Supreme Court sides with web designer who refuses to do gay wedding sites...

I get what you are saying. I'd bet 99+% of people who are affected by this live in urban areas where they have the ability to take their business elsewhere. All I'm saying is that forcing a business to cater to a customer that they don't want in the first place seems like a bad deal for the customer.

 

No it doesn’t.

 

Legalized bigotry.

 

Well, do we have a colorblind society or not? That was the assertion in the Affirmative Action case.

Civil Rights laws means bigots can eff off. Pretty simple. Why even crack the door?

I’ve seen some arguing that free markets in our “colorblind society” would dictate that bigoted businesses cannot exist because they would fail under market forces. Basically some high brow legal and economic theorizing about how far we’ve come compared to early 20th century. But what if in some areas these businesses can exist, and they DO discriminate. So we inevitably see “no colored” signs in windows. No gays. No Muslims. Is that the way you think America should operate anywhere in its borders in the 21st century?

Seems like a risky move to let the free markets re-litigate past evils under the (likely false) assumption they can’t exist in our time. I actually do believe the people most giddy about these decisions not only aren’t colorblind, they can’t wait to figure out how to leverage it! In a colorblind society there would be nothing to get excited about, nothing gained or lost.

 

SCOTUS on a roll.

 

Is there a line between the customer being a protected class and the services they want rendered? IF a gay couple wanted a website that did not go against the creators religious beliefs would he/she have balked at making it? If not then is he discriminating against the gay couple or is he refusing to create something that violates his beliefs?.

 

I don't suspect that this dialogue would be very fruitful. Just to clarify, I am not disputing that the briefing and the legal analysis approached the case as if it were free speech case. I'm talking about the subjective motivation of those that created the controversy and manufactured the Supreme Court case. For them it had nothing to do free speech. And in fact it doesn't, even if it's briefed and analyzed that way. It was just a legal crook to get a ruling that can be employed to create second-class citizenry for a "favored minority", a gaslighting term

 

All the people screaming for “equality” in the affirmative action thread are suddenly okay with this. LOL!

 

It changes nothing for me. If I learn that an establishment decides to hate on gays by refusing their biz for example, I’d probably stop doing biz there.

 

It depends.

Actual content is a grey area. I can definitely imagine circumstances where there is a violation of speech. I just don’t accept “I refuse to serve gays” as acceptable pretext. The Supreme Court pre-empted that fact set by litigating a hoax case.

 

Hmmm…there have been several fairly recent posts of different restaurants refusing to serve police officers and most of you had no problem with it. In fact, most seemed to support the establishments denying service but yet in this case are critical of this business refusing to work with gay couples.

First, I think it is ridiculous from a business standpoint to walk away from any paying customer but it is that company’s right to do so. Second, I’m sure there are many web designers in every part of the country that would be happy to work with gays so why not just move on and take your business elsewhere?

 

Not sure that is relatable… weren’t those simply cashiers who made their own call, not a store policy?

 

Maybe so. And if we are looking at the issue solely on its impact on two individuals on either side of the transaction (setting aside for one moment that one may be a corporation), that probably makes sense.

But there is also the issue of stigma and society as whole. Law is a message, a societal norm.

When you say that marriage is a core institution/building block of society, but is tainted by the participation of certain citizens, you are stigmatizing them and essentially arguing that they undermine society. When you say that it is a violation of conscience for otherwise open access public business to provide those same services to one discrete group of citizens, a right to refuse which you separately protect as a national policy, you are essentially communicating that one group of citizens is deserving of a special stigma, that they are outside of the normal fabric of society, not simply regular citizens like the rest of us.

Most egregiously, though somewhat outside the realm of this debate, when you say that certain citizens are especially dangerous to children, you are emitting perhaps the ultimate libel. Not to make this about personal anecdote, as anecdata is a cheap argument, so discount accordingly, but this is one area where I can relate, even though I am pretty conventional gender conforming, Elon's epithet cis. My wife is a trained CCD catechist, ran Catholic religious education for many institutions. At an old parish, some Opus Dei types tried to get her ousted because they said she was a Democrat (true), so she should not teach children because Democrats supported abortion rights. The issue was not part of anything taught. So nothing about anything she said or did, just who she was. But they still said they thought it was dangerous for their children to be taught by her. Said it was just their core beliefs.

It feels very personal and insulting for someone to tell you that they perceive you as a threat to their children just because of who you are, not anything you did.

 

And I don’t remember that there were a lot of people that thought this was okay.

 

What if a Baptist woman wants a cake that says minister

 

I don’t think that will happen since Christian’s don’t go around yelling “look at me, I’m a Christian”.

And to top it off, I don’t want to do business with anyone that hates me for what I believe.

 

I though you lived on the Florida beaches, not in Dubai

 

This post is sad. As you've noted in your postings recently, "you're better than this."

 

Moved to Lithia Florida in April. Got tired of red tide, hurricanes, and flood insurance.

Got out while the getting out was good. Made a significant amount of money on the move.