to do should probably be pretty short. Cake baking doesn’t seem like a candidate.
Great line.