STATE'S TREATMENT OF CHRISTIAN BAKER LIKENED TO FASCISM
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to reverse a state court ruling affirming Oregon’s $135,000 fine of the owners of Sweetcakes by Melissa for refusing to violate their religious beliefs and create a cake celebrating same-sex marriage.
The Supreme Court already has ruled in favor of a Colorado baker, Jack Phillips, who refuse the same request, citing the state’s “hostility” to his Christian faith.
Now a friend-of-the-court brief has been filed in support of the request for the high court to reverse the Sweetcakes ruling. It contends the state had a perverse motive in imposing a death sentence on the bakery owned by Melissa and Aaron Klein, which was forced to close.
The government’s intervention, the brief asserts, is “a step on the road to Fascism.”
William J. Olson P.C. filed the brief on behalf of Public Advocate of the United States, Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund, One Nation Under God Foundation and Restoring Liberty Action Committee.
It contends that the “notion of declaring all businesses (and all individuals) to be places of public accommodation has become in vogue in certain states, enacted, inter alia, to cater to the political powerful or politically favored, but it has no common law or even federal antecedent.”
“Such laws place government bureaucrats in operational charge of businesses, imposing the state’s morality on every business owner, while still (nominally) allowing private ownership of the ‘means of production.’ Thus, it is best understood as extreme interventionism – a step on the road to Fascism. Consider how the Oregon Public Accommodation law accords with the description of Fascism offered by scholar Sheldon Richmond, editor of The Freeman.”
Richmond wrote: “As an economic system, fascism is SOCIALISM with a capitalist veneer. … Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners.”
The brief stated: “In its essence, the Oregon law confiscates from individuals and businesses the right to determine with whom they will do business and on what terms. They smack of the type of control that Benito Mussolini described in his 1928 autobiography.”
In it, the dictator wrote: “The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity. The Fascist State with its corporative conception puts men and their possibilities into productive work and interprets for them the duties they have to fulfill.”
“We don’t often tell people they are acting like fascists – unless they
deserve it,” Olson told WND.
Officials in the office of Oregon Gov. Kate Brown declined to respond to a WND request for comment.
WND reported when First Liberty Institute filed a petition to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Kleins.
“Freedom of speech has always included the freedom not to speak the government’s message,” First Liberty President Kelly Shackelford said at the time. “This case can clarify whether speech is truly free if it is government mandated.”
“In this case, the court has the opportunity to resolve perhaps the most critical issue the Masterpiece court left unresolved: whether the government can compel citizens to create a message contrary to their religious beliefs,” the legal team said.
It was the Bureau of Labor and Industries in Oregon that asserted the Kleins violated Oregon’s public accommodations statute when they declined to design and create a wedding cake honoring same-sex marriage.
In addition to the $135,000 penalty for “emotional damages,” the state issued a gag order that prevented the Kleins from talking about their case.
The most recent decision in the Oregon case came from the state Supreme Court , which upheld the order that killed the business.
The Kleins explained to the couple, Rachel Bowman-Cryer and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, that providing a wedding cake would violate their Christian beliefs. But the same-sex pair filed complaints with the Oregon Department of Labor and Industries. The agency investigated and awarded $75,000 in damages to one and $60,000 to the other.
Court records said that then-Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian “made numerous public comments on social media and in media interviews revealing his intent to rule against them.”
“He stated that the Kleins had ‘disobey[ed]’ Oregon law and needed to be ‘rehabilitate[d].'”
The friend-of-the-court filing explains Oregon’s law gives state control over private behavior and grants rights to “politically powerful classes.” It contends the damage award violates the Free Exercise Clause, and there are important federal issues that have not been resolved.
The damages were awarded, the filing explains, despite the duo enjoying an “economic benefit” of being given a cake for only $250 from another baker, whereas Sweetcakes would have charged $600.
It also points out that the state’s agency is both prosecutor and judge in such cases and that those in the agency who participated in the attack on the Kleins were exempt from the “Oregon Code of Judicial Ethics,” because they were not officers of the judicial system.
The state acknowledged the Kleins’ testimony: “Respondents … have been jointly committed to live their lives and operate their business according to their Christian religious convictions. Based on specific passages from the Bible, they have a sincerely held belief that God ‘uniquely and purposefully designed the institution of marriage exclusively as the union of one man and one woman’ and that ‘the Bible forbids us from proclaiming messages or participating in activities contrary to biblical principles, including celebrations or ceremonies for uniting same-sex couples.'”
State officials, however, simply “disregarded” the testimony.
The brief states the case “is an attempt by Oregon to regulate the operation of a small business in ways that many Bible-believing Christians simply cannot obey. It takes the Law of Public Accommodation and expands it in ways that are completely untethered to its long history in common law.”
“The existential threat faced now by Sweetcakes Baker by Melissa is being repeated with increasing frequency by those twenty or so states which have public accommodation laws which operate to morally and religiously subjugate Christians and others who resist homosexual marriage to the demands of the LGBT Agenda. This is a threat to the Freedom of Religion of a great swath of the nation.”
The brief charges, “The threat to the Christian cakemaker in this case is part of a nationwide political, LGBT-led, relentless and well-funded campaign to use government power to coerce individuals and businesses to facilitate, participate in, and celebrate same-sex marriage. And it is part of an effort to destroy the livelihood of those individuals and businesses who stand against the secular tide.”
The Supreme Court, in fact, said in its majority opinion in the 2015 same-sex marriage case that the rights of Christians who believe same-sex marriage to be a sin are fully protected.
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...,“In previous cases, the Supreme Court has decided the “government is not free to compel speech to promote an approved message or discourage a disfavored one, however enlightened either purpose may strike the government,” the filing explained.
The foundation said states in recent years have moved to adopt broad “public accommodations” laws in order to cater to the LGBT population, and because of that, the conflicts with the First Amendment are developing.
In the Klein case, it is the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, that, the PLF explained, has been set up as “judge, jury and executioner,” in applying an extremely broad public accommodations law.
“Broad laws pose a problem for the First Amendment because their very existence can ‘chill the expressive activity of others not before the court.’ Such laws raise the concern that the legislature ‘has created an excessively capacious cloak of administrative and prosecutorial discretion, under which discriminatory enforcement may be hidden,'” it explained.
“This court,” the filing said, “should be vigilant to guard individual liberties against agencies that place policy objectives over the Constitution’s guarantees. Agencies can use fines and other tools to ‘rehabilitate’ businesses … and coerce them to ‘bend to the [agency’s] demand without a fight.'”
But such coercion “presents unique dangers in First Amendment cases. Pressure or threats from government officers impose a chilling effect on free expression.”
The solution?
“This court should grant review to offer clear guidance to state ALJs who decide sensitive First Amendment issues in the first instance. These judges can face strong political pressure when deciding important constitutional questions, and an authoritative holding from this court will help ensure that these difficult cases are solved on principled First Amendment doctrine rather than pressure from state agencies or the public.”
Just days ago, another friend-of-the-court brief filed in the case pointed out that the intervention by Oregon was, “a step on the road to Fascism.”
William J. Olson P.C. filed the brief on behalf of Public Advocate of the United States, Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund, One Nation Under God Foundation and Restoring Liberty Action Committee.
It contends that the “notion of declaring all businesses (and all individuals) to be places of public accommodation has become in vogue in certain states, enacted, inter alia, to cater to the political powerful or politically favored, but it has no common law or even federal antecedent.”
“Such laws place government bureaucrats in operational charge of businesses, imposing the state’s morality on every business owner, while still (nominally) allowing private ownership of the ‘means of production.’ Thus, it is best understood as extreme interventionism – a step on the road to Fascism. Consider how the Oregon Public Accommodation law accords with the description of Fascism offered by scholar Sheldon Richmond, editor of The Freeman.”
Richmond wrote: “As an economic system, fascism is SOCIALISM with a capitalist veneer. … Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners.”
The brief stated: “In its essence, the Oregon law confiscates from individuals and businesses the right to determine with whom they will do business and on what terms. They smack of the type of control that Benito Mussolini described in his 1928 autobiography.”
In it, the dictator wrote: “The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity. The Fascist State with its corporative conception puts men and their possibilities into productive work and interprets for them the duties they have to fulfill.”
“We don’t often tell people they are acting like fascists – unless they
deserve it,”.....https://mobile.wnd.com/2018/11/laws-mandating-same-sex-accommodations-threaten-1st-amendment-filing-argues/
What Colorado tried to do and what Washington and Oregon did do to individuals who are or were businesses and what 20 states do with expansion of their so called public accommodations laws is as the brief before the Supreme Court maintains, a form of fascism. That is what we the people are fighting n these cases, encroaching fascism.
In which Gospel did Jesus tell his followers to treat others as less than equal based on their religious beliefs?
Luke 6:31.
He didn’t say to treat them badly or less than other human being to reach out to. He didn’t say not to serve them in their day to day operations of their business. BUT, He would never have baked that cake for them. His saying was Go and sin no more, not, here let me help you comit an abomination before the father, the nature of which I destroyed Sodom over.
How do you know this?
Jesus told his followers not to judge.
The day to day work of a bakery is to bake cakes, so why should they be refused equal service? Hypothetically, what happens if Jesus returns as a gay man to test his followers?
I hate to break this to you, but all indications are that Jesus, himself, was gay.
Jesus undoubtedly fed LGBT people bread and fishes at Bathsheba. He also provided wine for all at the Wedding at Canaan.
Well, even He said He really loved Peter. So, who are we to judge Him?
That was really smoooooth.....
Jesus will never again set foot on this world until He recreates it upon the ashes of the lost after the judgement. So, that test will never happen.
Your religious apologetics isn't proof. Why wouldn't Jesus come back as a gay man to test his followers?
Because He said what he did. Because He rained fire and destruction upon Sodom and Gomorrah once his angels got Abraham’s family that was willing to leave out after Abraham asked and got Him to promise not to destroy the city if only 10 righteous and just people could be found between them. There were none as it turned out.
This is more religious apologetics, unless you have proof that doesn't require faith or belief.
You don't know what Jesus might have said, if he did actually exist, because he didn't write the 4 gospels.
No, what their doing is trying to eliminate discrimination by people who want to use religion as an excuse. If the baker was truly that religious, how does he justify making cakes for people getting married for their 2nd or 3rd times? Unlike homosexuality, Jesus DID speak out against divorce.
Requiring equal treatment for all in a public business is the opposite of fascism. Are equal rights for all people regardless of race, creed, color, gender, sex, and disability also fascist?
Do you also support "Whites Only" businesses because those bigots also claimed that their religious rights were violated by having to serve African-Americans equally to whites? The Klan also cites their religious beliefs to support bigotry toward blacks, Jews and Catholics, among others.
As the brief states, expanding equal access in this matter is a canard. The 1st amendment free exercise of religious belief and the right not to be coerced into creating speech, expression or acts that violate ones religious beliefs trumps the other issue. What is being done in these cases to these small businesses and their rights by the 20 states is nothing short of overt fascism by those states against religion and religious beliefs. Oh and the Oregon commission committed the same violation that the Supreme Court cited in the Colorado case.
Your religious beliefs have never been the right to discriminate in a public business. In your private life you can discriminate but when you choose to open a business that serves the general public you are required to serve all people equally. You can put religious quotes on your business literature but you cannot refuse to serve people because of your religious beliefs. Our religious rights are the right to believe or not to believe in god(s) and to worship as we wish, but they stop where the equal rights of others begin. If you cannot handle that requirement then don't open a business that serves the public, don't sell a product that causes you a problem or make your business a private business where you can choose who is or isn't a customer.
....“The government’s intervention, the brief asserts, is “a step on the road to Fascism.”
William J. Olson P.C. filed the brief on behalf of Public Advocate of the United States, Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund, One Nation Under God Foundation and Restoring Liberty Action Committee.
It contends that the “notion of declaring all businesses (and all individuals) to be places of public accommodation has become in vogue in certain states, enacted, inter alia, to cater to the political powerful or politically favored, but it has no common law or even federal antecedent.”
“Such laws place government bureaucrats in operational charge of businesses, imposing the state’s morality on every business owner, while still (nominally) allowing private ownership of the ‘means of production.’ Thus, it is best understood as extreme interventionism – a step on the road to Fascism. Consider how the Oregon Public Accommodation law accords with the description of Fascism offered by scholar Sheldon Richmond, editor of The Freeman.”
Richmond wrote: “As an economic system, fascism is SOCIALISM with a capitalist veneer. … Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners.”
The brief stated: “In its essence, the Oregon law confiscates from individuals and businesses the right to determine with whom they will do business and on what terms. They smack of the type of control that Benito Mussolini described in his 1928 autobiography.”
In it, the dictator wrote: “The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity. The Fascist State with its corporative conception puts men and their possibilities into productive work and interprets for them the duties they have to fulfill.”
“We don’t often tell people they are acting like fascists – unless they
deserve it,” Olson told WND.
Officials in the office of Oregon Gov. Kate Browndeclined to respond to a WND request for comment.
WND reported when First Liberty Institute filed a petition to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Kleins.
“Freedom of speech has always included the freedom not to speak the government’s message,” First Liberty President Kelly Shackelford said at the time. “This case can clarify whether speech is truly free if it is government mandated.”
“In this case, the court has the opportunity to resolve perhaps the most critical issue the Masterpiece court left unresolved: whether the government can compel citizens to create a message contrary to their religious beliefs,” the legal team said.
It was the Bureau of Labor and Industries in Oregon that asserted the Kleins violated Oregon’s public accommodations statute when they declined to design and create a wedding cake honoring same-sex marriage.
In addition to the $135,000 penalty for “emotional damages,” the state issued a gag order that prevented the Kleins from talking about their case.
The most recent decision in the Oregon case came from the state Supreme Court, which upheld the order that killed the business.
The Kleins explained to the couple, Rachel Bowman-Cryer and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, that providing a wedding cake would violate their Christian beliefs. But the same-sex pair filed complaints with the Oregon Department of Labor and Industries. The agency investigated and awarded $75,000 in damages to one and $60,000 to the other.
Court records said that then-Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian “made numerous public comments on social media and in media interviews revealing his intent to rule against them.”
“He stated that the Kleins had ‘disobey[ed]’ Oregon law and needed to be ‘rehabilitate[d].'”
The friend-of-the-court filing explains Oregon’s law gives state control over private behavior and grants rights to “politically powerful classes.” It contends the damage award violates the Free Exercise Clause, and there are important federal issues that have not been resolved.
The damages were awarded, the filing explains, despite the duo enjoying an “economic benefit” of being given a cake for only $250 from another baker, whereas Sweetcakes would have charged $600.
It also points out that the state’s agency is both prosecutor and judge in such cases and that those in the agency who participated in the attack on the Kleins were exempt from the “Oregon Code of Judicial Ethics,” because they were not officers of the judicial system.
The state acknowledged the Kleins’ testimony: “Respondents … have been jointly committed to live their lives and operate their business according to their Christian religious convictions. Based on specific passages from the Bible, they have a sincerely held belief that God ‘uniquely and purposefully designed the institution of marriage exclusively as the union of one man and one woman’ and that ‘the Bible forbids us from proclaiming messages or participating in activities contrary to biblical principles, including celebrations or ceremonies for uniting same-sex couples.'”
State officials, however, simply “disregarded” the testimony.
The brief states the case “is an attempt by Oregon to regulate the operation of a small business in ways that many Bible-believing Christians simply cannot obey. It takes the Law of Public Accommodation and expands it in ways that are completely untethered to its long history in common law.”.....
As the saying goes, “see you in court”.
The last paragraph of the recent SCOTUS decision holds a strong hint to that ruling.
“ It takes the Law of Public Accommodation and expands it in ways that are completely untethered to its long history in common law.”
“The existential threat faced now by Sweetcakes Baker by Melissa is being repeated with increasing frequency by those twenty or so states which have public accommodation laws which operate to morally and religiously subjugate Christians and others who resist homosexual marriage to the demands of the LGBT Agenda. This is a threat to the Freedom of Religion of a great swath of the nation.”
The brief charges, “The threat to the Christian cakemaker in this case is part of a nationwide political, LGBT-led, relentless and well-funded campaign to use government power to coerce individuals and businesses to facilitate, participate in, and celebrate same-sex marriage. And it is part of an effort to destroy the livelihood of those individuals and businesses who stand against the secular tide.”
The Supreme Court, in fact, said in its majority opinion in the 2015 same-sex marriage case that the rights of Christians who believe same-sex marriage to be a sin are fully protected.”
How is being forced to serve LGBT people equally any different than being forced to serve black and interracial customers when the religious conservatives used the very same arguments to oppose the public accommodation laws in question? Jack Phillips is a member of the very same bigoted Southern Baptist Church as Maurice Bessinger.
of course if they are LGBT community members - or any other group the religious feel contempt and hatred towards at the moment. and of course, you aren't supposed to discriminate against the religious but you are supposed to support their discrimination against others - especially with public businesses. (gee, seems to be yet another exemption to secular laws that the religious feel they need to have just due to their belief in a mystical unproven entity... yet i'm told that only i see it that way... hmmm...)
It would seem that the California judge in the similar Bakersfield case came up with the ruling that should be the federal law of the land on this matter.
That judge knew that any decision he made would be appealed so he pandered to his conservative supporters that he would need to get reelected. The ruling was constitutionally laughable, despite the fact that you agreed with it.
Which would be the least offensive to this baker? Baking a wedding cake for an LGBT Christian couple, baking a Ramadan celebration cake, or baking a wedding cake for a secular Humanist couple like myself?
Your religious rights end when others become involved in them.
with the small exception that (as of now) it's not the federal law of the land - you aren't above everyone else just because of your belief in an unproven mystical entity, i'm sorry you are having such a hard time with that concept.
IMO the question before the SCOTUS should be, "Does the constitution allow for the government to aid a religious individual to attain his/her other worldly reward in what is supposed to be a non-religious legal system."
The government isn’t aiding a religious individual. It is protecting the individual from fascist predators at the state and or local level of government. The role of government is not protect the free exercise there of of religious belief portion of the 1st amendment to the constitution. It’s really that simple.
Mandating equal service is a public business is the opposite of fascism, that supports discrimination. The Italian fascists under Mussolini exiled LGBT citizens to an island in the Adriatic.
Why didn't you answer my question about "Whites Only" businesses when the owner claimed that it was a violation of his religious beliefs to serve them equally with whites?
Not aiding a religious individual? Would you say the same thing if these were, say, Hebrews or any other non christian sect? We are dealing with American citizens, tax payers, people who work the same as you, me, and this baker. Not some hated "alien" species out to kill us. Would you want some business to brush you off in the name of their god?
It should be fun to witness what happens when it is a Dr, an ambulance service, or a private hospital that invokes their religious beliefs not to treat religious bigots. I still think that all EMS services should deliver conservative religious people to their church instead of the hospital when they are injured so their religious beliefs are not trampled on by secular medicine and doctors who may not believe in their god.
Because the race claim was bogus that is not in any way biblically based. The injunction against acts of homosexuality as an abomination before God is.
And how many of our hospitals are based on and operated by and staffed by religions and religious people?
How many of them attempt to force their religious beliefs on their patients or to deny people equal service because of their religious beliefs?
Au Contraire,
I'm a religious person, but on this issue I disagree with many Christians who think LGBT people or activities are some kind of abomination against God. I understand their feelings on the issue. I just think they're wrong.
I have never, though, been enthusiastic about government forcing them to behave against their beliefs. I also think that when it comes to artistic creations celebrating the event, they have a legitimate 1st Amendment argument, but I have also always said I think they should just make the cake.
I'd be surprised if the Supremes granted cert. This doesn't seem like it rises to the level of a disagreement they need to sort out. They love to tackle issues after they have been decided differently in different circuits and they can chew on the different opinions. They could surprise me, though.
The interesting thing is that members of the Oregon commission that dealt with the case showed the exact same impermissible intolerance of their victims religious beliefs as the Colorado ones did that the Supreme Court called them out on. I don’t own a business and I am not sure what I’d do in that circumstance. My default position here is to side with religious liberty and defend the people acting on their free exercise of their religious beliefs even if I’m undecided myself on the issue or even disagree with their belief. Protecting freedom of religion under the 1st amendment is paramount to me. Thus I disagreed with the courts decision regarding unemployment and peyote even though I oppose the use of illegal drugs in general.
There are no religious rights as part of a public business because a business is not a person. the owners and employees have religious rights but the business has no rights because rights only belong to a person. Either you bake the cake or you pay the fine and accept the consequences that can include the loss of your business license. Your religious beliefs are not superior to secular law and they obviously do not exempt you from obeying secular law.
If you put two cakes beside each the how could you tell the cake for the gay wedding from the wedding cake for the hetero wedding apart? If this is a creative idea, then what is the difference between the cakes? The couples are not asking for your approval. You are a baking a cake at a price that you determine.
If I can design churches, which I have done on two occasions, then you can bake a cake for a gay wedding. Just be a professional and do your job.
As I have said many times, I would sell the cake. From the baker's perspective, either cake sends the message "celebrate and honor this marriage." Therefore the cakes are different depending on who is getting married. You don't have to agree with that (in fact, I expect you don't) but your opinion of their perspective doesn't change the fact that that's how they see it.
I'm sure if you try real hard, you can imagine a customer or situation that would offend you so much you couldn't bring yourself to create something for them you would happily create for someone else. You might even be willing to do something ordinary for them (like sell them a cake not intended for a wedding) if you felt it didn't look like you were endorsing what they would do with your work.
For these bakers, the cake doesn't necessarily need to have something obvious on it, like the words "gay marriage is awesome." It might be a different conversation as to whether or not that should be a line we draw. Maybe if they are visually identical that argument doesn't hold. I won't say one way or the other.
I think I'd prefer a world where we can find ways to change people's minds about LGBT as opposed to forcing them to make wedding cakes. We aren't going to legislate thought and if someone disapproves of me, I don't want them making my cake anyway.
They expect you to be professional and accommodate their faith in your architecture, it's what civil people do regardless of ideological differences. Strange that they don't feel the same way when it comes to accommodating their own law abiding tax paying customers. I doubt any Christians could ever even imagine looking for a new residence closer to work, finding a cute little house just minutes from their office right next to a great school and within a block of a beautiful playground, and it's within your budget... but after applying and being told you're almost certainly going to get in, you get notified that the owners found out you're a Christian and have decided not to accept your application. While all States make it illegal to discriminate in housing based on religion, only 6 States have protections for LGTBQ Americans.
And they can be fired in most States if an employer finds out they're gay. And right now many Christians are arguing for their right to refuse service to gay Americans. If a Christian can believe that someone saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" is a "war" on Christmas and Christians in general, what do you call ripping away someones livelihood, job, housing and ability to use some public businesses? Maybe shameless massacre? A metaphorical genocide? All because you've taken it upon yourself to judge someone, to label them sinners, contrary to the bible commands you claim to worship.
Judge not lest ye be judged. Treat others as you would like to be treated, not some of the time, not only when you're dealing with another Christian, but always. And even if you get mistreated, why not again follow the Christ you claim to worship and turn the other cheek? Wouldn't that make more of an impact on someone you believe to be a sinner?
"16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” - Mark 2:16,17
“Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians, you are not like him.” - Rabindranath Tagore (1920's)
It doesn't in private situations but when you operate a business your religious rights do not and cannot determine who you must serve when they walk into your store.
The baker isn't being asked to celebrate and honor anything. He bakes a cake for profit and the transaction ends when he gives them the cake after it is paid for. The customer isn't asking for your approval and it isn't wanted.
It's just a job, Be a professional and don't become emotionally involved in your customer's life. Donate some or all of the profits to your church if it makes you feel better about baking a wedding cake for a couple that your religion disapproves of.
You are still allowing your emotions to control you. Just bake the silly cake and take their money. Wedding cakes are a license to print money compared to pastry.
He is only being forced to obey the law and serve all customers equally, just as the bigoted pitmaster was forced to serve black and interracial couples equally. If you can't do the job then hire someone who can, stop making the product that causes a problem or sell the business to someone who is more mature.
That's your opinion and that's fine. The baker obviously feels differently.
I agree, but not everyone is willing to function that way.
An individual doesn’t lose the free exercise there of of their religious beliefs when they work or own their source of livelihood. Those rights are 24/7/365 just like the rest of the bill of rights are.
The denial of equal service in a public business is not a religious right.
The person can dress as a nun or a monk, tattoo bible verses on their forehead, close 3 hours a day for prayer, and chant the gospels while they work but the business itself has no religious rights, so they cannot refuse to serve customers equally based on their religious beliefs. This is a fact of incorporation. You can operate unincorporated but I doubt that either your lawyer or your accountant would support that decision.
There is no precedent that supports the owner citing their religious beliefs as an exception to the public accommodation protections. Neuman v. Piggie Park BBQ is proof. Do you also support "Whites Only" businesses when the owner claims that his religious beliefs do not tolerate racial integration? You have danced around this question more times than Fred Astaire.
Emotions are subjective but facts are objective.
Then find a new job where they do not have to treat others as equals or stop selling wedding cakes.
That's not exactly how the supreme court sees it.
"The Court recognized that under the First Amendment , the Congress cannot pass a law that prohibits the free exercise of religion . However it held that the law prohibiting bigamy did not meet that standard. The principle that a person could only be married singly, not plurally, existed since the times of King James I of England in English law, upon which United States law was based.
The Court investigated the history of religious freedom in the United States and quoted a letter from Thomas Jefferson in which he wrote that there was a distinction between religious belief and action that flowed from religious belief. The former "lies solely between man and his God," therefore "the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions." The court considered that if polygamy was allowed, someone might eventually argue that human sacrifice was a necessary part of their religion, and "to permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself." The Court believed the First Amendment forbade Congress from legislating against opinion, but allowed it to legislate against action."
So secular law does Trump religious law and religious freedom is not unlimited. So while their religious freedom rights are in effect 24/7 they are not unlimited and if by acting on a religious belief (by openly discriminating against law abiding tax paying American citizens) you break the law, you will suffer the penalties because religious freedom does not make you immune from prosecution if you break the law and step on someone else's right to access public commerce.
So you're always welcome to your religious opinions and you can act on them as long as those actions are still within the law. If a religion decided one of its holy doctrines was that the only way to save the soul of a loved one was to have sex with the corpse, they're allowed to believe whatever they want, but as soon as they act on their criminal religious belief, they should be arrested and prosecuted for violating a corpse no matter what their religious belief.
When the cake baker acted on his belief by telling the couple that he doesn't serve their kind here, he broke the law and should be punished for it. If that means the fine they have to pay for breaking the law ruins their business, so be it, it was their choice to break the law. Just like if that necrophiliac religion was going to lose their once thriving mortuary business because they were prosecuted and fined for vile actions forcing their religious opinions on a corpse. In the same way the baker should have thought about the penalties before forcing his religious opinions on others by denying them service.
Platitudes don't add to anything in this or any other topic.
That's not a healthy system either. It's well and good to say they broke the law and should pay some price, but putting them out of business is not the answer. Just imagine if the penalty for speeding were $1 million or life in prison. Yeah, you'd get rid of speeding, but who wants to live in that system? There is such a thing as a sensible penalty and it shouldn't destroy lives or livelihoods.
I was stating a fact because some people get those ideas confused. Emotions are not to be trusted as a basis of a decision.
Bueller.................Bueller.....................Bueller.....................
Your First Amendment Free Exercise religious rights end when other people become involved. You have no constitutional right to a church wedding or even to be a member of a church. You cannot sue a church or a minister in a secular civil court for refusing to allow you to be a member or if you are refused a religious sacrament/service.
And yet medical professionals can decline to provide an abortion or Rx certain birth control methods at their work due to conscience clauses in the wake of roe vs. wade. The same applies in these matters as well.
Why do religious people feel that they need to force others to comply with their religious beliefs when they chose to go into that field? Be a professional and do your job! Why has it become that treating others as you would expect them to treat you now has to come with religious exemptions?
That applies only if there is someone else to provide the service or the medication at the hospital or pharmacy. You don't go to a hospital for an elective abortion. Anybody currently working in medicine started after the Roe' decision.
Crossing the secular progressive dogma in any way is deserving of maximum penalty in their minds.
It doesn’t matter when it started. The beliefs are unchanging. Many medical practitioners skip educating themselves in methods related to carrying out an abortion. Learning how to take a life and do one is not required of those commissioned to do no harm.
What secular progressive penalty are you convinced that we have in mind?
Allowing the patient to suffer or die because they refuse to perform an abortion in an emergency situation is doing harm. A woman does not go to a hospital if she chooses to have an elective abortion, so any abortion performed there is in an emergency situation where her life is at risk.
This from the State where it has been suggested that opposing political opinions be disallowed in 'designated' politically charged areas such as the city of Portland... why am I not surprised that State law gives State 'control' over private behavior … but what is a 'politically powerful class'...?
Making numerous public comments regarding ones 'intent' to rule against someone does tend to smack of impropriety - perhaps the Supreme Court does need to rule on 'intent' as it seems to be a term used to excuse ones behavior, and accuse another..
Emotional damages being awarded because someone would not bake a cake … I once believed that these cake and flower service denials were about a violation of civil rights .. not so much any longer .. things now seem to be some sort of a game to seek out the baker that one knows in advance will not bake a specific cake for religious reasons, with the 'intent' of causing an issue, how else can one insure that a business owner will 'disobey' and be found in need of 'rehabilitation'...?
Freedom is the one thing that sets the United States apart from all other nations .. everyone desires to be free to be who they are, love who they want and believe how they choose to believe …. yet some freedoms need to squelched, so another can be free to be themselves? Pfft … go next door and save 350 bucks on the cake of ones dreams!