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Comment by brodouevencode | Hacker News Reader

As a Christian I appreciate the bulk of this perspective. We can disagree (and probably do) about a lot of things all day long, but the second either of us attempts to coerce the other into doing something under threat of law (force) the line has been crossed.

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I want to be very clear about my prospective here.

If I walk into your restaurant and you refuse to serve me for lunch because I was gay. That is no ok. Me being gay has nothing to do with you serving me lunch. I don't care about your beliefs.

If I were to ask you to cater my wedding, thats a different story since you are actively partaking in something. I am fine with that.

I just really want to make sure that this is not misconstrued.

I agree with you. I think that you'll find most Christian business owners will not turn away any customer based on their features or lifestyle until they are put into the position of active participation. By forcing someone to bake a cake for a gay wedding then you're asking them to participate (some may even call this "support") in a lifestyle of which they disagree. Also not okay.

> If I walk into your restaurant and you refuse to serve me for lunch because I was gay. That is no ok. Me being gay has nothing to do with you serving me lunch. I don't care about your beliefs.

Why not? Cooking is as much of an art as baking a cake and ergo they should have the right to deny serving you food under their right to free expression.

This is literally the exact argument that has been used in both of these cases. Well, except in this case the site was literally made up and the supreme court fell for a fake case with zero standing.

> Why not? Cooking is as much of an art as baking a cake and ergo they should have the right to deny serving you food under their right to free expression.

Except it wasn't.

If you know the cake case, they ruled that there was nothing wrong because they offered to sell them an off the shelf cake, they just refused to write a message they didn't support.

> 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.[0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

Yes, I know. The crux of the case is that the cakeshop wanted to discriminate on basis of religious belief and attempted to argue this via a line of bullshit that the Supreme Court bought. The argument was that writing on said cake was a violation of their right to free expression.

> Yes, I know.

Then why are you making up facts of the case to try and pretend it's going to lead to restaurants banning gay people?

There's a level of nuance that some just aren't able to comprehend.

Because I was making the argument that cooking involves free expression, ergo they can kick you out if they don't want to serve you food. This isn't hard to understand and should be obvious given that the rhetoric over this line of argument has been increasingly common. See: the literal case we're discussing here which is based around made up standing.

Cooking may be an art in one sense of the word, but it generally does not communicate a message. Neither does an off-the-shelf cake from a bakery. A custom wedding cake iced with a message, however, is protected speech.

> Me being gay has nothing to do with you serving me lunch

"allowing you to dine in my restaurant is normalization and tacit support of homosexual lifestyles, so i will not serve you."

"giving you medical aid means i have to come in contact with you, so you'll need to find someone else."

what happens when your bank no longer wants to support gay communities and closes your account? when your bus driver is homophobic and doesn't want gay people on their bus?

There's a difference between artistic work and standard commerce. You can't blanket ban people from your business because of their gender identity/orientation. Just like the cake case, they couldn't deny selling a cake to them but they could deny custom designing one, or writing a message that they disagreed with.

Same situation here, they can refuse to custom design a website, but can't refuse off the shelf work because of their gender/orientation.

I dunno. A out of people were upset when they were forced to serve black people too, but I’m pretty sure that was a good idea.

Except that there was never a Biblical reason as to not serve other races, which was the beauty of MLK's whole point.

They can just start a new religion. It's been done.

They're called cults and do not represent Christianity in any way.

> They're called cults

It doesn't matter what you call them, it just matters whether the Supreme Court protects them.

> do not represent Christianity in any way

Hence the phrase "a new religion".

Well fuck, if some old book makes the rules for who we can discriminate against, I guess that makes it okay!

I'm also a christian and this whole thing is very clearly intended to enable oppression and harm to already marginalized groups. Supporting this decision is to spit in the face of christ.

> Supporting this decision is to spit in the face of christ

Please justify this claim

No thank you maybe talk to your own priest about it if you have concerns about your spiritual conduct.

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