RE: Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Round 2
August 22, 2018 at 7:31 pm
(This post was last modified: August 22, 2018 at 7:34 pm by Angrboda.)
(August 22, 2018 at 4:47 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(August 22, 2018 at 3:33 pm)Tiberius Wrote: I can see the difference. What I disagree on is that a cake for a gay wedding is promoting a message with which they disagree. A cake isn't a message. I'm not even sure you could call it a symbol. It's a cake. It's food. It gets looked at and then eaten.
I fully explained the difference in a very long post further up. TL;DR. No one disputed the argument,as I presented it (in response to you actually) for why the cake indeed serves as a symbol. Communion wafers are food too. I find it hard to believe you would not consider them symbolic in certain contexts. Flags are just pieces of fabric sewn together. Paintings are just dirt and oil daubed on rough cloth. Ever hear of private-labeling? A supplier makes a generic product, like breakfast cereal, and the seller puts his brand name and logo on it. So your basic sugary cereal gets marketed as "Fruity Loops" or something. But a seller could ask to have it branded anything they wanted, like "Queer Cheer O's". Following your line of reasoning, the supplier could not refuse, because, it's just cereal.
What do you propose should be the test for whether the production of a product is an act of speech, and when it is not? Or are you suggesting that all products and their sale should be protected against anti-discrimination laws.
Btw, this "they could just go down the street to another seller" simply doesn't wash. These laws are enacted to prevent such things as the de facto segregation that occurred during the Jim Crow era. Majorities can and do make products and services inaccessible by implementing de facto networks of discrimination. The free market does not, has not, and cannot address all such ills. That is why we have such laws in the first place. The state has a compelling interest in protecting certain classes from de facto discrimination of this sort. What you are essentially suggesting is that the stae does not have such a compelling interest, and therefore laws of this nature should not be passed. I would ague that you're simply wrong on that point, and so your suggestion that we should instead depend upon free market forces to resolve such problems is simply unacceptable.