anon(4698833)
Banned
I'll be more succinct. Do you want over 300 different religious groups to be able to deny services based on their religious beliefs?
In the case of Sweet Cakes, Oregon found that they refused to serve some because of their sexual orientation. Had Sweet Cakes won, see the above.
This has nothing to do with free speech, and everything to do with using religion to discriminate.
The Supreme Court has held that laws may prohibit religiously motivated action, as opposed to belief.
The legislative branch may prohibit conduct it deems discriminatory, even where the motivation for that conduct is base on a religion. This too has been held up in courts.
On a side note, I wonder how many wedding cakes Sweet Cakes made for couples who engaged in premarital sex? I bet quite a few. It would appear that Sweet Cakes cherry picked what sinner they would serve and ones that they would not.
Cherry picked? Are you joking? You're being ridiculous now. Nobody is going to go request a cake from a bakery and make it known that they were screwing before they tied the knot. A gay couple is a bit more in your face, to say the least.
And I wanted your elaboration for a purpose...you seem to want to distance this from the idea of "freedom of speech", but at the end of the day, it is directly related. Say that couple goes in, and they ask for a cake for the wedding and the bakery simply says "No." Are you telling me that you're naive enough to think that it simply ends there and nothing else is said about it? Really?
In reality, the bakery says no...the customer says "Why not?" and the bakery, according to this charge they are paying for, has no recourse because it's not good enough to run a private business in the fashion you wish to as an owner...nope, you have no freedom to explain to someone "I don't want to serve you because I don't agree with your lifestyle"...because at that point, you're going to get charged with something and you're going to pay a big fine.
Nope, you better keep your mouth shut, and either make that cake or just stonewall them with silence.
Where is that freedom of speech again? Oh yeah, it's so clearly present as they sign that $135,000 check because a couple of gay people were "offended" that they wouldn't make a wedding cake for them and explained to them why. Best just not to say anything anymore out of risk of being sued for doing such.
My father in law does video editing as a side business/hobby...he does a lot of wedding video editing. As a Christian man, he would not do video editing of a gay wedding. If someone asked him to do that, he would tell them no and he would explain to them why. Now days, he can be sued for that and end up losing everything he owns because of it...not because he simply WON'T do the job...but because he won't do the job and he'd tell you precisely why.
It's a hypocritical system of enforcement. Nearly the whole damn system is...one of the reasons why I jumped at the chance to get out of it when I could and never look back. It disgusts me.