As was mentioned, nobody is compelling the baker to bake anything he doesn't want to. If he voluntarily chooses to run a bakery, he needs to follow certain ground rules regarding discrimination. He's free to choose to do something else with his time. He's free to treat all customers as equal. If he discriminates against a few customers, then he gets in trouble. But nobody is forcing him to do anything he doesn't want to.
He operates his business by permission and at the whim of the government.
I'm going back to your original argument here Stv, since you seem convinced that we're arguing about something other than what we were arguing about.
Let me take a slightly different tack.
That statement, that a business operates by permission and at the whim of the government, is not true. Requiring a permit doesn't make it true. Passing a law that businesses are required doesn't make it true. And passing a law that violates the rights of the person engaged in business, doesn't in any way affect that person's ability to conduct business, in a just society. If the society chooses to pursue a course of action interfering with that business by enforcing the law and interfering with the individual's protected rights, that's a problem. Just like the separate but equal rulings and laws interfered with customer's rights, so to does the Colorado law interfere with the baker's rights.
If what you were saying were true, then the government would be free to disband any business for any reason. That's what whim would mean. That's what "needing government permission" would mean.
Name for me please the U.S. businesses that have been disbanded by the government on a whim.
Your argument that a person can be forced to close their doors for exercising a constitutionally protected right demonstrates a failure to understand the foundation of the U.S. legal system. "Discrimination" that businesses are prohibited from engaging in requires an explicit definition, and in this case there's a disconnect between the federal law and the state law. And when that happens, the federally protected rights win, which is what happened with separate but equal, and when separate but equal was overturned.
I do apologize for responding in kind to your rhetoric. I try to ignore it, I engaged your bad attitude, sank to your level, and that was wrong of me. I am sorry, I will try to do better in the future. There have, as is typical when arguing with liberals, been quite a few accusations thrown my way by you and others. You keep responding to arguments that I am not making, assuming I'm coming from a place of homophobia or, somehow, racism, which is bizarre given the context. I've even been accused of being anti-cake, just because I mentioned I personally prefer brownies. Which would be like accusing me of being anti-blonde just because I prefer bald.
And you accuse me of being ignorant of the laws required to operate a business despite me actually operating two businesses in the U.S. The repeated assertion on your part that I need government permission to do so, is again, absurd. I have no piece of paper from the government authorizing me to do business, as none is required for the specific businesses I engage in. There is no law that makes those businesses legal, as none is required. This is a free society, there has to be specific legislation restricting or regulating a specific activity in order for even a permit to be required. And the government
has to issue the permit, it isn't at the whim of anything.
If they fail to issue me a permit because I spoke out against the government, they've violated my freedom of speech. If they likewise fail to issue a permit because I attend church, they've violated my freedom of religion, which is the same amendment as the freedom of speech. If they close my business because I practice my religion, that's a violation. And in order for us to get behind deciding that it isn't a violation, we have to discredit that religious belief, which isn't as trivial as has been represented by you and others in this argument.
Good Christians shouldn't discriminate. True. Nowhere in the faith is that a part of it. But good Christians shouldn't encourage sinful behavior. That's crystal clear. And in this specific context, we're talking about cake. Not dinner. Not the meal. Cake. Cake is the dessert at the end of the meal. Cake is the reward, it's the part of the celebration. A wedding cake is celebration. And good Christians, while acknowledging we are all sinful and we all live in sin and we all need salvation and deserve compassion as we move towards a better understanding of what it is to walk with God, also do not celebrate sin. A wedding cake for a homosexual couple is clearly a conflict for a religious baker. You have to be so profoundly lacking in empathy and compassion to fail to understand that. And I don't believe you to be that bad of a person. I think you want to win an argument on the internet, or you think it's just cake and so doesn't matter. And in this instance maybe you're right. I don't know the baker, maybe he's never been to church and is just a bigot. But somewhere out there is a deeply devout religious person working in the wedding industry. And depending on how this shakes out, they're going to have their first amendment rights to freedom of worship stripped away, or homosexuals everywhere are going to lose their protections.
And I think that's a really shitty way for this have gone, and I don't think we should be celebrating either way.
You "know" who I am and can see through the "code," but your prejudgments, which is my broader point overall when I've engaged on this thread, are immaterial to attempting an actual conversation. And charging off ignorant, pursuing a course of action, and allowing a course of action to proceed, when the outcome is uncertain and in all cases bad, is why good people abandon progressivism.
Victory was achieved, and you still think there's something to win. And the victory lap can get you slapped down hard. And even if it doesn't, all you've done is cement into legal precedent an assault on religious freedom, because religious conflict is
always a good idea?
But no, nobody is going to regret voting for Trump, because this is what it is to engage with liberals, you don't agree with them 100% on everything: ignorant, racist, homophobic.
Trump's just an idiot, ya'all are somethin' else.