Colorado baker ordered to serve gay wedding or face fines
 

A very interesting case...a Colorado baker, who is Christian, refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. They sued, and a judge ruled in their favor. Last time I checked, the constitution guarantees the ability to practice your religion without government interference. But what happens when that freedom butts up against the freedom from discrimination?

http://news.yahoo.com/colorado-baker...041625653.html

I have no quarrel with gay marriage. What I don't like, is that proponents of gay marriage often used concepts like "inclusiuon" to support their cause. Well, if they are in favor of inclusion, doesn't that mean that Christians have a right to be included, too? And in suburban Colorado, assuming thi sbaker isn't the only baker in town, is it asking so much that they find a baker who doesn't have to violate his religious beliefs to support their wedding?

The jusge said this..."At first blush, it may seem reasonable that a private business should be able to refuse service to anyone it chooses," Spencer wrote in his 13-page ruling.

"This view, however, fails to take into account the cost to society and the hurt caused to persons who are denied service simply because of who they are."

So when did we amend the constitution to guarantee that no one would ever experience hurt feelings? COurts have upheld the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to protest military funerals, which is devastating to the families. In other words, the freedoms guaranteed in the Bill Of Rights, allow for the Westboro Baptist Church to hurt the family members trying to bury a fallen patriot. If freedom of speech trumps hurt feelings, why doesn't freedom of religion trump hurt feelings?

An interesting case. I say, tell the happy couple that even Chriistians have the freedom to practice religion, and they can easily find another baker happy for their business.

The baker could have just made the cake and put pubes in it if he has such a problem with gays.

Apples and oranges.
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I'm not sure what that means. If you're referring to the Westboro analogy, I'd argue that's it's apples and apples. The judge said that citizens are constutitionally protected against having their feelings hurt by a business. If that's true (and I'm pretty sure it's not true), why don't we have the same protections against having our feelings hurt by the Westboro kooks?

And how is this not a violation of the right to freedom of religion, which has consistently been interpreted as the right to practice your religion without the government telling you that your beliefs are wrong?


Interesting case...

Ultimately, the expansion of society's interests into and against the sphere of individual interests is that continual growth of the State versus the individual. The individual's sovereign rights to property are constantly eroded and eventually surrendered to the collective, and the individual's property becomes public property.

they should make this guy eat some weed brownies, inhale some nitrous oxide ,
smoke some of the finest giggle grass like skunky bubblegum, drink some wine
chugging on his own bottle and eat a couple grams of magic mushrooms (preferably all at the same time) while watching pink floyd pulse

and make him a more highly enlightened individual instead of the uptight stuck in a box of doggiedoo dogmire crap that's ruining his Life immeasurably.

The baker
 

doesn't sound very Christian to me...

If one's religion is opposed to gay marriage, and this baker supports that, then his actions are perfectly in alignment with his Christianity. If he treated these guys with respect, but merely declined the opportunity to support the wedding, it's not un-Christian. No more than it's un-Christian for Catholic doctors to refuse to perform abortions.

This guy has the right to exercise his religion. That right, unlike the right for homosexuals to marry, is explicitly stated in the Bill Of Rights.

The Bill Of Rights isn't always easy. Freedom of speech means the Klan can hold a rally. Freedom of the press means that the kooks on MSNBC can say George Bush was a racist. And like it or not, freedom of religion means that a Christian baker can say "no thanks, but best wishes to you" when being asked to provide services for a gay wedding.

Bill of Rights
 

George Bush isn't intelligent enough to be a racist.

:fishin: :hihi:

Interesting decision. Article said his bakery was a "public business" - maybe it was a chain? Most small bakery's are "private businesses" - then maybe then it would have been ruled differently?

DZ

I think by "public", the judge meant that it was "open to the public", and therefore, subject to anti-discrimination laws.

Should have just bumped up his price 100%

Yep..

Unfortunately for the couple, though, even Christians who own bakeries are entitled to the freedoms guaranteed in the Bill Of Rights. The constitution doesn't say that Freedon Of Religion only applies so long as no one's feelings are hurt.

Very interesting case.

Or the happy couple could have chosen a baker that was willing to work for them, of which I'm sure there are several.

But how would they have known that until they went to the baker? While I didn't read the link you posted, I'm betting he must have indicated he didn't like their lifestyle or something similiar. They prob. felt insult and thought it was illegal for the baker to discriminate against them and sued.

If he just said he had a few cakes that weekend and would have to charge extra, they prob. would have just walked away not knowing better.

Or he could have said he was out of flower cake decorations and only had basketball and football cake decorations left and I'm betting they would have went to someone else.

I think the key is how this BIGGOT told them to take their business somewhere else because they were fags.. He could have been wildly insulting.
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You are correct, there is no way they could know that this baker is a devout Christian. Apparently, when they asked him to provide a cake for their wedding, he politely told them that his religion prevented him from doing so. You're right, there are other things he could have said (and he may wish he said one of those thing). However, we have the constitution, and a Bill Of Rights therein. The Bill Of Rights includes the freedom of religion, and that has consistently been interpreted that the individual can practice his religion without interference from the government, and that the government cannot take sides for or against any one religion.

Basically, the question is this...what takes precedence, freedom of religion, or anti-discrimination laws?

You are correct, the baker could have said one of those things. Similarly, these guys could have gone to a different baker when this guy refused...

"this BIGGOT ..."

Have you ever failed to ascribe derogatory intentions to anyone who has ever disagreed with you about anything? Not that I can tell...Everyone is an idiot unless they agree with you. I guess I missed the announcement when they named you God.

"He could have been wildly insulting."

Now you are making things up in order to paint him in the worst possible light...

The key, perhaps, is that the US Constitution (which you have either never read, or do not have the ability to comprehend) appears to give him the right to refuse their business.

If freedom of religion gives Westboro Baptist Church the right to demonstrate at military funerals (where they hold signs saying "Thank God For Dead Soldiers"), perhaps it also gives this baker the right to refuse to provide services for the wedding.

I'd love to hear what a lawyer has to say...

Sorry. If someone told me that they will not serve me because of my sexualality, I will call them a #^&#^&#^&#^&ing BIGGOT. Furthermore, the very fact that you mention westboro Batist church.... The biggest bunch of BIGGOTS in this country, makes me completely fine with calling the baker a BIGGOT.
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I don't concede that being opposed to gay marriage is necessarily bigoted (while it certainly can be rooted in bigotry, it's not necessarily rooted in bigotry). I know plenty of profoundly decent people who don't want to call that union 'marriage'. George Bush did more for AIDS victims than any human being who has ever lived. If he opposes gay marriage, are you going to tell me he's a homophobic bigot? Why did he do so much for AIDS victims?

How about that pesky constitution, Eben? All you are doing is bashing those with whom you disagree. Fine. Tell me why the freedom of religion doesn't guarantee that baker the right to say "no thanks" to the happy couple?

Firstly. You don't have to be gay to get aids.
Secondly, if George Bush is opposed to gay marriage, that's just fine. Your point is moot.

Feeling one way is one thing. Actively discriminating against someone is another.
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If there's one thing that grinds my gears about conservative Christians and of course other religions, it's the fact that they push what they believe onto others.
Why doesn't everyone just keep their beliefs to themselves??
Against gay marriage?? Don't have one!
Simple.

Tollerence of others that are not like you is what will save this planet from self destruction.
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Would that not then, behoove YOU to be tolerant of others?

interesting...the State of Colorado does not recognize gay marriage, but rather, they have civil unions...the couple married in Mass. and wanted a cake to celebrate that marriage from Mass. in Colorado...the State...or at least, one judge, is forcing the bigot baker to do something that the State itself does not do, recognize the marriage, and bake a bigot cake to celebrate something it does not recognize.... or be punished....

I think their bigot beef is with the State

if gay marriage is not recognized in Colorado, aren't the judge and the couple forcing their views on the bigot baker?


10/31/2013

A Colorado couple has filed a lawsuit aimed at overturning the state's ban on same-sex marriage.

7News in Denver reports that Dr. Rebecca Brinkman and Margaret Burd applied for a marriage license from the Adams County Clerk's office. The clerk told them that they were not eligible because they are both female and offered them a civil unions license instead. The couple rejected the clerk's offer and instead filed suit in district court Wednesday. seems to be contagious

Colorado legalized same-sex civil unions earlier this year, with the first couples being granted a civil union in May, but same-sex marriage was banned in the state in 2006. The lawsuit that Brinkman and Burd filed argues that civil unions do not grant the same rights to couples that marriage does.


been reading about a related Colorado story in which some High School girls(bigots) were threatened with hate crime charges and other punishment by the school if they didn't stop complaining about the trans-gender boy that was using the girl's bathroom whenever he wanted and harassing them...apparently your right to be unable to differentiate between male and female plumbing supersedes another's right to privacy

there are plenty of scenarios of the planet experiencing destruction
without man's intervening in the process.

that doesn't mean it breaking into chunks -> just living conditions becoming uninhabitable for those with no access to the underground.

"If there's one thing that grinds my gears about conservative Christians and of course other religions, it's the fact that they push what they believe onto others.
Why doesn't everyone just keep their beliefs to themselves??"

Classic liberal response. You know what? You could not be more wrong here. You literally could not be more wrong.

The baker isn't trying to convert anyone to Christianity. He simply wants to be left alone to practice his religion, as the Constitution appears to explicitly guarantee him the right to do.

It's the pro gay marriage community, including you, that would force your beliefs on him, against his will. It is your side who wants to force him to abandon his beliefs, it is your side that wants to force him to accept your agenda.

Try making that wrong.

"Against gay marriage?? Don't have one!
Simple. "

Using your logic, a child molester might say "against raping kids? Then don't do it! But leave me alone to do as I wish"

"Tollerence of others that are not like you is what will save this planet from self destruction."

That's rich, coming from you.

all of this hullabalou over a cake...:love:

nothing funnier than a bunch of "straight-ass straight guys" arguing the finer points of the gay agenda...

sorry TDF...had to do it ...:rotf2:

Eben, I'm curious because you are a shop owner yourself, if someone walks into your shop and asks you to make something that somehow represents something that you disagree with ethically, politically or otherwise...do you feel you have a right to refuse the work?...should a judge be able to force you to accept and do the work or face a fine or worse?

I would never say no to anyone if they came in and asked me to make something that I make all the time. If it is something that I don't make, then I might say no because I just can't make it.
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And that's your right - you have the right to decide whether or not to say 'no'. The baker has teh same right.

It's easy to demonize this man Eben. Try something harder...try telling me why the Bill Of Rights, and the freedom of religion contained therein, doesn't apply to him.

We don't get to selectively decide who is protected by the Bill Of Rights, depending upon the ideological agenda that's popular at that moment.

And let me remind you that personally, I support gay marriage. But more than that, I support our constitution, and I don't like it when judges ignore sections of it that they don't happen to like. If we give judges that power, then maybe someday, someone will decide that the constitution doesn't apply to you. I wouldn't like that any more than I like this.

If this judge wants to be a gay rights activist, that's a noble thing, but he cannot do it when he's sitting on the bench. The concept of 'justice' demands that he put his personal agenda aside when he's wearing that robe. His only agenda is supposed to be the law.

Just upset that you beat me to it

Glass Swastika?

I'm pretty sure I've been in Places that have had signs that say "We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service"


....and you're telling me that between two Gay Guys they can't figure out how to bake their own cake...C'mon :hee:

This story reminds me of the Barilla pasta owner who said he would not advertise with images of gay people. He has gay employees and provides benefits for them but feels any type of marketing portraying a gay lifestyle is not for his company. Predictably, the international backlash was loud.

They could have got an Entenmann's cake and put a nice topper like this on it.

Go to trial
 

In Colorado if it went to trial the jury might just side with the BB.

The judge in this case made a telling and instructive admission when he said that at first blush it would seem that the baker had a perfect right to refuse to sell his wares to anyone he wished . . . but on second consideration it was necessary to understand and correct the harm that would do to society. How he was even able to arrive at such a reason for judgment is based on how the court system has been transformed from merely adjudicating the law to judging by agenda. I had said in a previous thread that I didn't know of any progressive principles. But I had forgotten one of the very first--Woodrow Wilsons assertion that the Constitution was not to be seen, as the Founders did, as a "Newtonian" document--a mechanistic structure--but to be "interpreted" as a Darwinian one. It was, in the progressive view, an organic living thing, as was the government it instituted. The Constitution was not to be a rigid mechanically functioning structure to serve the people at the people's behest as any machine would do, rather it and the government which functioned through it were living things, subject to living evolution and self-fulfillment. A wholly different way of "interpreting" the Constitution was necessary in view of its transition from an immutable code to an organic living system of societal governance.

Government and its judges were not to be bound by mere structures of law, but would perform and judge as if by a living entity with its own ideas of necessity, efficiency, and justice. For that is what a healthy and rational living thing does. Of course, the reality is that only ACTUALLY living things, real people, would be the functionaries that operated this new system. So, in actuality, it was not some self-evolving "living" entity called government, but a small coterie of actual people deciding for the entire population what was law and what was not.

Judges developed new ways of interpreting the law. Interpretation was no longer about what the words in the Constitution, as written, meant, nor any longer only to decide if the law was actually within an enumerated power granted by the Constitution--rather, judges were to be free of such narrow limitations and allowed into a vaster sphere of interpretation based on utilitarian and equitable social justice, as well as other forms of "higher ideals," none of which stemmed from powers granted in the Constitution. Concepts of jurisprudence were concocted out of thin air such as government having "a compelling interest" outside the confines of prescribed constitutional limitations, or whether there was any, even the slightest theoretical, rational basis for legislation regardless of whether or not there was an actual constitutional basis for it.

Of course, a machine, as the progressives viewed the founders version of their Constitution, can have no "interests" much less any "compelling" ones. Such an entity does not have self-willed human attributes. Such a Constitution can only "compel" the government, as a guide or blueprint, to operate and legislate only within its enumerated boundaries. A progressive "living" governmental structure, on the other hand, is not restricted to things that refuse to give it life. A living thing must be free to meet new challenges in new ways, to grow beyond infantile restrictions and expand to a mature strength that gives it the power to more efficiently govern an evolving society. And so another principle the progressives derived from this living status of government was that this living thing must have the power to create its own bounds. That is, this living government must be unimpeded to function as it sees fit for the efficient and socially justified administration of law. That is, the government was to be basically unlimited in its power to govern.

And so the judge, in this baker vs. gays case can blithely go from the "first blush" of original constitutional property rights to the progressive socially justified distribution of the baker's property per force of a compelling government interest in protecting society from "harm". The irony that such a judgment is elicited from the "interpretation" of a document which was written to protect society from being harmed by government, goes unnoticed. It is, in fact, applauded by our ruling elites in academia, in the media, and in our branches of government. Some might say this is the new road to serfdom. Others would say, c'mon, that's extreme--couldn't happen. But one of the founding principles of the American Revolution, of the Declaration of Independence, and of the Constitution, was the individual right to possess property and dispose of it as one wishes. And one of the most important functions of the government that was originally founded is the protection of those property rights. Under the progressive model, however, those property rights are an obstacle to efficient and equitable governance. There is a burgeoning progressive philosophy that property is a public right not a private one. The government holds it in a sort of escrow for the people and distributes it through regulation and taxation to individuals to husband for the good of the community. Private property, essentially becomes public. And, in the final analysis, the baker has no right to withhold property from the gay couple.

Detbuch - good probing questions as usual...

"Would you as a Christian hospital have the right to say no to a gay person who was admitted with a life threatening injury which needed immediate attention?"

No, the Catholic hospital would not have that right, nor is any Catholic hospital threatening to withold care from anyone on any such basis. Catholics, as a group, do not want to eradicate homosexuals from the planet. Catholics care just as much about homosexuals as we care about anyone else, we (and I don't include 'me' in that 'we', as I am a Catholic who supports gay marriage) just don't want to call the union a marriage. That's not nearly the same thing as a Catholic doctor refusing to treat a gay patient. The Catholic catechism demands that we love homosexuals as much as we love ourselves.

There is a difference between opposing a marriage between two homosexuals, and refusing to treat them as human beings. Any religion based on love, and in my opinion Catholicism certainly qualifies, woudl dictate that I have empathy and compassion for anyone. Loving a person and condoning/supporting their specific behaviors, is not the same thing.

"I don't know the specifics of his particular brand of Christianity, but it doesn't seem to me that this is a question of practicing religion."

I don't know the specs either. But it's easy for me to see how a Christian might not want to accept this business, because you are in a sense, supporting that which your religion says is immoral. And according to Catholic cathechism, if you support that which is immorl, you are acting in a way which could result in excommunication from the Church.

To your question on medical care...Catholic doctors should be (and are) required to provide lifesaving care to those in need. However, my belief is that the state cannot force that same Catholic doctor to prescribe abortificant drugs to a pregnant woman, nor should the state be able to force a Catholic business owner to provide his employes with birth control if his religious beliefs lead him to conclude that is immoral.

"But we have gone very far down the road as a society whose government and its judicial system does exactly that (selectively applied the Bill Of Rights".

Yes, this particular president has a real habit of doing that. It's repugnant.

"as in restricting the second amendment to own firearms to what they consider a "sensible" level, "

I actually wish we had more stringent gun control, but in my opinion, we would need to amend the constitution first, to allow for that. As the constitution is written today, I would not support radical gun control.

"How he was even able to arrive at such a reason for judgment is based on how the court system has been transformed from merely adjudicating the law to judging by agenda"

Correct, this was a perfect example of judicial activism, and I always hate that.

FIRST THE CAKES!

NEXT THE CHILDREN!

You people are clowns.

I think the matter of baker vs. gays goes well beyond religious freedom. Unfortunately, when I write a long response, I usually do it extemporaneously, as was the case in the above post to which you respond here. Because in long posts I'm thinking on the run, there are pauses for thought which add to the already long amount of time needed to finish the post. This leads to a glitch that I often run into which makes the site not allow my post but must refresh with back button, etc. And this is not always successful, and I lose the post and the considerable time spent writing it. So I sometimes pause with a note that there is more coming and will be back shortly in order to prevent the glitch from happening. I see that you posted a response before I finished adding to the post after the pause in which I said more was coming. The addition further added my thoughts on the importance of the property rights issue and how we were losing that most important reason for which there was a revolution and a Constitution. You might go back and read the eding.