Back when baker Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo, refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, I sided with him. So did the Supreme Court. Now he’s in court because he refused to bake a cake celebrating a customer’s gender transition. I hope the courts side with him again.
The woman, Autumn Scardina, called Phillips’ suburban Denver cake shop in 2017 requesting a birthday cake that had blue frosting on the outside and was pink inside to celebrate her gender transition. At trial last year, Phillips, a Christian, testified he did not think someone could change genders and he would not celebrate “somebody who thinks that they can.”
I disagree with laws that say a business of any kind must serve all comers. A business owner should be entitled to pick and choose his clientele. Some call that discrimination. Yet customers can, for any reason, pick and choose which businesses they patronize. Capitalism and a free market will prevail if allowed to function, eg, if enough people object to this baker’s religion-based position and boycott his business, he’ll soon be out of business. Problem solved.
As for the customer who wanted a cake celebrating her gender change, why bother suing the man who won’t bake that cake? What’s your motive? If you really want a cake like that, just go to a baker who will make it for you. If you don’t, then you didn’t really want that cake; you wanted the publicity of a lawsuit. You wanted to make trouble for a baker who doesn’t share your beliefs. You wanted to make trouble for this baker. Shame on you. Get a life.
EGG-ZACKLY !! I am so tired of this tiny proportion of the world’s population calling the shots !
I’ll never understand people who are so concerned with what other people believe or how they conduct their lives. Just mind your own business. Live and let live. If you want respect, be respectful.
My mantra from now on !!
If only everyone felt that way …
Must be the 1943 link.
It was a particularly good year, wasn’t it? 😉
I don’t know, the slope is pretty slippery with this… what if a business run by a Christian decided not to serve someone who is Muslim, Hindu, or Jewish? Can someone hire or fire someone based on race, gender, or religious belief?
In Canada it *is legal* to deny service, but only “[a]s long as businesses can offer legitimate reasons for refusing service, and they’re applied equally to everyone, there likely won’t be a problem. As a small business owner, you have the right to refuse service to customers for certain reasons: for example, if people are being disruptive or intoxicated.”
But up here “all Canadians have the right to equality, equal opportunity, fair treatment, and an environment free of discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, marital status and family status.” Basically, in Canada, if you’re going to open a business, you can’t deny service based on your own religious beliefs. That would apply to Mr. Phillips as well.
There’s also the ‘Employment Equity Act’ “[which] achieve[s] equality in the workplace so that no person shall be denied employment opportunities or benefits for reasons unrelated to ability and, in the fulfillment of that goal, to correct the conditions of disadvantage in employment experienced by women, Aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities and members of visible minorities.”
Yep, we have similar laws. And under those laws, Mr. Phillips is on very thin ice. But in theory, at least, I still think a business owner should be able to choose who he will or won’t serve. I realize that flies in the face of laws against discrimination, but if the majority of people think he’s wrong and refuse to buy from him, he’ll go out of business. Am I being racist? Unrealistic? What about free choice? Freedom of association? I can understand and support laws against discrimination and yet, doesn’t a business owner have a right to free speech? A right to follow his beliefs inside his own business? It’s an interesting issue, food for thought. Certainly not a black-and-white issue … uh, poor choice of words, because often that’s exactly what it is. Perhaps I should say there are a lot of gray areas, a lot of room for debate.
The court really split some hairs with their 2018 decision in order to find Phillips did not break the law. He might not do as well the next time.
Sorry, I posted a reply before checking to see if you had replied first…
Interesting… I just read the Colorado anti-discrimination law (ADL), and it does “guarantee equal access to public accommodations, housing, and employment regardless of disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation (including transgender status), marital status, family status, religion, national origin, or ancestry.”
From what I’ve read, it doesn’t allow people to discriminate by denying employment or services to “protected” peoples. But the US Supreme Court didn’t rule based on the ADL, they decided that “The Civil Rights Commission’s (CRC) treatment of his case has some elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated his objection.”
So it was the CRC that was at fault, not the ADL itself. I found this from the American Bar Association:
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/the-ongoing-challenge-to-define-free-speech/not-a-masterpiece/
I was going to cite much the same from SCOTUSblog:
But I think I like the ABA coverage better.
johnthecook…I stand with you on this one!
Thanks. I just can’t let go of the idea that the business owner has rights too, doesn’t he? Should the customer’s right always trump the businessman’s rights? I know what the law says, but I just keep thinking “What if I were that baker? What about my rights?”