Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Round 2

[Angrboda]

But...there’s no fundamental difference between a same-sex wedding and a hetero wedding either. It’s only an issue of the sex of the partners.

What if the baker’s religion told him that graduation ceremonies for blacks were against God? Does that change the issue for you?

I’m trying to understand what difference there is. At some point in your mind it becomes not ok. What is the differentiator?

I need to get going, but do definitely want to come back and talk about this bc I am on the fence about it and can see pros and cons and arguments to both sides, depending on which extreme is taken.

Maybe a real quick response would be that marriage itself is considered a religious sacramental ceremony to a lot of people, and so they have certain beliefs surrounding it. Particularly that it is a union between one man and one woman, and that's it. Graduation doesn't have ties to any sort of deep seeded sacramental or religious beliefs, neither does it make sense that it would. So I would call BS on the person who tried to pull that card.

Even in that case, the Christian prohibition is against same-sex acts, not against same-sex unions. The bible didn't foresee that development, and so it is silent on that score. Given that the bible is silent on whether same-sex marriage is or isn't a valid sacrament, it seems rather obvious that the baker was originally objecting to the homosexual orientation of the customers. One can infer that Christianity condemns same-sex marriage, but it's not a direct and obvious reading of the bible, anymore than that God approved of chattel slavery can be directly read in the bible. One has to take the sanction about homosexual acts in the bible and extrapolate from that to reach an opposition to the sacrament being applied to same-sex unions. Similar problems hold with a Catholic conception of the sacrament, as natural law is a philosophical position, not a biblical one. The Catholic church can, and an individual baker also can believe whatever they want regardless of whether it's biblical or not, but then you have to open up the whole can of worms as to what is protected in terms of religious objections. If I claim to be a religion of one person, can I use that to exempt me from any law I see fit just by changing my beliefs to suit?