| All this hair-splitting belongs in the gov't arena. A private business can do whatever the heck they want. Freedom of choice is no freedom from consequences, right? LOL |
| "Christian" bakeries and other businesses should self-identify so people with a genuine moral compass can avoid them. |
Can they refuse black people? Obviously not. Did you miss the entire civil rights movement? |
We could use Yelp. |
Selling cake is not a religious activity. Marrying people is, and it's really clear that the right of clergy to choose who they marry is constitutionally protected. |
Participating in the marriage by creating a custom cake for the wedding is. The bakers served these same people in their bakery before with no issues. Why do you think they were targeted? |
THANK YOU. You're not protected from having to sell your goods and services to gay people. Cake-selling isn't a fundamental tenet of any religion that I know of. Are they "participating" in divorce by making cakes for second (or third or fourth) marriages? Common sense, people. |
They weren't refusing to serve gay people. They were refusing a to enter into a contract for a specific type of event. |
Gay wedding are not people. They are events. |
Why are you such a hateful person? |
What's a bit strange is that I can't imagine that the gays would want to do business with someone who didn't think that their wedding was going to be the most marvelous, absolutely fabulous event ever!!!!! |
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Remembering that it is not so long since being gay was a crime, as it still is in many places in the world, we have made so much progress that I don't see it as a major sacrifice to go easy on those bakers and similar business people who serve gays, but find it hard to participate directly in gay wedding ceremonies.
There are still states that have no anti-discrimination laws at all about gays, so this narrow class of situations seems to me to be a silly place to draw the battle lines, rather than putting full energy where general anti-gay discrimination is still legal. I do understand the argument that allowing discrimination of any sort encourages discrimination -- but I disagree with that argument in this particular case, because I think there are people of good will whose sympathy is being lost. |
| Every business, bat, restaurant has the right to refuse service and many have this posted. If Roman Catholic organizations are granted the right NOT to pay for birth control or abortion them this bakery also had the right to refuse to sell cakes to a same sex marriages. The rights of gays, lesbians to marry do not trump the right of churches to refuse the marry them or bakeries and other service businesses from refusing to do business with them. |
| So someone clarify this....if selling a cake to a gay couple for a wedding is "participating", why isn't selling a gun to a murder "participating" in the murder? |
Doh! |