Write it in frosting, please
by Greg Krehbiel on 4 February 2013
Bakery Denies Same-Sex Couple Wedding Cake
If somebody opens a bakery, are they required to write anything you want on a cake? Clearly not, I would say. Nobody could compel you to write something evil or hateful on a cake. But where do you draw the line?
According to the article, “The Oregon Equality Act was enacted in 2007 and prohibits public accommodations, including businesses, from discriminating against people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.”
That seems to make it clear that the bakery can’t refuse to bake the couple a cake for their event, whether it violates their moral views or not. If you choose to offer a public accommodation in Oregon, you can’t discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation.
But how far does that go? Refusing to bake a cake is one thing. Refusing to bake a wedding cake might be another matter, since that is now a form of speech.
As an illustration — and this is not meant to offend anyone who believes in same-sex marriage, it’s just to make the point — imagine the man-boy love association came into the bakery and asked for a “wedding cake” for a man and a 10-year old boy, with the words “pederasty is beautiful” written on the top. Could they refuse that?
-- 2013-02-04 » Greg Krehbiel
5 February 2013 @ 12:37 pm
There seems to be two things that are overlooked in a situation like this…
1. Discrimination (using the term in the modern/racial sense) is not WHAT you refuse to produce as a company, it’s WHO you refuse to do business with. If the gay couple was refused a birthday cake, that’s discrimination. But as long as the straight mother of the bride was also refused a gay-wedding cake, then no group of people is being discriminated against. The company is just refusing to sell a certain product.
2. In order to have a free society, we need to be very, very, VERY careful in what we limit in free enterprise in the name of discrimination. There are certain things, so fundamental to our existence that it makes sense to limit freedom to ensure fairness, like the availability of housing where we have very strict anti-discrimination laws with good reason, but we as a society have crossed the line into arenas that are bound to result in the sort of conflicts in this article, and quite stupidly.
5 February 2013 @ 1:05 pm
Ken, I guess the argument is that it’s a “wedding” cake, and a wedding cake is just a wedding cake, but they’re refusing to do it for certain people’s “weddings,” so the discrimination is against the people.
The buried assumption that we’re not allowed to challenge is that a gay wedding is actually the same event as a real wedding. We’re neither allowed to challenge it as a matter of legal principle, nor even to hold it as a private belief informing our consciences, in this matter.
5 February 2013 @ 2:10 pm
The point I was trying to make is that it’s one thing to refuse to fix a gay person’s muffler or to sell him a house, but it’s another thing to refuse to participate in a message — e.g., print a t-shirt, make a bumper sticker, etc.
It seems to me that something like a wedding cake is somewhere in between those two.
5 February 2013 @ 6:57 pm
if nambla wants to actually show themselves in court … so be it. i’d refuse the cake.
6 February 2013 @ 5:11 pm
That’s a good point pentamom… I hadn’t thought of it that way. So yet again it comes down to the fundamental question of whether there is something unique about marriage.