Atheists and Cakes

[GrandizerII]

What exactly is virtuous about refusing to bake cake for gay couples? I don't understand some of you guys. When I was a fundamentalist Christian, I didn't have any of this hatred and bigotry towards gay people. Are you that hateful to refuse to do people who are different from you a service that you would gladly do for others?

A lot of it is misinterpreted and not hatred or bigotry.  If you were a fundamentalist Christian as you stated, I would think the conflict should be obvious.  I would bake two gay people a cake any day of the week I if I ran a bakery, but I wouldn't put certain things on the cake because my work is an extension of who I am.  If I can't believe in it, then why should I be doing it?  It could equally be considered hatred and bigotry to force someone to create something they object to.

I'm well aware of the perception of "conflict", but I never understood why as a Christian one had to make a big deal out of how other people (aka: the people of this world) chose to live? Did I believe homosexuality is a sin as a fundamentalist Christian? Absolutely. But to me, it was no more of a sin than adultery and murder and fornication. I never had this obsession with the sin of homosexuality (like a lot of other fundamentalists do) that I would advocate refusing to bake a wedding cake (or whatever) for two gay people yet not refuse the same services to people who clearly "sinned" in other ways. Hell, even back then, I was all "live and let live" when it came to same sex marriage because why the fuck does it matter if they got married anyway? Sinners are sinners and are going to do their own thang, whether we like it or not. That's the attitude I had at least. And it was an attitude that is ironically enough encouraged in various parts of the New Testament.

The most reasonable explanation I can think of for why a lot of Christians have this attitude is that they have a certain prejudice towards gay people that goes beyond "because the Bible says so".