Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Round 2

[Angrboda]

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.

I've been very clear about the two criteria for permissible denial of service on a 1st Amendment basis:

1) bespoke products or design services
&
2) the intended product or service and/or its use has obvious significance OR, if its significance is otherwise unclear but expressly communicated and understood.

This tells us nothing. You've simply substituted one unclear term with an equally unclear term. How do we determine if something has "obvious significance" or not. Is this another Meese-like "I'll know it when I see it"? You really haven't answered the question. For a simple example, let's take the case under consideration. Different people disagree on whether a pink and blue cake is obviously symbolic. And your criteria give us no idea of how to resolve that situation. I would hope you would be in favor of laws and precedents which can be unambiguously applied so that we don't have to depend upon the whims of the court to determine whether the law or precedent has been correctly applied. Your criteria do nothing to this end. In addition, there are problems with your criteria. All products are essentially bespoke products as if nobody orders them, they don't get made (with the possible exception of producers who sell directly to the public). So, one could argue that a mass produced car is a bespoke product. Moreover, it's unclear how being made to order necessarily implies that a product is an example of speech. Cars ordered with specific accessories and colors are also bespoke products in that they may be made to order, that doesn't make them acts of speech. I don't see that this "bespoke" business is anything more than you parroting yet another talking point. Some bespoke products are acts of speech, and some aren't. Your criteria is simply inappropriate for the task given to it. Which leaves us with your "it's obvious" criterion, which is essentially useless.

Try again.

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.

Even when the specific concerns of LBGTQ activists are wholly legitimate, any comparison between those struggles and the oppression and indignity of African-Americans living under segregation belittles the significance of the civil rights movement and is both inappropriate and shameful.

So now you're belittling the suffering of LGBT people and calling comparing their experiences to those suffered by blacks under segregation shameful. Well, you're obviously an asshole, it's just we now know what kind of asshole you are. Prior to Stonewall, LGBT people suffered discrimination and lack of civil rights equally as significant as blacks suffered under Jim Crow. Need I remind you that in some parts of the world homosexuals are being thrown off rooftops simply for the crime of being homosexual? Monday I had the pleasure of discussing immigration with an Iranian refugee who is gay. Under Iranian law, he could face the death penalty if his immigration to this country is denied. And prior to Obergefell v. Hodges, gay people were denied many things that were reserved for straight couples by law in at least 13 states, and federal discrimination against same-sex couples was a fact of law. So either you're simply ignorant about what you speak, or this is yet another example pointing to the fact that you're a reprehensible cunt.

Matthew Wayne "Matt" Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998) was an American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie on the night of October 6, 1998. He was taken to Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he died six days later from severe head injuries. Perpetrators Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were arrested shortly after the attack and charged with first-degree murder following Shepard's death. Significant media coverage was given to the killing and to what role Shepard's sexual orientation played as a motive in the commission of the crime.

Wikipedia || Matthew Shepard