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[Phoenix RISING]

Yall want an opportunity to discuss and debate a topic rife with nuance? This is it.





Read the summary of the ruling in full here.

I've spend most of the morning trying to figure out what "narrow" means when the vote was 7-2. That is because SCOTUS scuttled, on the grounds that the Colorado Commission basically did not take the baker, Jack Phillips', faith seriously, by using non-neutral language in the original ruling:

On July 25, 2014, the Commission met again. This meeting, too, was conducted in public and on the record. On this occasion another commissioner made specific reference to the previous meeting’s discussion but said far more to disparage Phillips’ beliefs. The commissioner stated:

“I would also like to reiterate what we said in the hearing or the last meeting. Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the holocaust, whether it be—I mean, we—we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to—to use their religion to hurt others.” Tr. 11–12.

To describe a man’s faith as “one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use” is to disparage his religion in at least two distinct ways: by describing it as despicable, and also by characterizing it as merely rhetori- 14 MASTERPIECE CAKESHOP, LTD. v. COLORADO CIVIL RIGHTS COMM’N Opinion of the Court cal—something insubstantial and even insincere. The commissioner even went so far as to compare Phillips’ invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust. This sentiment is inappropriate for a Commission charged with the solemn responsibility of fair and neutral enforcement of Colorado’s antidiscrimination law—a law that protects discrimination on the basis of religion as well as sexual orientation.

That single line might have damned the whole thing. SCOTUS did not rule if Phillips' refusal of service was constitutional or not, because the Colorado Commission, to put it bluntly, "inserted its feelings into facts."

So, this is an interesting case (literally) where one might make the argument that the civil liberty of a person does not supersede the civil liberty of another. What is at odds is that gays in Colorado are a protected class. And we know that the first amendment states that the government shall not interfere with a citizen's religious practice.

If you read the ruling, this case may very well be exceptional, as Phillips appears to be genuinely devout, as opposed to, say, using "clobber scriptures" or "Bible-thumping" and other denigrating language. If he were a representative of Westboro, for example, he might have been sent packing.

Lastly, this ruling ironically less kicks off the first full week in Pride Month.

 

[Agent_Carnage]

How was it a narrow vote if it was 7-2 vote? That is pretty lopsided vote. I kinda expected it to be 5-4 but this vote isnt strictly along party lines..

 

[NickFire]

Narrow in this context means the decision is not likely to be cited as binding precedent in the future. It is possible of course, but without reading the entire opinion I believe it would only really be binding precedent if a hearing officer was blatantly expressing anti-religious beliefs while weighing the rights of religious objectors with the rights of a different protected class. In short, the snippets I read suggest the SC basically just affirmed that religious freedom remains protected, that states are entitled to include sexual orientation as a legitimate protected class, and that it will be another day before anyone decides which right is superior. I think you could make an educated guess that religion will always have the upper hand because of the express restriction on infringement via the constitution (as opposed to judicial construction or statute), but that will only ring true when the religious objection is fundamental to what is being objected to.

 

[yet_another_alt]

Narrow in scope.

 

[Keylime]

Why do I get the feeling that if someone's religious beliefs consisted of hating even more heinous things that they wouldn't really be upheld?

Like at what point is a religious belief something that is respected and when is it not?

 

[NickFire]

Why do I get the feeling that if someone's religious beliefs consisted of hating even more heinous things that they wouldn't really be upheld?

Like at what point is a religious belief something that is respected and when is it not?

I think when the religious belief is sincere and actually relevant. For instance - if you sell paperclips, cars, homes, etc., or if you cut grass, serve food, manage money, etc., then your religious beliefs have no relevance. But if you paint pictures, or do other expressive things where your views are actually part of your services, then religious beliefs cannot be trumped by state statutes that protect other classes.

 

[infinitys_7th]

I think when the religious belief is sincere and actually relevant. For instance - if you sell paperclips, cars, homes, etc., or if you cut grass, serve food, manage money, etc., then your religious beliefs have no relevance. But if you paint pictures, or do other expressive things where your views are actually part of your services, then religious beliefs cannot be trumped by state statutes that protect other classes.

This sounds like a "I know it when I see it"-style of reasoning. I think practically any service could be viewed as an art depending on how it is carried out.

Take something like programming - there is a personal art to it as much as there is to painting.

 

[camelCase]

Good ruling, court shouldn't be able to force someone to make s cake with anything on it. I'm surprised so many people are looking st this as a bad thing.

 

[NickFire]

This sounds like a "I know it when I see it"-style of reasoning. I think practically any service could be viewed as an art depending on how it is carried out.

Take something like programming - there is a personal art to it as much as there is to painting.

Kinda yeah. That is how the law works sometimes. I could search for other examples, but that's just too much work when I'm agreeing with someone.

 

[NickFire]

Good ruling, court shouldn't be able to force someone to make s cake with anything on it. I'm surprised so many people are looking st this as a bad thing.

I agree the ruling is good, but disagree that you cannot ever force someone to make a cake with something on it. Let's take the example of a large grocery store baker. The are most likely just run of the mill corporate employees who follow the store's policies and standards. They most likely have fixed options that they are allowed to offer in terms of cake style, and probably have design choices set by the store as well. Their artistic expression is almost certainly limited by store policy. So if someone asks for a store's standard cake with congratulations to the husband and husband written on it, I believe it would most likely be discrimination to refuse. I would agree for someone like the man in this case, but a corporate baker like I described would not have the same defense IMO.

 

[Derekloffin]

This case still annoys me as there is one key detail which I have never been able to get, was there anything particular about this desired cake for the gay wedding? To me that is the point of distinction. If you want service X would be provided to others but isn't to in this case due to the requester being of group Y, then it is definitely discrimination, but if the requester is asking for some variant on X particular to them, it is no longer the same service. So for instance, if you're running a T-Shirt shop that specially makes up Shirts with slogans, you couldn't say to a gay man they can't buy the same shirt you'd sell to a straight man, but if the T-shirt requested was custom and you wouldn't provide it to anyone on religious grounds, then it isn't discrimination against the person, but rather the message. Unfortunately, that key distinction I've never gotten a clear answer to in this case.

 

[Blood Borne]

Beautiful!

The fact that this was even a case is awful and terrifying. I mean, how the hell can you force someone to do something against their will. That's just tyranny.

I mean, can one go to a Muslim t-shirt maker and tell him to print a shirt that says "Fuck the Prophet". What kind of precedence were these people trying to establish.

 

[WaterAstro]

Yeah lol narrow 7-2. That's quite the tweet. Here's what I wrote in the other thread.

What I took from that article is that the baker was being aggressed on, so the aggressors will be at fault. Religious beliefs must also be protected, especially if the religious person in question remains passive.

If I remember the original article correctly, the baker had declined and offered other kinds of cakes. No hate of any kind, just trying to follow his beliefs.

 

[TheShadowLord]

I don't think I will ever understand what this case is about, but I kinda want to see more of it in the future as part of a social experiment.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

Why do I get the feeling that if someone's religious beliefs consisted of hating even more heinous things that they wouldn't really be upheld?

Like at what point is a religious belief something that is respected and when is it not?

The thing is, the same issue of drawing a line of judgment between acceptable and extreme exists on the other side of this case as well. If a couple engaged in a niche BDSM community comes in and asks for a cake to celebrate her public humiliation as his submissive -- with her bound in a collar and gagged -- for a strictly legal niche event, the Colorado commission would probably have left the cake shop's refusal alone and said, okay we get that you have a right to not service something you find so distasteful.

The point is that there are always content judgments in these cases, despite any protests that it is a mere matter of neutral equality; as in Obergefell, which pretended at times to be a strictly procedural ruling (eg "this is unfair because unequal") but which clearly leaned on implicit elevation of "normal committed homosexual relationships" over many other legally excluded possibilities (sibling marriage, multiple partner marriage, immediate remarriages within timeframes that states legally impose as cooling period after divorce, etc etc) that the law forbids equally and with purely moral evaluations behind those prohibitions. It was little more than an aesthetic decision showing Kennedy's belonging to a particular class and his commitment emotionally to its social judgments about where to reasonably draw the line, masquerading as neutral procedural law. And I say this having read many on even the progressive / left side who recognize how astonishingly lacking all the legal reasoning was in his decision (most of it resting on muddy nonsense like discerning a psychological "animus" behind views) -- more than any in recent court memory.

The point is, there really is no neutral standpoint on these matters and never has been; even having marriage at all as a part of our public structure means making a moral judgment about the specific public good that the legal distinction of this relationship from all other human interactions serves. My apologies to Rawlsians who actually believe law can be generated purely via a secular and presupposition-free game of equalization.

This case still annoys me as there is one key detail which I have never been able to get, was there anything particular about this desired cake for the gay wedding? To me that is the point of distinction. If you want service X would be provided to others but isn't to in this case due to the requester being of group Y, then it is definitely discrimination, but if the requester is asking for some variant on X particular to them, it is no longer the same service.

Read the consenting opinion by Gorsuch in the full court document, just a few pages in. He makes the case clearly that this distinction does not apply here: when it concerns a wedding cake (which the gay couple themselves openly said was being commissioned "to celebrate their wedding"), the cake is itself a ceremonial element rather than a mere piece of food. Gorsuch says that it's rather absurd to deny that being paid to create any wedding cake -- even without a message -- is anything less than endorsing the ceremonial event for which this cake is to be a major centerpiece.

Gorsuch further makes an amusing quip to point out that the Colorado commission was using a "goldilocks standard" to insist that the cake signals the event of a wedding (this is crucial to their treatment of it as a strike to the couple's dignity) but that it somehow doesn't signal a same-sex wedding inherently. So they're not treating it as mere flour and ingredients (this is "too little"), but also refusing to accept that it inherently signals a very specific kind of same-sex ceremony (this is "too much"), and instead insisting that it be considered a neutral, yet emotionally important wedding cake that just happens to be attached to a gay couple (this is "just right" for their case). This is foggy reasoning imposed again, used to force a certain reading of the event in advance.

 

[Ke0]

Beautiful!

The fact that this was even a case is awful and terrifying. I mean, how the hell can you force someone to do something against their will. That's just tyranny

Well technically your government has "forced" people/states to do many things throughout the course of your country's history no?

 

[Phoenix RISING]

I don't think I will ever understand what this case is about, but I kinda want to see more of it in the future as part of a social experiment.

Gay rights against religious freedom.

 

[TheMikado]

This was actually an excellent ruling. Personal opinions of individuals' faith have no place in the court of law.

 

[Super Mario]

This was nothing more than a militant LGBT attack to say their rights supersedes everyone else's rights. I'm actually surprised by this ruling. Even more surprised by the Liberal justices decision.

 

[Future]

Don’t have a strong opinion about this one. I don’t know enough about the law when it comes to exactly when and how you can refuse services. I generally feel that if a company refuses to be inclusive in things like this, the potential public backlash is often enough to correct things rather than getting the law involved.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

Why do I get the feeling that if someone's religious beliefs consisted of hating even more heinous things that they wouldn't really be upheld?

Like at what point is a religious belief something that is respected and when is it not?

Like no murdering I take it. I hope that stays illegal even if we can't keep people from slaying it. Slaying.

 

[LegendOfKage]

I agree the ruling is good, but disagree that you cannot ever force someone to make a cake with something on it. Let's take the example of a large grocery store baker. The are most likely just run of the mill corporate employees who follow the store's policies and standards. They most likely have fixed options that they are allowed to offer in terms of cake style, and probably have design choices set by the store as well. Their artistic expression is almost certainly limited by store policy. So if someone asks for a store's standard cake with congratulations to the husband and husband written on it, I believe it would most likely be discrimination to refuse. I would agree for someone like the man in this case, but a corporate baker like I described would not have the same defense IMO.

I agree. If the Walmart bakery asks you to make a gay wedding cake, and you don't wish to do so, you need to find another job. If you own the bakery, that should be your decision to make. It kind of goes back to what I said about this topic a month or so ago, when I posted the following:

This goes back to the slippery slope situation where people pushing for reform either underestimate the effect it would have on those opposed to it, or knowingly lie because they don't care.

I do support gay marriage, but I also remember before it was legal people would say things like "what do you care who gets married? You don't have to like it. It's not like it affects you. It only will matter to gay people."

And then we got gay marriage, and that quickly changed to "oh, you WILL design a cake for this marriage!" and "Well, I guess if your religion is opposed to gay marriage, you're just going to have to give up your job as someone who issues marriage licences."

Now I do fully believe that if your religion conflicts with serving a gay marriage licence itself, social change has just put you out of a job. I'm fine with that, otherwise you could never have gay marriage in the first place. If not that, maybe you hire an assistant clerk to process them. But if we accept the baker situation, we're largely saying "despite religion and sexual orientation being protected classes in America, if the two conflict, sexual orientation wins" And if that precedent is set, how far are we away from the government telling a church that refusing to marry someone is illegal?

The point is, anyone pushing for a change is going to undersell the effect it will have on those opposed to the change. This isn't a partisan situation, either. Anyone on the right will be happy to also undersell proposed change.

 

[Panda1]

Its almost as if religions and marriage have no place government ! Or a decent society

 

[pramod]

This is why this country is falling apart. Where will it end? So if I'm an artist and some one wants me to draw images of gay men having sex, I can't say no? What if it's images of decapitated heads?

 

[Blood Borne]

Gay rights against religious freedom.

There are no rights involved here. No one should have the right to force someone to do something against their will.

Leftists label everything a right and use the force of the goverment to violate other people's inalienable rights.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Amazed and encouraged they got this right.

 

[jadedm17]

Don’t have a strong opinion about this one. I don’t know enough about the law when it comes to exactly when and how you can refuse services. I generally feel that if a company refuses to be inclusive in things like this, the potential public backlash is often enough to correct things rather than getting the law involved.

My exact thoughts on the thread years back of the restaurant having trouble with black people to the point they'd put "No black people" on their door : You're losing money from black people and people like me who aren't black but don't want to financially support a business that does that.

I also recognize we need lines and my views of thinking everything would correct itself in a similar way probably wouldn't work as well as I think.

It's their business, if in a world where more money is the goal they want to turn down money then so be it, that's my personal thought.

 

[Manus]

Great ruling. That's what is so nice about owning your own private business. Good on the courts.

 

[Da-Kid]

You went through all of this instead of just getting your cake made somewhere else. Christ...

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

You went through all of this instead of just getting your cake made somewhere else. Christ...

Don't post this on twitter

"That is not the point omg homophobe!"

 

[isual]

if people say "i agree with the decision", does that make them homophobic ?

 

[ZehDon]

Interesting decision; I appreciate they highlighted the fact that the baker wasn’t given fair treatment by the appropriate authority, effectively tainting the case and forcing their hand a little. I didn’t realise the bakers position had literally been compared to the holocaust, though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised: everything is “literally hitler” these days.

 

[WaterAstro]

I took a look at the other community and... holy geez, such a contrast to us lol.

I really hope that instead of seeking lawsuits and whatever, people will just go to other services. It's better for it to be "you don't bother us, we don't bother you" type of deal.

 

[Zog]

I do support gay marriage, but I also remember before it was legal people would say things like "what do you care who gets married? You don't have to like it. It's not like it affects you. It only will matter to gay people."

And then we got gay marriage, and that quickly changed to "oh, you WILL design a cake for this marriage!" and "Well, I guess if your religion is opposed to gay marriage, you're just going to have to give up your job as someone who issues marriage licences."

Well after they trick you into getting your support by saying 'it won't affect you so please don't fight us on this' and they get what they want, they will call you a bigot for not agreeing with their lifestyle.

As for this ruling, it had to go this way. Imagine the craziness if it didn't. People going into a bakery and requesting a 'Happy Abortion Day' cake just because they can and that's just one example.

 

[Bolivar687]

1) This case really shows the sorry state of American governance. You have a case with massive implications on free speech, the free exercise of religion, and the legitimacy of state and local public accommodations antidiscrimination laws - and they punt it down the field.

2) This case mainly served to emphasize one of Kennedy's main takeaways from Obergefell: just because same sex marriage is now the law of the land, doesn't mean you get to rub shit in the face of Christians for it. The Kagan/Breyer concurrence seems to make this point explicit and it's a shorter part of the published opinion, so I encourage others to read it. It kind of flies in the face of the "guilty until proven innocent" outrage culture, when someone doesn't fall in line with the narrative and they get pounced upon for their apostasy. There's a tendency to look at genuinely-held religious principals and toss them aside to call "bullshit, you're just a bigot" and Colorado's statements to this effect are ultimately what doomed their case. This aspect also touches on the paradox that the more widely-accepted homosexuality becomes, the more Constitutional protections we have to afford to traditional views as they become an alleged minority. I always assumed Kennedy was only hanging around for this case - to add one final contribution to his philosophical swing-vote musings of his federally-mandated family law. I hope so, because the sooner the Supreme Court gets back to actual jurisprudence, the better.

3) When we do, we're eventually going to need to rethink our entire antidiscrimnation framework and how it more broadly relates to federalism. We originally stretched the Commerce Clause beyond its reasonable application because American racism really is that extraordinary of a problem - it was hard-coded into our social DNA with the way the Founders failed to confront slavery. We just didn't go far enough to solve the problem of anti-black public accommodations discrimination, as it really should have been an amendment to the Constitution and not merely a federal law. We took an unstable shortcut and now every advocacy group wants to exploit that same shortcut for every instance of mistreatment. This is what it really means for our institutions to be in jeopardy, because we just don't have a Constitutional framework to handle these issues and judges really are just pulling this stuff out of their asses. It's why, in Kennedy's long line of reproductive rights and LGBT cases, he's citing to things like "the mystery of human life" and not any actual provisions of the Constitution. It's the return to the fictional theocracy that the outrageists are always screeching about, but celebrate when it goes in their favor. We can't continue down this path of contentious issues being resolved without appeal on the federal stage, by the passing feelings of unelected judges, according to when they were appointed by whoever the electoral college made President within the right timeframe. This just isn't the way our Constitutional Republic was designed to work.

 

[hammysaurusrex]

I can understand the ruling, I get why both sides were frustrated with the situation but also why the court decided not to set precedent. It sounds like the commission really screwed up.

It was his bakery. As others have pointed out, I'd be more concerned if some cake maker at a typical chain grocery tried to pull this stunt and then argue they couldn't be terminated because of their religious beliefs.

Regardless, these days the problem kind of fixes itself - if you run a discriminatory business there are potential financial consequences from advocacy groups. Agree or disagree with individual campaigns, it's perfectly fair in a capitalist society. No one is owed a successful business.

 

[Oner]

I am not a practicing religious person (I'm more of an agnostic or a non religious theist) but I do agree that a company has the right to choose who/what business they feel they can serve. Then let the market place decide. If you are blatantly $#@!!^ towards the public or customers than THEY have the right to not spend their money there and the company will be held accountable by the public at large...BUT to have the government step in and actually/specifically force private entities to do something, then that is where I have an absolute problem. Other than that I find it funny how in the SCOTUS example there are those that are offended with this specific bakery but when another situation is shown there is nothing but silence ~

 

[Dunki]

Gay rights against religious freedom.

Is it? It is not your right to get a wedding cake. Honestly he explained why he did not wanted to do it and even offered a compromise. He was never against gay people he just could not betray his own blieves

A normal person would then have moved on but in times of outrage and Social Media Mobs they went crazy about it so the bakery even got a ton of threets from so called progressive people.

 

[llien]

Gay rights against religious freedom.

Pretty much (I'd call it "against religious rights").
Curious that religion won.

 

[Phoenix RISING]

1) This case really shows the sorry state of American governance. You have a case with massive implications on free speech, the free exercise of religion, and the legitimacy of state and local public accommodations antidiscrimination laws - and they punt it down the field.

2) This case mainly served to emphasize one of Kennedy's main takeaways from Obergefell: just because same sex marriage is now the law of the land, doesn't mean you get to rub shit in the face of Christians for it. The Kagan/Breyer concurrence seems to make this point explicit and it's a shorter part of the published opinion, so I encourage others to read it. It kind of flies in the face of the "guilty until proven innocent" outrage culture, when someone doesn't fall in line with the narrative and they get pounced upon for their apostasy. There's a tendency to look at genuinely-held religious principals and toss them aside to call "bullshit, you're just a bigot" and Colorado's statements to this effect are ultimately what doomed their case. This aspect also touches on the paradox that the more widely-accepted homosexuality becomes, the more Constitutional protections we have to afford to traditional views as they become an alleged minority. I always assumed Kennedy was only hanging around for this case - to add one final contribution to his philosophical swing-vote musings of his federally-mandated family law. I hope so, because the sooner the Supreme Court gets back to actual jurisprudence, the better.

3) When we do, we're eventually going to need to rethink our entire antidiscrimnation framework and how it more broadly relates to federalism. We originally stretched the Commerce Clause beyond its reasonable application because American racism really is that extraordinary of a problem - it was hard-coded into our social DNA with the way the Founders failed to confront slavery. We just didn't go far enough to solve the problem of anti-black public accommodations discrimination, as it really should have been an amendment to the Constitution and not merely a federal law. We took an unstable shortcut and now every advocacy group wants to exploit that same shortcut for every instance of mistreatment. This is what it really means for our institutions to be in jeopardy, because we just don't have a Constitutional framework to handle these issues and judges really are just pulling this stuff out of their asses. It's why, in Kennedy's long line of reproductive rights and LGBT cases, he's citing to things like "the mystery of human life" and not any actual provisions of the Constitution. It's the return to the fictional theocracy that the outrageists are always screeching about, but celebrate when it goes in their favor. We can't continue down this path of contentious issues being resolved without appeal on the federal stage, by the passing feelings of unelected judges, according to when they were appointed by whoever the electoral college made President within the right timeframe. This just isn't the way our Constitutional Republic was designed to work.

100% support a revision of the Constitution to be inclusive of women, who didn't have rights, and ethnic minorities, who varied from full citizenship as freemen to 3/4 a person.

There are some things, I believe, that only federal law can amend. For example. The Fair Housing Act extends beyond citizens, and applies to beyond national origin.

With the deaths due to school shootings exceeding fatalities in our military this year, another look at the 2nd amendment would be appropriate.

Article 3 and 4 are worth another look in the post 9/11 world.

And so on.

 

[Dunki]

100% support a revision of the Constitution to be inclusive of women, who didn't have rights, and ethnic minorities, who varied from full citizenship as freemen to 3/4 a person.

There are some things, I believe, that only federal law can amend. For example. The Fair Housing Act extends beyond citizens, and applies to beyond national origin.

With the deaths due to school shootings exceeding fatalities in our military this year, another look at the 2nd amendment would be appropriate.

Article 3 and 4 are worth another look in the post 9/11 world.


And so on.

1. Wait what? Inclusive to women? Did you maybe have slept a bit too long to not know that this already exists?

2. What is a fair housing act? You have the money? Someone want to sell it? There buy a house.

the 2nd Amandment I would gree with but this rest.....

 

[Future]

Is it? It is not your right to get a wedding cake. Honestly he explained why he did not wanted to do it and even offered a compromise. He was never against gay people he just could not betray his own blieves

A normal person would then have moved on but in times of outrage and Social Media Mobs they went crazy about it so the bakery even got a ton of threets from so called progressive people.

Even though I understand the ruling, I think its easy to understand the complexity here. What made this more understandable was that they weren’t discriminating against the people directly because they made it clear they would make any other cake. Just not one for gay marriage

But some gay marriage advocates can see that as harmful as well since gay marriage itself is such a recent topic for change for the positive. For some this could seem like a step back in allowing other rulings in favor of allowing a business to refuse to acknowledge the right for gays to marry by refusing certain services.

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t have enough knowledge of the law to be able to form a real opinion. Would religious freedom allow someone to get away with discriminating against making a cake for other reasons (no interracial wedding cakes, no Christian marrying Muslim cakes, no Jewish / Muslim marriage cakes, etc?).

It feels like the ruling is correct. But it’s a bit callous not to at least understand why some people wouldn’t fully understand where the line is drawn for what people can do in he name of religion. I’m not sure I do either.

As an alternative example of why this confusion exists: Back in the pre civil rights days, “separate but equal” was the law for segregation which seemed to make sense for a lot of people on how to deal with people unable to live and work with each other in a post slavery world. This line of thought invited it’s own type of discrimination and negative results for minorities and eventually was taken out of the equation. Considering how recognizing gay rights is a relatively new phenomenom in the US, and that we currently still allow some debate to exist on whether it’s cool with religious types to openly dismiss it in the name of religion, it’s quite possible that in the future the needle will move again forcing everyone to recognize gay marriage regardless of what used to be cool to believe

 

[Dunki]

Even though I understand the ruling, I think its easy to understand the complexity here. What made this more understandable was that they weren’t discriminating against the people directly because they made it clear they would make any other cake. Just not one for gay marriage

But some gay marriage advocates can see that as harmful as well since gay marriage itself is such a recent topic for change for the positive. For some this could seem like a step back in allowing other rulings in favor of allowing a business to refuse to acknowledge the right for gays to marry by refusing certain services.

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t have enough knowledge of the law to be able to form a real opinion. Would religious freedom allow someone to get away with discriminating against making a cake for other reasons (no interracial wedding cakes, no Christian marrying Muslim cakes, no Jewish / Muslim marriage cakes, etc?).

It feels like the ruling is correct. But it’s a bit callous not to at least understand why some people wouldn’t fully understand where the line is drawn for what people can do in he name of religion. I’m not sure I do either.

As an alternative example of why this confusion exists: Back in the pre civil rights days, “separate but equal” was the law for segregation which seemed to make sense for a lot of people on how to deal with people unable to live and work with each other in a post slavery world. This line of thought invited it’s own type of discrimination and negative results for minorities and eventually was taken out of the equation. Considering how recognizing gay rights is a relatively new phenomenom in the US, and that we currently still allow some debate to exist on whether it’s cool with religious types to openly dismiss it in the name of religion, it’s quite possible that in the future the needle will move again forcing everyone to recognize gay marriage regardless of what used to be cool to believe

I think I would be more on the side of the couple but their real dickish beahviour, the mob they did basically put on the bakery so they recieved death threats, threats of arson etc. makes me more agree with the Bakery here. I get that it would be seen as harmful for gay people but acting like they did is not helping at all. Hell If I were the judge I wuld have fined the couple for starting a lynchmob mentality which resulted in threats for the whole bakery.

 

[NickFire]

100% support a revision of the Constitution to be inclusive of women, who didn't have rights, and ethnic minorities, who varied from full citizenship as freemen to 3/4 a person.

There are some things, I believe, that only federal law can amend. For example. The Fair Housing Act extends beyond citizens, and applies to beyond national origin.

With the deaths due to school shootings exceeding fatalities in our military this year, another look at the 2nd amendment would be appropriate.

Article 3 and 4 are worth another look in the post 9/11 world.

And so on.

The constitution has been amended several times via amendments to the bill of rights. All citizens have the same constitutional protections these days. If you want to argue that more rights should be explicitly added which only exist because of judicial construction, that argument would make sense even if people disagreed with it. For example, abortion, right to have counsel paid for by the government, etc. But if you frame it as making it more inclusive for one gender, your message will be lost because it starts off with a very flawed premise.

 

[prag16]

Gay rights against religious freedom.

I know this is a difficult issue. But when in doubt I have to come down on the side of freedom. One person does not have the right to another person's labor. Both sides have to want to enter into the contract.

 

[Trojita]

How was it a narrow vote if it was 7-2 vote? That is pretty lopsided vote. I kinda expected it to be 5-4 but this vote isnt strictly along party lines..

A narrow rule is when the court decides on something specific to this case (only). It isn't supposed to apply as a precedent since this is very specific. They basically kicked the ball down the field by making a decision on the fact of how he wasn't treated fairly by the civil rights commission.

You are thinking of a narrow decision, which is when there is a 5:4 split or close.

 

[WaterAstro]

It's good to see a lot of people here being level-headed about it, but it was disheartening to see the opposite reaction when I was watching Stephen Colbert talk about the issue like it's a crime against LGBT.

Obviously, Colbert has to please his crowd as a late night entertainer, but it's really a shame that media has to do what's popular, and it really shows that supporting LGBT can be because it's following the trend. I don't mean that LGBT is a trend, but for a lot of people, they just want to do what's "in" without thinking about the moral implications.

 

[<+)O Robido O(+>]

they just want to do what's "in" without thinking about the moral implications.

What are the moral implications of supporting the LGBT community?

 

[Phoenix RISING]

I know this is a difficult issue. But when in doubt I have to come down on the side of freedom. One person does not have the right to another person's labor. Both sides have to want to enter into the contract.

I am more concerned with whether or not the federal government is interested in protecting religious practice. I'm not about to go around hollering PERSECUTION or anything, but it oftentimes feel that it's not safe when citing God as my modus operandi.

Ironically, SCOTUS has laid the groundwork to send any kind of Muslim/travel ban packing. I mean, federal judges have been giving pimp-slapping that stuff left and right. But now, it is most certainly doomed.

 

[WaterAstro]

What are the moral implications of supporting the LGBT community?

According to Catholics, it is the issue of sexual morality because sex without giving life is immoral, and this is only the case with marriage because marriage is extremely sacred and basically the foundation of the Catholic belief.

I make that point of it being about marriage because if LGBT members are being unfairly treated in other ways unrelated to marriage, Catholics can support them. For example, you would think LGBT members aren't allowed to go to church, but you would be sorely mistaken because there are men with homosexual tendencies who are devoted Catholics. How is that possible? They just remain chaste for the rest of their lives.