9 ms·

To be clear the cake maker didn’t refuse to bake a cake for gay people. The cake maker refused to bake a cake depicting a gay wedding. Regardless of the prote

To be clear the cake maker didn’t refuse to bake a cake for gay people. 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.

Retric 5y ago
[edit:] The depiction was never discussed, it was about the wedding not the cake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission 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.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  im not following the analogy. What is a black mortgage?
  - Retric 5y ago
    A mortgage to a black person. The point is you can’t reject something that’s a proxy for a protected class. For example only staffing your call center with blonds.
    - nonameiguess 5y ago
      It's probably obvious, but you can do this when you have a legitimate business reason for it. Hooter's is within its rights to hire only women with a DD+. More germanely, a casting director can put out a call for actors only of a specific race.
      - Retric 5y ago
        Yep, which is why I said call center. If the customers can’t see the staff then it’s hard to argue blond hair is anything but a proxy.
    - gmadsen 5y ago
      thats different than the cake though. 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
      - Retric 5y ago
        Only the context was discussed not the details. In other words they could have been trying to order a cake saying “Happy Birthday“ to be used in a wedding for some in joke and the baker wouldn’t have known. 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]
        whiddershins 5y ago
        A straight couple could purchase a cake for a gay wedding. 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.
- cpartq 5y ago
  He made quite beautiful artistic cakes. He offered any other cake than a wedding cake, because other cakes aren't personal. A mortgage is impersonal, this is more like requiring an LGBTQIA+ artist to paint a picture of Trump against their will.
  - Retric 5y ago
    No it was the wedding cake specifically that was rejected without discussing details, they could order other baked goods as long as they where not used as a wedding cake. “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._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
    - alfredochips 5y ago
      Right. They might have wanted a cake with gay symbols on it. But Phillips made his mind when the couple said they wanted a wedding cake for their wedding. It wouldn’t have mattered if it’s a pride flag or an asteroid on the wedding cake.
- luckylion 5y ago
  > A bakery can’t reject an order because it’s for a religious ceremony due to the religion associated with that ceremony. 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"?
  - Retric 5y ago
    Rejection was based on context not content. “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.”
    - xcdfgvd 5y ago
      So if the cake is going to be used during a Satanic human sacrifice ritual, they need to make it?
      - heavyset_go 5y ago
        That might make them accomplices/accessories in a crime if they knew about the human sacrifice, so I'd hope not.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - Retric 5y ago
        Clearly religion isn’t a blanket free pass to do anything, otherwise the baker would have won the case. This is needed as religions do actually prescribe stoning people to death for example. So a symbolic ritual sacrifice is protected, but an actual human sacrifice isn’t.
quonn 5y ago
Does depicting mean that there was some sort of marzipan decoration depicting two men? 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.
- cdot2 5y ago
  Yes
  - Retric 5y ago
    No, the details of the cake where never discussed. “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._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission 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
ufmace 5y ago
That's true, but not even half the story. The couple in question had gone around like a dozen other cake makers who were all fine with making the cake they said they wanted. So why sue that guy? 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.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Rosa Parks was never an ordinary individual who didn't want to sit in the back of the bus. She was an activist who was a chapter secretary of the NAACP ten years before kicking off the Montgomery bus boycott with her actions. The day of her arrest, her NAACP chapter president E.D. Nixon encouraged her to be a plaintiff in the fight against segregation laws that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
  - bnjms 5y ago
    I’m not sure that refutes the point. The couple may be activists but at the time of the event they needed to interview many places before they found what they were looking for. Maybe it’s oppressive but I believe there is a difference between forcing a sole proprietor to make a particular type of cake because they can’t say no for protected class reasons. While the fay community has been similarly oppressed I just don’t see the comparison here as clarifying so much as muddying.
  - ufmace 5y ago
    This is true, as far as I know. I don't think it really means much though. Rosa Parks may have been a professional activist, but there was real and widespread oppression. Nobody had to go looking to find it. It was mandated by the state. 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.
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
jollybean 5y ago
I think the distinction is that the 'cake maker' could not be compelled to use is 'artistical craft' for purposes he didn't want to. 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.
- hypothesis 5y ago
  > AT&T cannot inspect our packets for 'bad words' 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.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    Net Neutrality was tossed by the Trump admin, and Section 230 was written for the protection of business. 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934
otterley 5y ago
This is not so. It wasn’t about the depiction at all. It was the purpose that was the cause for rejection. See Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), section I (1)(a).
Wistar 5y ago
"Craig and Mullins promptly left Masterpiece without discussing with Phillips any of the details of their wedding cake." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colo...
alfredochips 5y ago
Incorrect. The gay couple did not even detail the cake’s design. They said they wanted a cake for “our wedding,” and since Jack Phillips believed homosexuality was a sin, he thought providing any kind of wedding cake would violate his freedom of religion. He did tell them they could get other kinds of cakes, just not a wedding cake, and that includes plain wedding cakes. 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 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.
- whiddershins 5y ago
  He wouldn’t have sold a cake for a gay wedding to a heterosexual couple. So therefore he is not discriminating against the customer, but rather the stated purpose of using the cake.
  - orlandobriskies 5y ago
    Phillips is by definition discriminating, since he makes something (a plain wedding cake) he gives to some people but not others, all because they’re gay. He himself admitted he wouldn’t make wedding cakes of any kind for same-sex weddings. Having intermediaries in the middle is a moot point. If anything, it makes for a stronger case that Phillips also excludes heterosexual people from buying cakes if their purpose is to give it to a homosexual couple for their wedding. (Also, a better comparison would be between the gay couple who visited Phillips’ bakery vs William Jack who visited the other bakeries, since there were no intermediaries here.) As Alfredo said, this isn’t a cake with a rainbow flag; only a plain wedding cake you might find at your local cakery. The other bakeries wouldn’t make a cake containing hateful messages for anybody, so they can’t be discriminating (unless you argue not offering something to all people is discrimination). The difference is that Phillips finds a certain class of people who do weddings sinful and so wouldn’t make the same cake (he sells to others) to them, while the other bakeries find the message of “homosexuality bad” abhorrent and wouldn’t sell a cake with such messages to anybody; they wouldn’t even think of making it.

Retric 5y ago

[edit:] The depiction was never discussed, it was about the wedding not the cake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission 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.

gmadsen 5y ago
im not following the analogy. What is a black mortgage?
- Retric 5y ago
  A mortgage to a black person. The point is you can’t reject something that’s a proxy for a protected class. For example only staffing your call center with blonds.
  - nonameiguess 5y ago
    It's probably obvious, but you can do this when you have a legitimate business reason for it. Hooter's is within its rights to hire only women with a DD+. More germanely, a casting director can put out a call for actors only of a specific race.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Yep, which is why I said call center. If the customers can’t see the staff then it’s hard to argue blond hair is anything but a proxy.
  - gmadsen 5y ago
    thats different than the cake though. 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
    - Retric 5y ago
      Only the context was discussed not the details. In other words they could have been trying to order a cake saying “Happy Birthday“ to be used in a wedding for some in joke and the baker wouldn’t have known. 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]
      - whiddershins 5y ago
        A straight couple could purchase a cake for a gay wedding. 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.
cpartq 5y ago
He made quite beautiful artistic cakes. He offered any other cake than a wedding cake, because other cakes aren't personal. A mortgage is impersonal, this is more like requiring an LGBTQIA+ artist to paint a picture of Trump against their will.
- Retric 5y ago
  No it was the wedding cake specifically that was rejected without discussing details, they could order other baked goods as long as they where not used as a wedding cake. “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._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
  - alfredochips 5y ago
    Right. They might have wanted a cake with gay symbols on it. But Phillips made his mind when the couple said they wanted a wedding cake for their wedding. It wouldn’t have mattered if it’s a pride flag or an asteroid on the wedding cake.
luckylion 5y ago
> A bakery can’t reject an order because it’s for a religious ceremony due to the religion associated with that ceremony. 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"?
- Retric 5y ago
  Rejection was based on context not content. “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.”
  - xcdfgvd 5y ago
    So if the cake is going to be used during a Satanic human sacrifice ritual, they need to make it?
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      That might make them accomplices/accessories in a crime if they knew about the human sacrifice, so I'd hope not.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 5y ago
      Clearly religion isn’t a blanket free pass to do anything, otherwise the baker would have won the case. This is needed as religions do actually prescribe stoning people to death for example. So a symbolic ritual sacrifice is protected, but an actual human sacrifice isn’t.

quonn 5y ago

Does depicting mean that there was some sort of marzipan decoration depicting two men? 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.

cdot2 5y ago
Yes
- Retric 5y ago
  No, the details of the cake where never discussed. “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._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission 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

ufmace 5y ago

That's true, but not even half the story. The couple in question had gone around like a dozen other cake makers who were all fine with making the cake they said they wanted. So why sue that guy? 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.

heavyset_go 5y ago
Rosa Parks was never an ordinary individual who didn't want to sit in the back of the bus. She was an activist who was a chapter secretary of the NAACP ten years before kicking off the Montgomery bus boycott with her actions. The day of her arrest, her NAACP chapter president E.D. Nixon encouraged her to be a plaintiff in the fight against segregation laws that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
- bnjms 5y ago
  I’m not sure that refutes the point. The couple may be activists but at the time of the event they needed to interview many places before they found what they were looking for. Maybe it’s oppressive but I believe there is a difference between forcing a sole proprietor to make a particular type of cake because they can’t say no for protected class reasons. While the fay community has been similarly oppressed I just don’t see the comparison here as clarifying so much as muddying.
- ufmace 5y ago
  This is true, as far as I know. I don't think it really means much though. Rosa Parks may have been a professional activist, but there was real and widespread oppression. Nobody had to go looking to find it. It was mandated by the state. 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.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago

jollybean 5y ago

I think the distinction is that the 'cake maker' could not be compelled to use is 'artistical craft' for purposes he didn't want to. 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.

hypothesis 5y ago
> AT&T cannot inspect our packets for 'bad words' 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.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Net Neutrality was tossed by the Trump admin, and Section 230 was written for the protection of business. 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934

otterley 5y ago

This is not so. It wasn’t about the depiction at all. It was the purpose that was the cause for rejection. See Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), section I (1)(a).

Wistar 5y ago

"Craig and Mullins promptly left Masterpiece without discussing with Phillips any of the details of their wedding cake." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colo...

alfredochips 5y ago

Incorrect. The gay couple did not even detail the cake’s design. They said they wanted a cake for “our wedding,” and since Jack Phillips believed homosexuality was a sin, he thought providing any kind of wedding cake would violate his freedom of religion. He did tell them they could get other kinds of cakes, just not a wedding cake, and that includes plain wedding cakes. 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 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.

whiddershins 5y ago
He wouldn’t have sold a cake for a gay wedding to a heterosexual couple. So therefore he is not discriminating against the customer, but rather the stated purpose of using the cake.
- orlandobriskies 5y ago
  Phillips is by definition discriminating, since he makes something (a plain wedding cake) he gives to some people but not others, all because they’re gay. He himself admitted he wouldn’t make wedding cakes of any kind for same-sex weddings. Having intermediaries in the middle is a moot point. If anything, it makes for a stronger case that Phillips also excludes heterosexual people from buying cakes if their purpose is to give it to a homosexual couple for their wedding. (Also, a better comparison would be between the gay couple who visited Phillips’ bakery vs William Jack who visited the other bakeries, since there were no intermediaries here.) As Alfredo said, this isn’t a cake with a rainbow flag; only a plain wedding cake you might find at your local cakery. The other bakeries wouldn’t make a cake containing hateful messages for anybody, so they can’t be discriminating (unless you argue not offering something to all people is discrimination). The difference is that Phillips finds a certain class of people who do weddings sinful and so wouldn’t make the same cake (he sells to others) to them, while the other bakeries find the message of “homosexuality bad” abhorrent and wouldn’t sell a cake with such messages to anybody; they wouldn’t even think of making it.