The cake maker refused to bake a cake depicting a gay wedding.
Regardless of the protected class status of whoever was ordering it.
People get this wrong all the time about this story.
It's pretty clear, this was never a ordinary couple looking to have a nice wedding. The point of the whole operation was to find somebody who was not sufficiently supportive of them and use the power of the state to crush them.
If you have to go looking for a particular individual to "oppress" you when you've already found plenty of alternatives that work fine, maybe what you're facing isn't in the same ballpark.
Segregation on the basis of individuals belonging to protected classes is illegal, the law makes it very clear.
How would you feel about a "white couples only" restaurant or bakery? What about a "whites only" grocery store? Or a "whites only" mechanic? Do you feel the same way about those as you do with the "straights only" bakery?
People have used their religions to give a pass to discrimination for a long time[1]. Today's scapegoat is gay and trans people, but a few decades ago it was miscegenation. People discriminated against mixed-race couples and said it was a core tenet of their religion[1]:
> Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.
The ACLU has this to say about such cases of discrimination:
> Instances of institutions and individuals claiming a right to discriminate in the name of religion are not new. In the 1960s, we saw objections to laws requiring integration in restaurants because of sincerely held beliefs that God wanted the races to be separate. We saw religiously affiliated universities refuse to admit students who engaged in interracial dating. In those cases, we recognized that requiring integration was not about violating religious liberty; it was about ensuring fairness. It is no different today.
There were plenty of places these people could have chosen to do business with, as well, but that doesn't really matter.
[1] https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=55...
[2] https://www.aclu.org/issues/religious-liberty/using-religion...
As an extreme example, I think everyone agrees that littering is bad. But how would you feel about summary execution for littering? Feels crazy extreme, right? The actual effective punishment for littering is more like people maybe frown at you a little, and maybe if you're super obnoxious about it or do it right in front of a cop, you might get a modest fine. That seems about right to me. I feel like I'm complaining that maybe we shouldn't summarily execute people for littering and everyone's coming back at me with how dare you support the evils of littering.
I don't like any kind of discrimination. If everyone in town is discriminating against some group so hard that they can't go about the ordinary activities of life, that feels like something that needs to be addressed by government action. On the other hand, if one business in a medium-size city doesn't want to serve some group for some reason, and there's a dozen competitors that are fine with that group, maybe it's best to just let it slide from a legal standpoint. Maybe a local soft boycott or something like that.
If you want to ratchet up the severity of the punishment for an act that is vanishingly rare and hasn't really caused anyone that much trouble, consider the possibility that you aren't the good guys anymore.
It was the cake, not the customer.
I guess I am still not cynical enough to have thought of that. So thank you for bringing in new perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora... informing the couple that he did not create wedding cakes for marriages of gay couples owing to his Christian religious beliefs, although the couple could purchase other baked goods in the store. Craig and Mullins promptly left Masterpiece without discussing with Phillips any of the details of their wedding cake. In other words he was unwilling to provide any cake for this purpose regardless of what was shown on it.
The law isn’t that literal for good reason. Put another way saying it’s ok to reject a mortgage because it’s a black mortgage rather than a black applicant is silly. It’s clear in the case the rejection was based on sexual orientation.
A bakery can’t reject an order because it’s for a religious ceremony due to the religion associated with that ceremony. However, it’s likely a bakery could reject being part of any wedding independent of religion or sexual orientation.
Anyway, the same baker is in court over refusing to make birthday cake for transgender woman.
Are you sure about that? Like, a cake depicting human sacrifice to Satan, and your random baker couldn't say "uhm, no, I don't do those"?
“Masterpiece's owner Jack Phillips, who is a Christian, declined their cake request, informing the couple that he did not create wedding cakes for marriages of gay couples owing to his Christian religious beliefs, although the couple could purchase other baked goods in the store. Craig and Mullins promptly left Masterpiece without discussing with Phillips any of the details of their wedding cake.”
So a symbolic ritual sacrifice is protected, but an actual human sacrifice isn’t.
If the bakery would sell a non designed cake to a gay couple, or if they refused a straight couple to make a gay cake, that is different than your example.
To be clear, I'm not sticking up for the bakery, it just doesn't seem like a clear proxy like you are saying
And in context a strait couple can’t have a gay wedding, the difference is inherently gender dependent thus making it a proxy. [edited for clarity]
And the baker wouldn’t have sold it to them.
Therefore the baker is not discriminating against gay people.
The baker won’t sell cakes for gay weddings to anyone, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation.
A mortgage is impersonal, this is more like requiring an LGBTQIA+ artist to paint a picture of Trump against their will.
“Masterpiece's owner Jack Phillips, who is a Christian, declined their cake request, informing the couple that he did not create wedding cakes for marriages of gay couples owing to his Christian religious beliefs, although the couple could purchase other baked goods in the store. Craig and Mullins promptly left Masterpiece without discussing with Phillips any of the details of their wedding cake.“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
Phillips even said, “I’ll make your birthday cakes, shower cakes, sell you cookies and brownies, I just don’t make cakes for same sex weddings.” (Notice the lack of nuance: he wouldn’t make any cake, whether it’s plain or designed.)
You can read more in the opinion of the Supreme Court [1], page 4 (7 on your document viewer).
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf
P.S. A good argument can be made that the Colorado Commission didn’t violate religious neutrality. As Ginsburg outlined in her dissent, Phillips wouldn’t make a wedding cake for any gay couple. So there is a subset of people he discriminates against just because of who they are (gay couples), and another he doesn’t discriminate against. The other bakeries involved that rejected William Jack’s request to make cakes depicting homosexuality as a sin wouldn’t make such a cake for anybody.
To make it easier to understand: Jack Phillips makes plain cakes he gives to one group of people but not another. On the other hand, the other bakeries wouldn’t even make a cake depicting homosexuality as a sin for anyone. So it wouldn’t matter if it’s an atheist or Christian or Muslim. Plus, the very same bakeries made cakes for other Christians and decorated beautiful Bibles, so it’s clear they didn’t find someone’s religion a reason to deny them a cake.
Phillip’s argument might be more convincing if he was asked to, say, design a wedding cake with a rainbow flag. But the gay couple were refused a plain, let alone designed, wedding cake.
So therefore he is not discriminating against the customer, but rather the stated purpose of using the cake.
See Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), section I (1)(a).
i.e. if it was an off-the-shelf cake, there would have been legal problems.
But a 'song writer' I think can't be compelled to write a song in such circumstances.
It's a little bit of a digression though:
For networking - most people agree in total neutrality i.e. AT&T cannot inspect our packets for 'bad words'.
On the other end, for Social Networks, we mostly agree they should probably have the right to moderate on some level according to their own rules. Perhaps we could require some consistency and objectivity or something, but generally speaking, I think we can live with Section 230 there.
The 'big issue' in IT I think has to do with hosting, which is a service one might deem should be 'neutral' - at the same time, companies may not want to host certain content and may be able to demonstrate 'harm' by doing so.
Like Amazon dumping Parler as the threshold / test case, along with this GoDaddy example - which is complicated because on one hand it's 'expression' on the other, there were some very serious and probably illegal things going on there.
In tech, we tend to focus on these social issues, but imagine if 'Brick and Mortar' business started doing this? i.e. UPS refusing to deliver packages? Or the 'Paper Company' refusing to sell inkject cartridges?
For commonly available things, like groceries, probably we can allow discrimination, because after all, someone can just go down the street to the next one, but for products and services which are unique, it really poses a problem.
However much we might not like some groups, we have to be really careful about banning things.
I was under impression that they actually can inspect, but should not be able to deny/degrade or prioritize service based on whatever they might find in one’s packets.
Inspection part is going to be moot if everyone is using encryption though.
What remains is this [1] 1934 Comms. Act.
In the US it's the Wild West and basically money rules on this issue, like the vague laws about land holding and mineral rights on the frontier in the 20th century, power is winning, not so much civility.
I'm not sure that the EU has the right laws, but at least there are clearly measures enacted to protect individuals and to try to create some kind of more rational 'playing field' even at the risk over over regulation.
Maybe we are in an era where only a few things here and there are going to get banned, and we will arrive at a new 'consensus' without intervention, that Parler was taken down isn't the end of the world for free expression ... or it's possible things will only escalate, it's hard to say.
But it's worth considering if hosting platforms might better fall more under the notion of 'carrier' than they would 'internet service' i.e. Section 230.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934
On the other hand, it is clear that heavy handed suppression is not good either, especially when all major platforms do that.
Is it possible to have both alternatives available somehow?
But I like your 'have the cake and eat it too' thinking! ...
I wonder if companies on the margins could be given either the option of Section 230 protections, but then also have an obligation to curate for some things, and to have some kind of 'consistently objective rules' ... or ... take the more 'neutral' approach and wash their hands of everything and be obligated to provide services for 'pretty much anything legal' ... which in this case would be interesting because GoDaddy is looking mostly to avoid populist outrage. If they are legally bound to allow the 'legal site' ... well ... there's little they can do ant the outrage would have be oriented towards the legislators.
My feeling is that both our current Net Neutrality and Section 230 just don't provide very well in the middle ground cases.
For Visa, wasn’t the latest OnlyFan thing that payment networks almost forced them to self-destruct due to some morality rules? That would be a bit too restrictive for “carrier” case I think…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colo...
If so, would it be possible to refuse to make that particular decoration (but make a cake)? Wouldn‘t this kind of be like telling an artist what exactly they have to paint?
I‘m wondering purely from a legal viewpoint, not based on what would be the right thing.
“Masterpiece's owner Jack Phillips, who is a Christian, declined their cake request, informing the couple that he did not create wedding cakes for marriages of gay couples owing to his Christian religious beliefs, although the couple could purchase other baked goods in the store. Craig and Mullins promptly left Masterpiece without discussing with Phillips any of the details of their wedding cake.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
It might actually be 100% legal to reject providing gay themed decorations while providing a cake