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Your answer was basically that nobody cares about religious controversies in Canada, not even Canadians.
It seems that the US is different. We've devoted several pages to talking about what an obscure pizzeria owner in an obscure state said he would hypothetically not do. Nobody was actually refused service in this instance.
I'm sure you could find a Canadian business owner to say he wouldn't serve gays or minorities. But nobody cares. That seems to be the difference, not this philosophical contortion. Although ironically it might be a Christian value to get self righteous and feel we have to lecture others about why their culture is wrong and they should embrace a new belief that will bring salvation.
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On April 08 2015 13:25 OuchyDathurts wrote:
If you're a business that is open to and serves the general public, you serve the general public. You've chosen to make a company that deals with people through a product or service, no one made you start your bakery. You decided to start a bakery, as such you've explicitly decided that you will take public customers in all their forms. Bi, christian, muslim, black, mexican, FLAMING, man, woman, doesn't matter. If you or your religion make it such that you can't deal with people from all walks of life maybe you should go work in a factory or a warehouse or something. Get a job in a position where you don't have to deal with the public at large. But if you want to be an entrepreneur and reap the potential monetary benefits of serving the public, you WILL serve the public. That is the price of admission to play ball.
While I support gay rights and find the current battle between the religious right and the gay community both stupid and appalling, I also recognize that other people than gas also have rights. And this argument that you are forced to serve all groups does not make sense. A barber who sets up his business to cut men's hair is not a bigot when he refuses to cut a woman's hair: it simply isn't his business model. He is explicitly choosing to not cater to half the potential clients, and that's OK.
Similarly, a bakery should be able to choose the events that he caters to. If he feels unequipped to bake a cake for gay weddings, I don't really see the problem. As long as he still bakes birthday cakes for gay people. Or bar mitzvah cakes for children of fay couples. He isn't refusing gays service based on their sexuality.
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On April 08 2015 20:52 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2015 13:25 OuchyDathurts wrote:
If you're a business that is open to and serves the general public, you serve the general public. You've chosen to make a company that deals with people through a product or service, no one made you start your bakery. You decided to start a bakery, as such you've explicitly decided that you will take public customers in all their forms. Bi, christian, muslim, black, mexican, FLAMING, man, woman, doesn't matter. If you or your religion make it such that you can't deal with people from all walks of life maybe you should go work in a factory or a warehouse or something. Get a job in a position where you don't have to deal with the public at large. But if you want to be an entrepreneur and reap the potential monetary benefits of serving the public, you WILL serve the public. That is the price of admission to play ball. While I support gay rights and find the current battle between the religious right and the gay community both stupid and appalling, I also recognize that other people than gas also have rights. And this argument that you are forced to serve all groups does not make sense. A barber who sets up his business to cut men's hair is not a bigot when he refuses to cut a woman's hair: it simply isn't his business model. He is explicitly choosing to not cater to half the potential clients, and that's OK. Similarly, a bakery should be able to choose the events that he caters to. If he feels unequipped to bake a cake for gay weddings, I don't really see the problem. As long as he still bakes birthday cakes for gay people. Or bar mitzvah cakes for children of fay couples. He isn't refusing gays service based on their sexuality.
If u dont see the difference, u re simply blind
A barber might be unequipped to serve women, cuz he didnt train for that, and cutting women's hair is very different then shaving/cutting hair for men, requires different training and style and tools.
Baking a cake for a gay couple and a straight couple is not different, at all, 0%.
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On April 08 2015 20:52 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2015 13:25 OuchyDathurts wrote:
If you're a business that is open to and serves the general public, you serve the general public. You've chosen to make a company that deals with people through a product or service, no one made you start your bakery. You decided to start a bakery, as such you've explicitly decided that you will take public customers in all their forms. Bi, christian, muslim, black, mexican, FLAMING, man, woman, doesn't matter. If you or your religion make it such that you can't deal with people from all walks of life maybe you should go work in a factory or a warehouse or something. Get a job in a position where you don't have to deal with the public at large. But if you want to be an entrepreneur and reap the potential monetary benefits of serving the public, you WILL serve the public. That is the price of admission to play ball. While I support gay rights and find the current battle between the religious right and the gay community both stupid and appalling, I also recognize that other people than gas also have rights. And this argument that you are forced to serve all groups does not make sense. A barber who sets up his business to cut men's hair is not a bigot when he refuses to cut a woman's hair: it simply isn't his business model. He is explicitly choosing to not cater to half the potential clients, and that's OK. Similarly, a bakery should be able to choose the events that he caters to. If he feels unequipped to bake a cake for gay weddings, I don't really see the problem. As long as he still bakes birthday cakes for gay people. Or bar mitzvah cakes for children of fay couples. He isn't refusing gays service based on their sexuality.
If a barber said "I don't serve woman" he'd get the shit sued out of him so fast his head would spin. He could make a case for being a terrible candidate to cut women's hair. I don't keep up with the styles, I've only used a buzz clipper for 40 years, but if you're dead set on me cutting your hair sure, but it's going to look like shit.
If you want to exclude members of the public what you're going to want is a private club.
Also how is one unequipped for a gay cake? Could you explain how a baker just doesn't have the ingredients, or means, or technology to make a cake for gays? Maybe it takes some super special expensive frosting or something.
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On April 08 2015 21:24 OuchyDathurts wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2015 20:52 Acrofales wrote:On April 08 2015 13:25 OuchyDathurts wrote:
If you're a business that is open to and serves the general public, you serve the general public. You've chosen to make a company that deals with people through a product or service, no one made you start your bakery. You decided to start a bakery, as such you've explicitly decided that you will take public customers in all their forms. Bi, christian, muslim, black, mexican, FLAMING, man, woman, doesn't matter. If you or your religion make it such that you can't deal with people from all walks of life maybe you should go work in a factory or a warehouse or something. Get a job in a position where you don't have to deal with the public at large. But if you want to be an entrepreneur and reap the potential monetary benefits of serving the public, you WILL serve the public. That is the price of admission to play ball. While I support gay rights and find the current battle between the religious right and the gay community both stupid and appalling, I also recognize that other people than gas also have rights. And this argument that you are forced to serve all groups does not make sense. A barber who sets up his business to cut men's hair is not a bigot when he refuses to cut a woman's hair: it simply isn't his business model. He is explicitly choosing to not cater to half the potential clients, and that's OK. Similarly, a bakery should be able to choose the events that he caters to. If he feels unequipped to bake a cake for gay weddings, I don't really see the problem. As long as he still bakes birthday cakes for gay people. Or bar mitzvah cakes for children of fay couples. He isn't refusing gays service based on their sexuality. If a barber said "I don't serve woman" he'd get the shit sued out of him so fast his head would spin. He could make a case for being a terrible candidate to cut women's hair. I don't keep up with the styles, I've only used a buzz clipper for 40 years, but if you're dead set on me cutting your hair sure, but it's going to look like shit. If you want to exclude members of the public what you're going to want is a private club. Also how is one unequipped for a gay cake? Could you explain how a baker just doesn't have the ingredients, or means, or technology to make a cake for gays? Maybe it takes some super special expensive frosting or something.
Lets face it, a barber will generally not refuse to cut women's hair. He will just say he only knows men's styles. But I refuse to believe that an orthodox jewish barber who is by religion not allowed to touch women other than his family, will get sued for refusing to cut a woman's hair categorically.
Similarly, the baker in question is dumb from a legal/business perspective and should never frame it like that, but should instead just not be available for whatever dates they picked. As for unequipped I think you could make an argument that the baker takes pride in making the best cakes he can and he can only do that through feeling really motivated about the event. He is simply not motivated by a gay wedding, and while he could bake a cake, he feels incapable of baking a cake that is up to his own rigorous quality standards because of this lack of motivational fervor.
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Well, there would be a slight difference between a gay wedding cake and a straight one, at least if you talk about one of these ginormous monstrosities with small figurines on top of it. Possibly a baker doesn't have a double Husband/double Wife set of those figurines?
Of course this is utterly irrelevant to the discussion, just a small observation.
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Let’s face it, if the cake baker said “I don’t bake cakes for interracial marriages because its against my religion” we wouldn’t even be having this discussion today because we would know the person is just a racist. But you can bet similar discussions were had in 1967 about businesses refusing to serve interracial couples. There just wasn’t an internet to bring all the attention to a baker and pizza place.
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WASHINGTON — A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder on Tuesday after a video surfaced showing him shooting in the back and killing an apparently unarmed black man while the man ran away.
The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, said he had feared for his life because the man had taken his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man, Walter L. Scott, 50, fled. The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening.
The shooting came on the heels of high-profile instances of police officers’ using lethal force in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere. The deaths have set off a national debate over whether the police are too quick to use force, particularly in cases involving black men.
source
Law enforcement in this country requires immediate, radical and comprehensive reform. An unnecessary loss of life committed by a man sworn to protect and serve.
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On April 08 2015 17:19 WolfintheSheep wrote:The US has always struck me as caught in some limbo between wanting Freedom of Religion and separation of church and state, while still trying to be an outspoken Christian nation. So, unsurprisingly, talk of wanting "more religious freedom" usually comes across as Christians wanting the country to be more outspokenly Christian. Comparatively, attitudes toward religion in Canada seems much more laid back. We're still a primarily Christian nation at about 67-33 (though not nearly as Protestant as the US), but the dividing lines you have don't seem to be nearly as prevalent. I mean, there was some minor push like a decade and a half ago to make our national anthem gender neutral and to remove references to God. I think the general public opinion was basically "who the fuck cares". And British Columbia is like a statistical anomaly among the Provinces and Territories, with about equal numbers of Christians and non-Religious people, and like half of the country's population of Buddhists and Sikhs. And, for the most part, no one steps on any toes...at least, not on a level that reaches politics. So, you want more religious freedom? That's cool...provided you know what that actually looks like.
As well as a nation juxtaposed between inalienable human rights and the systematic degradation of those rights by those sworn to uphold them.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
the only acceptable foundation here is a conception of positive right to same level of service and also a formal requirement of nondiscrimination in the criteria for providing service. only regulating at the level of facial or purposeive discrimination will still be blind to actual facts of discrimination. formal focus is rather ill founded becuase of the lack of the correct conception of rights at issue. particularly only positive rights can represent social outcomes.
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In an ideal world the market would prove that discriminatory practices do not make for good business. But given that this no-name pizza place has now raised a million dollars for being discriminatory, so much for that. It's clear the market isn't good enough on its own.
But it's an interesting issue, nonetheless. People keep using bakeries as the example for gay weddings, but what about photographers? This is the example I feel conservatives should be using. The baker doesn't have to be there in the thick of this event he "fundamentally disagrees" with, but the photographer does. Also, if you, as a photographer, are fundamentally opposed to gay marriage, do you think you could do a good job photographing a gay wedding? Would you be able to capture the emotions and moments that the couple want you to capture?
But ultimately this comes back to my reasoning for why churches should be able to refuse to perform gay weddings: 1) I don't know why a gay couple would want to patronize an establishment that openly abhors their way of life, and 2) There are other ways to get the things you want, and 3) Do you really think they will do a good job if their heart isn't in it and you are forcing them to?
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re: zasz
churches can already refuse to perform gay weddings, because freedom of religion.
as to your point 3, if they're professionals, then they should be able to. That's part of being a professional.
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And growing up in a town of 900 people, it would only take a couple businesses refusing to serve a gay couple to make life very difficult. The law doesn't protect against just weddings, it protects against any religious objection someone feels is reason to refuse service. Like “I don’t want to go into their house or interact with them” or “serve/sell them food.”
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On April 08 2015 13:19 wei2coolman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2015 13:15 oneofthem wrote:
there's a reason why civil rights laws specify the relevant groups/characteristics qualifying for protection, or cannot be used for differential treatment.
is your haunted house resident a race, gender, religion etc?
these particular kinds of prejudices are politically deemed to be unjustified.
if your particular scenario becomes widespread enough and the haunted way of life is in need of protection for equal rights, then maybe we can get that term added onto our laws. Like I said, the law they're trying to introduce is stupidly framed around religious freedom, when it should have just been framed around a business's freedom to choose their clientele.
Which is the crux of why your argument is stupid, and I'm frankly baffled at why this hasn't come up yet. Businesses still have the right to refuse service to black people, or gay people, or any other group. They just can't be open to the public. That's how country clubs in the south kept the blacks out, and it would work equally well for gay people. People just don't discriminate like that because it's bad for business.
On April 09 2015 00:10 Plansix wrote:
And growing up in a town of 900 people, it would only take a couple businesses refusing to serve a gay couple to make life very difficult. The law doesn't protect against just weddings, it protects against any religious objection someone feels is reason to refuse service. Like “I don’t want to go into their house or interact with them” or “serve/sell them food.”
Or administering CPR, or surgery, or birthing a child.
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On April 09 2015 00:04 zlefin wrote:
re: zasz
churches can already refuse to perform gay weddings, because freedom of religion.
as to your point 3, if they're professionals, then they should be able to. That's part of being a professional.
I don't know if you're operating in the ideal world rather than the real world, but not all professionals are professional. I will admit that for most services, you do not need to "agree" with gay marriage in order to serve someone a pizza or bake them a cake.
But I think photography is an interesting exception. If you're the sort of person that would refuse to work a gay wedding, if you were allowed to, but are instead forced to photograph it, I think it would be a real struggle to capture the moments that they would want you to capture. Which loops back on why on earth a gay couple would want that photographer for their wedding, but I digress.
But this pizzeria is proof that the free market isn't capable of solving this problem on its own, we do need anti-discrimination measures. And "freedom of religion" should not give license to discriminate, that's a freedom you don't get regardless of your personal beliefs. Sorry Christians.
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A similar but less politically charged controversy over conflicting First Amendment rights is the question of when bands have too controversial a name.
Interesting that Oberlin College did cancel a concert by the band Viet Cong amid complaints by Vietnamese Americans that their families had suffered tremendously at the hands of the real Viet Cong. The band issued a public apology, saying they were naive and not aware of the human costs of the war. It's unclear if they plan to change their name.
Or to fit it into the current issues, if the band Black Pussy wants a bakery to write their name on a cake and the owner refuses, is that a bad thing? They've been less responsive to complaints about their band name.
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On April 09 2015 00:40 coverpunch wrote:A similar but less politically charged controversy over conflicting First Amendment rights is the question of when bands have too controversial a name.Interesting that Oberlin College did cancel a concert by the band Viet Cong amid complaints by Vietnamese Americans that their families had suffered tremendously at the hands of the real Viet Cong. The band issued a public apology, saying they were naive and not aware of the human costs of the war. It's unclear if they plan to change their name. Or to fit it into the current issues, if the band Black Pussy wants a bakery to write their name on a cake and the owner refuses, is that a bad thing? They've been less responsive to complaints about their band name.
Well that band isn't a protected group/class based on their name. Being denied service due to the offensive name for your band is not equal to being denied service for being black or gay.
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On April 08 2015 20:14 coverpunch wrote:
Your answer was basically that nobody cares about religious controversies in Canada, not even Canadians.
It seems that the US is different. We've devoted several pages to talking about what an obscure pizzeria owner in an obscure state said he would hypothetically not do. Nobody was actually refused service in this instance.
I'm sure you could find a Canadian business owner to say he wouldn't serve gays or minorities. But nobody cares. That seems to be the difference, not this philosophical contortion. Although ironically it might be a Christian value to get self righteous and feel we have to lecture others about why their culture is wrong and they should embrace a new belief that will bring salvation.
We're a nation of busybodies for damn sure.
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United States2611 Posts
On April 09 2015 00:24 ZasZ. wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2015 00:04 zlefin wrote:
re: zasz
churches can already refuse to perform gay weddings, because freedom of religion.
as to your point 3, if they're professionals, then they should be able to. That's part of being a professional. I don't know if you're operating in the ideal world rather than the real world, but not all professionals are professional. I will admit that for most services, you do not need to "agree" with gay marriage in order to serve someone a pizza or bake them a cake. But I think photography is an interesting exception. If you're the sort of person that would refuse to work a gay wedding, if you were allowed to, but are instead forced to photograph it, I think it would be a real struggle to capture the moments that they would want you to capture. Which loops back on why on earth a gay couple would want that photographer for their wedding, but I digress. But this pizzeria is proof that the free market isn't capable of solving this problem on its own, we do need anti-discrimination measures. And "freedom of religion" should not give license to discriminate, that's a freedom you don't get regardless of your personal beliefs. Sorry Christians.
Not sure I agree. Had they not been turned into martyrs, they never would've made a million dollars on GoFundMe.
If you want to crush a bigoted business, making them a martyr for other bigots doesn't seem like a good idea to me. And yet that's exactly what the media circus did.
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EPT
