We have previously discussed (here and here) the growing conflicts over businesses that decline to accommodate same-sex weddings and events in a clash between anti-discrimination and free speech (and free exercise) values. Despite my support for gay rights and same-sex marriage, I have previously written that anti-discrimination laws are threatening the free exercise of religion. Some of these cases involve bakeries that insist that making wedding cakes for same-sex couples violates their religious principles. Now we have a twist on this trending litigation. The Azucar Bakey has been found to have broken discrimination laws by refusing to make an anti-same-sex cake. The bakery was asked to make a Bible-shaped cake with an anti-gay slur and owner Marjorie Silva refused. The customer brought a complaint to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and won.
The customer wanted the bakery to draw two males holding hands with “a big ‘X’ on them.”
Silva identifies herself as a practicing Christian and makes Christian cakes, but balked at making an anti-gay cake at her Lakewood bakery in December 2013. Previously in Colorado, Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips broke discrimination laws when he refused to make a cake for the same-sex wedding of Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig in July of 2012. That decision was upheld by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
Now we have the flip side. Silva offered to leave the bible page blank to allow the customer (who she describes as disruptive) to write whatever he wanted but she declined to write it herself. Ironically, she could have simply refused to serve him on the basis for any disruption in the store. She was later sent a notice by the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) that a religious discrimination complaint has been filed against Azucar Bakery. She has since received a notice from DORA requesting a final letter describing her account of events.
The question raised by these cases is whether anti-discrimination laws are driving too deeply into free speech rights. Bakers and photographers view themselves as engaged in a form of speech generally. The loss of a bright-line defining free speech has meant that we are finding ourselves increasingly on a slippery slope of speech regulation. On the other hand, we fought hard to guarantee accommodation for all races in places of public accommodation. Stores are not allowed to ban black customers under the same rationale. The question is whether there is a difference between refusing to serve customers on the basis for sexual orientation generally as opposed to taking an active or direct role in a same-sex wedding.
Where do you think we should draw the line?
Source: KDVR
Chip S….of course, you are correct in that statement. My problem is that I can never really do it if it violates my personal principles.
Darren…I sort of agree with you, …e.g., “business is business”, but with reservations. I’d not build an oil rag woven wooden cross for the local wackos for their perverse celebrations (which I have witnessed) nor would I make a cake for people who are obviously trying to set me up by demanding a slur. Wouldn’t get that far with me…I’d have phsyicalyl removed the idiots from my premises. No one has a right to demand I create slurs. I no longer give a rat’s tinker dang about gay issues, but I would draw the line at the incest described in an earlier post…I suggest we form a department of “Deserved Butt Kicking” for those people. I have way too much time breeding horses and dogs or dealing with the process to ever think that was a sound idea, let alone legal for humans to abuse each other like they do animals with in-breeding.
As a young man-boy (18 years of age) I made my first road trip through the south…and what I saw I admit stunned me for my naiveté … and I have never forgotten it. Between Memphis and Pompano Beach I saw overt racial discrimination and I then vowed I’d never participate in any form…even against gays, who I had several as friends at the time (1960’s). Of course, the LBGT community has over reached now, but it was to be expected. Doesn’t mean I will participate either way. I will remain me. I retain the values I held as that man-boy of 1961. And I am not the lest ashamed of it. Fact is, those values saved my life at times in a place far away…when I first encountered real terrorism and its effects. I was able to trust those who might otherwise have hated me, with some justification based on their prior experience with westerners.
Pray f’ing tell me, just what is it that is wanted?
Obedience to the state. The more ridiculous the regulations, the more one must adapt one’s thinking to accept the primacy of the state over one’s own moral instincts.
Jeff SIlberman said: I have a right to know whether I am soliciting a business whose business practices are an affront to my conscience.
No. You do not have that right.
You are proposing that a business owner should have to post a long litanny of things that he or she believes in or doesn’t believe in that “might” be an affront to someone’s conscience. This would be a never ending list since people seem to have an unending ability to be affronted lately.
What if I am offended by a person keeping a pet of any kind and consider that animal slavery? Does the business owner need to post that they own dogs or cats?
How about if my offense-o-meter pegs at someone who likes to use rubber restraints and bondage gear in three way multi gender hook ups? I think the owner should post that since my tender sensibilities might be triggered and the offense-o-meter will be pegged into the red zone.
In your world everyone should post their religion on their business door front, just in case I am affronted by Mormons or Muslims. Right? Maybe a nice bright yellow star for the Jewish merchants….hmmmmm?
In addition to being an invasion of the privacy of the business owner, your suggested practice would expose them to potential harm and retaliation from people who are prejudiced and affronted.
BTW..I am NOT criticizing the posting of these odd stories…I encourage it so we can see just inane we are becoming. Cakes? Pretty women? And we, or others, have time to find fault. Especially in a case that refused to advocate for base bigotry? Pray f’ing tell me, just what is it that is wanted?
… Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) …
Avoiding my usual epistle, for this one I’d simply say the fact such an agency that regulates other regulatory agencies, is the problem. KISS principle and all that. Sort of like our Department of Homeland Security (lifted from Orwell?) …. rather than a chief executive simply exercising their legal power to direct agency actions, they create a buffer agency to do so (convenient for de rigueur dodges, etc.) …one that produces precisely zero for the populace? Will this never end?
PS: I am moved by this issue exactly the same as I am by the post on beauty contestants being investigated for association, however slight, with another contestant due to what is defined as political correctness by ugly old jerks in government. I am both ugly and old, but no longer in government. It drove me mad it appears. How dare I not advocate for more regulatory regulatory regulatory (redundancy intended) oversight? By anyone but the populace and the voters. Ha ha, ho ho, they’re coming to take me away, ho ho….
“Ain’t no way “Congratulations Steve and Steve” is discriminatory to anyone.”
Well, except to the baker who doesn’t want to print it.
Just think of this ruling as mandating access to free speech.
Just like the ACA mandates access to free contraceptives.
Chip – just got back from one of my doctors where I had to fill out ‘more’ paperwork because of the ‘government.’ Even though I complained that nothing had changed they were not going to treat me until I filled everything out. I did get the down to filling in only the necessities.
I thank God for the day that Obama was elected President!!!
Is refusing to make a cake with a discriminatory message (“I don’t bake cakes that contain discriminatory messages.”) really the same as refusing to make a cake as a discriminatory statement (“I don’t bake wedding cakes for gay marriages.”)? I would say no. Ain’t no way “Congratulations Steve and Steve” is discriminatory to anyone.
Nick,
But if you call a leftist a leftist, they say you’re name-calling.
This is crazy. To the greatest extent possible, people should be allowed to live their lives as they choose. They should not be allowed to kill/harm other people or destroy property but beyond that, leave us the hell alone. Political correctness is a cancer.
PC Playbook
If someone says their religion says that gay marriage is a sin, smirk and call them “HOMOPHOBE!”
if someone says one should have an ID to vote, scowl and yell, “RAAACIST!”
If someone uses the phrase Islamic terrorists, frown and call them “Islamaphobe.”
And, the playbook is working folks.
Seems to me it is not much different then asking the baker to use profanirty in the cake. Would he not have a right to refuse to do so?
If it is against his conscience it is against his conscience and as much as I abhor that the baker refused a gay couple it is their right to do so but the analogy of could they turn away a black customer, or a black baker a whoite customer based on race, (or Asian, India, etc) does seem apt. It is not as Pogo wants and likes to make it a “leftie” thing it is a question of where can, and should, the line be drawn? Do we want to return to per civil rights days where it was legal to force a black person to stand in the back of the bus, or actively discriminate against those whose race, religion, sexuality we don’t like.?
Goodridge, read together with Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 207, §§ 1 and 2, means that in Massachusetts a man can marry his brother. New York enacted legislation in 2011 allowing same-sex marriage. As a result, two brothers can marry in New York. N.Y. Dom. Rel. Law § 5.
An “X” is not indicative of a slur, is simply a statement, a vote of reasoned thought as to not support a the message that ‘brother to brother marriage’ would send to children.
So we come to the issue of Prejudice, you have before you an issue, not of politics, not of subjective feelings, but one of Prejudice, one of Justice – So we ask you – which child does the constitution allow to be prejudiced by the people so governed by the constitution – a constitution that presumably allows the elderly and infertile to marry in order to protect the civil rights of the child they may be raising – –
from the related same-sex pair: or
from the unrelated same-sex pair ?
May you not place and “X” upon the former and also the latter . . .
“There is a big difference between being asked to make a cake and being asked to include a anti gay slur. This was a set up pure and simple.”
Let’s flip this and see if the other side works…
There is a big difference between being asked to make a cake and being asked to bake a cake for gays when it’s against the owners’ religious beliefs.. That was a set up pure and simple.
Yep, it seems that both statements are valid. Hmmm.. Imagine that.
There is a difference between not selling a normal wedding cake based on the participants in the wedding and making a cake containing a slur against any person or group. In the former case, the baker may need to put “John and Jon” or “Joan and Jane” instead of “John and Jane” on the cake, but that should be insignificant. However, if a potential customer desires to put “John and Jon” are “______________” (pick your choice of slurs – there are enough to choose from) on a cake, the baker would need to place that expressive slur. That may be considered outside the normal business practices of that bakery and such expressions may be refused. However, if the bakery routinely makes cakes saying “pagans go the h*ll”, maybe the outcome is different.
With regard to posting signs, I recall in the 60’s seeing signs in restaurants that the “management reserves the right to refuse service to anyone.” Of course, “anyone” referred to blacks. Signs do not absolve a commercial establishment from following discrimination laws.
I agree that the bakery should have made the cake, charged double, and delivered it in a plain box that did not identify the bakery.
@ Jeff, I would respectfully debate the issue, but I first demand to know what you like, don’t like, support, are against, etc. by your reasoning where does privacy begin and end?
Ah, payback is a bitch.
Jeff’s solution of putting up a sigh “We don’t Do Gay Weddings” is precious. That is a target sign for the Gay Mafia. And, “Gay Mafia” is a term gay people use w/ pride.
Pogo, Your point about how PC can effect your medical/scientific refusal to prescribe estrogen to a man is sobering. PC stifles debate and speech. The Gay Mafia have perfected this. Free speech maybe should apply for endangered status.