I think Christian bakeries should bake a cake for LGBTQ and I think a Muslim bakery should have to as well.

Dumbest answer ever!

Oh how snide of you Dan. Just rebut the letter, and don't make the excuse that you have work to do because nobody has the copyright on being busy. If a reader takes the time to write you, you should give them the courtesy of your answer instead of randomizing us will your flippant attitudes.

Gun show loophole, gun law loophole, Brady law loophole (or Brady bill loophole), private sale loophole, or private sale exemption is a political term in the United States referring to sales of firearms by private sellers, including those done at gun shows, dubbed the "secondary market".[1] The term refers to the concept that a loophole in federal law exists, under which "[a]ny person may sell a firearm to an unlicensed resident of the State where he resides as long as he does not know or have reasonable cause to believe the person is prohibited from receiving or possessing firearms".

@1 who says they don't, bigot?

By the same logic, Scott, a business could refuse to serve people because they were black? They fought for their rights, too! There are anti-discrimination statutes for a reason.

So Scott - that means a baker can refuse to serve a black/Hispanic/Asian other minority as well? No, it is a public business and needs to serve all people equally. There is a reason discrimination is outlawed. This business won't serve that group. This group won't be allowed to buy houses here. We can refuse basic services because we don't like this group. A police officer doesn't like someone's religion/ethnicity/whatever and says it is his "right not to violate his deeply held beliefs" not to protect that person. Taken to the extreme it leads to Nazi Germany. There is no "right" for a public business to discriminate! Even former Justice Scalia (a beacon of conservative thought) wrote that this approach would “make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”

The second comment about gun shows is pure and simple ignorance:
"Under federal law, private-party sellers are not required to perform background checks on buyers be it at a gun show or other venue. They also are not required to record the sale, or ask for identification. This requirement is in contrast to sales by gun stores."

I don't know that it's the dumbest letter ever, that Dan's received. But it has to be up there, in the top ten at least.

If you open a cake business to the public, any rules of the establishment will have to apply to all potential customers such as, no shirt, no shoes, no service. If a person walks in and orders a birthday cake to which you say yes, but then you go on Facebook and discover that the person is in a same sex marriage at which point you refuse to fulfill the order, that is illegal. Even if the person said she wanted a gay birthday cake, say some rainbows or whatnot, it would still be illegal for the bakery to say no since religious objections do not apply to businesses that cater to the public especially if they have no religious affiliations.

*facepalm* So well meaning. So clueless.

Bakers: Try this in another context. Should bakers be able to refuse to sell birthday cakes to blacks? To jews? To latinos? Of course they can't. That is the point of civil rights laws. If a business is open to the public, they cannot discriminate. They must serve all customers. They cannot turn away customers that are specifically listed as protected classes under civil rights laws. A church can refuse to hold a wedding for an LGBT couple, but a bakery is not a church, and can't use "sincerely held religious beliefs" as a pretext to discriminate.

Guns: Not sure what state you are in, and background check laws vary by state. It is common in many states (or cities) for gun shops to require background checks. It is equally common that weekend gun shows, not in stores, are exempt from these background checks. The theory is that many private citizens sell personal weapons at these shows, and shouldn't be unduly burdened with these regulations. In reality, many gun dealers sell more weapons at these gun shows than they do in stores, all without any check of any kind. Hence "gunshow loophole". This loophole may not exist in your state, but it is common in most states. YMMV.

Scott dear, here's the thing: If you run a business, you are benefiting from "the commons": you have taxpayer supported police and fire departments to protect your business, you use the taxpayer funded public roads to have goods delivered and sent out. You have a taxpayer-financed court system to mediate any wrongdoing, and a tax-supported government to regulate commerce. We all pay taxes (except for the wealthy, who are parasites), and that includes lesbians. So that means that you have to play by the rules set forward by that government. A lesbian can't legally force her way into your home and make you to bake her a cake, but if you are open for business to the public, taking advantage of public resources, you are obliged to render services in a non-discriminatory manner.

The gun show, I can't help you with. That sounds almost as awful as a megachurch, or having to go to a Wal-Mart.

There is no difference between refusing to serve food to African American customers and refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding. You open a public accommodation, you have to serve the public (not just that part of the public you deem suitable). Baking a cake is not "religious conduct," nor is it "speech," nor is selling a cake "speech." Refusing to serve a class of customers is discrimination, period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_l…

Writer of the original letter: should a person legally be free to hang this sign in the window of the only pharmacy for 300 miles: We Don't Serve Jews?

The problem here is that you're going to say yes. And then make a totally backward ignoramus argument that was shown to be a stupid and fundamentally un-American argument more than 50 years ago. The utterly basic concepts about civil rights that you don't understand and are asking to have explained to you were fully-tested in the courts and public discourse in the 1950's and 1960's, and are encoded in your beloved Constitution.

Think about that. You're arguing, if only in your own head, in a way as dated and out of wack as saying that 10 hours a day in a factory is the best thing for 6 year olds; or that women certainly shouldn't vote because, you know, they're not sane on their periods; or that smoking increases your athletic performance; or that a black person doesn't count as whole person.

It's exhausting dealing with people so out of touch with the basics of American civil society. So I say fuck it. If you're such an ignorant and/or lazy knuckle dragger that you can't reiterate for yourself the long-established, and perfectly-rational, and morally-correct, and quintessentially American, age-old arguments that businesses can't discriminate against minorities, then I'm sorry but fuck it, figure it out yourself. It's a waste of time to explain to people who by all accounts should know better that the earth rotates around the sun.

Do this instead - open a Wikipedia page about civil rights, read it, and then come back and articulate THE VERY BEST ARGUMENT FOR REQUIRING BUSINESSES TO NOT DISCRIMINATE. Put in a little mental-sweat equity. Then go ahead and attack those arguments - though you'll be on the wrong side it's not impossible to frame a semi-rational response.

But just straight up ignorance about the most basic aspects of American civil rights doesn't mean that in the 21st century people should be expected to hold your hand and explain these things in shadow puppets.

The basic premise for why the merchant shouldn't discriminate against minority consumers, particularly when that minority makes up a small percentage of the population, is well covered in Gary Becker's "On Discrimination."

The argument goes along the lines that while the bakery does little damage to themselves by refusing to service the minority consumers due to accepting the loss of sale from discriminatory behaviour and folding prejudices into costs the damage dealt to the consumer due to overall restrictions of choice can be quite harmful.

While the damages of discriminatory market transactions of a relative few merchants could be mitigated by a unfettered and free marketplace there is no indication that this would solve the problem as the seller has already decided to view the loss of sales as a cost.

I do not do Gary Becker justice in this response because he is a brilliant economist and I'm just a pleb with a tenuous grasp on the argument.

where is the line drawn? Can a health care professional refuse to treat you because of your religion, skin color, weight, class ... if not... why not? And if this health care worker was the only one in your immediate area??? You are SOL. But again where do you draw the line for services? I know healthcare is not bakery goods but it is still a service. If you can say the baker can make a choice then why not the healthcare worker?

Imagine a vendor at a gun-show refusing to sell guns to hetero-white dudes, just because...

I hate lawsuits and tied up courts. Punish this dumbass bakery with our feet. Publicize it's name across social media and people will avoid like the plague as they should. Sue them and they'll reap a go find me windfall. World is better with fewer lawsuits.

Unless I'm mistaken, Dan doesn't style himself a "journalist" but rather a "sex advice columnist". As such, the bar for his blog posts is set a little lower. As with his Fox News counterparts, what he expresses is simply his opinion - one I'm more than willing to accept.

"Go Fund Me" sorry. Obv.

For-profit businesses may not discriminate against protected groups under federal law. In almost half the states, sexual orientation is included. It should be all the states.
If congress ever gets it passed, the Equality Act will extent the Civil Rights act to include sexual orientation in Federal anti-discrimination law. Call your congresspeople. Vote.

"As with his Fox News counterparts, what he expresses is simply his opinion - one I'm more than willing to accept."

Oh fuck! I mean that I agree with Dan's opinions - not Fox News'. D'oh!

It's an NRA talking point to claim that the "gun show loophole" doesn't exist. Here's the gist from Politifact, which goes into extensive detail: Federal law requires all federally licensed gun dealers to run background checks, but not all people who sell guns at gun shows are dealers required to have a federal license. The bills that would close this loophole would require even private sellers to do background checks if they sell at gun shows. And I bet the original LW knows this and is just sticking to his NRA talking points. Here's Politifact's details:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/…

Regarding baking the cake....

It's not JUST about the fucking cakes. Haven't you wondered why it's only bakers making a fuss? Because it's easy for the public to think, "What's the big deal, just go to another baker." But here's the big deal:

(1) What if every baker in your area refused? If you're in Oklahoma or Alabama, maybe you won't be able to find anyone to bake your wedding cake or birthday cake.

(2) It's not just about cakes. They're focusing on that for now because it seems trivial and harmless to the public, but once the precedent is set, then all sorts of businesses can refuse to serve LGBT people. We already had situations in the 80s when mortuaries refused the bodies of gay people regardless of how they died because they were afraid of AIDS. If you're in a big city, it will be easy to find LGBT-supportive businesses. But again, those in rural and conservative areas may find themselves unable to be served by all sorts of businesses. And again, not just cakes and flowers but every other business as well. The common fear is that fire fighters, hospitals, and emergency responders would refuse to help LGBT people. Even if the law specifically didn't exempt government employees or emergency services, there are still millions of other businesses that could make it impossible to live or travel through parts of the country while being identifiably gay -- businesses dealing with housing, insurance, hotels, groceries, food, transportation, and everything else.

I have no patience for LW today.

Yup, it's tough in some situations but publicly-licensed business must serve every one in the public.
So, for example, a gay black baker must bake a cake for her local Nazi troop to celebrate Adolph Hitler's birthday.

Yes! No poor baker should be required to bake a cake for anyone who displeases him/her in the slightest way. I would never bake a cake for Dick in apartment 32! For one thing, his name is Dick and that's just a thinly-disguised name for the P-Word! He also is a Green Bay Packers fan, and that just shouldn't be allowed here in Minnesota. I should have to serve HIM? Disgusting! And let's go back to segregated water fountains while we're at it! No one should have to allow "those people" to drink out of the same fountain as the rest of us! It's a matter of conscience! I think it's obvious to everyone that inferior races and people who don't fuck exactly the same way "we" do do NOT deserve to be treated like human beings! The Nazis knew it, why not us?

With I-594 WA state requires background checks for every sale, including gun shows (they don't always comply...)
https://www.rt.com/usa/202679-washington…

Scott, you ignorant slut. Rather than do your homework for you, you need to educate yourself. Google "gun show loopholes" related to background checks. Then search 1964 Civil Rights Act related to public accommodations that businesses must - by law - follow. Then ask yourself, "Am I as fully informed as I demand my sex columnist be before I fire off a letter full of egregious errors?"

Let's put it this way....the Lesbian, who pays taxes, helps support that business in-directly. I'm assuming that business may utilize public roads to deliver their goods or receive goods to do their business. They rely upon a police department to protect their business and certainly they relish having a fire department to help in case of fire. Does the business get any tax breaks or incentives, because that money doesn't just vanish...it comes from tax payers. So, tell me again why a business that utilizes PUBLIC services funded by EVERYONE should be able to discriminate?

Anyone making a public offer, say baking cakes in exchange for money, cannot refuse such offer to anyone who can keep their part of the deal. If they can pay the price, they should have access to the good, a freaking cake. Who denies someone a cake? You don't fuck the way I do, so you don't get cake? That's mean even for 8 year olds....precocious 8 year olds.

Remember, 100 is the average IQ, and by definition, half of the population is below that.

@28 that's not the definition of average.

@20: No "Do'h" needed, the pronoun "he" referring to Dan was in the same clause and therefore the subject of whom you agree with.

Poor Scott, now he has to sort out the nasty replies from the helpful replies. Tip: one of the helpful ones has big hair and calls folks dear.

I'll tell you why I don't mind bakers/florists/other small business owners (and mind the caveat there: small businesses) discriminating.

I kind of like discrimination in some contexts. For instance, there are some gay bars where I would like it if the owner could tell women they weren't allowed to come in some nights. Not because I hate women, but because it's not their space.

The other reason I don't mind the small bakers and florists discriminating against me is that I don't really care. I know that some people just aren't going to like me. And sometimes, that will be for dumb reasons. And that's OK. I feel and think and do dumb things all the time myself.

If I need a nice cake, I know there are lots of options. That's the beauty of an open market. Even if I live in a small village with only one professional baker living for hundreds of miles, I still have options.

So even if you oppose discrimination on all grounds as a matter of principle (and yes, while I can be a bit of a curmudgeon, I've largely come to terms with girls invading my GROSS clubhouses), and while that is a position I can respect, even if I don't fully support it, what I really don't get is why people need to turn this into a massive barroom brawl. Do we really have that much emotion invested in getting the perfect cake from that perfect baker? Are we so thin skinned that rejection from one small business owner means we have to trigger global thermonuclear war?

Is it just possible that perhaps these fights reveal just a little too much about our own insecurities?

Yeah, yeah, yeah...people shouldn't discriminate like this. But gay rights battles were won by convincing others to support us, not forcing them. It's like people here want to abandon our winning strategy now that we actually have real political influence. To be honest, I'm kind of disappointed (though not surprised) that this is how we choose to use our power.

@31, I toyed with the idea that civil rights *laws* didn't do very much, that after all they don't turn assholes into decent humans, and that the real civil rights revolution was social. (I was in my teen libertarian phase and motivated to believe that civil rights laws weren't necessary.)

The thing is, anti-discrimination laws help shift social norms and attitudes. They communicate let's all just live with each other, and sometimes people are surprised to find they can deal, or can at least keep their complaints private. The law sets a new default. A lot of people just roll with that.

@31
So if I want to buy a cake I would have to call bakeries before hand to determine if they would sell it to me? Who has time for that?

The LW's comment about guns--"Every gun sale, by a business, is required by law to do complete and pass a background check"--is actually TRUE, not dumb.

The loophole that everyone wants to educate LW about applies to private individuals. Private individuals RARELY sell guns at gun shows, it's pretty much all businesses. If the loophole were closed, it would have minuscule effect (which is not to say it shouldn't be closed, but lets not (a) greatly exaggerate the effect of closing the loophole, or (b) call someone dumbest ever because they know that the "loophole" really doesn't much exist).

@31 - Corydon, I guess you missed my point that it's not about the fucking cake. The cake is the insignificant wedge issue that gets the fundies the precedent they want. And once they get that precedent....

Gay person is driving across country, and now every hotel for a 150 mile radius won't let them stay with their boyfriend. Believe me, there are parts of this country where that will be true. Landlord evicts gay person when they discover the tenant is gay, and no one else in town will rent to them. Every grocery store in North Dakota refuses to let gay people shop there. The pharmacies refuse to fill prescriptions for AIDS medications because it's God's will.

You think these are ridiculous examples? They're already in the news. Pharmacy owners are currently suing for the right to be able to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions. In many parts of the country, women have to travel hundreds of miles to get an abortion.

It's easy to say that gay people should then just move to places that are more accepting. But that's a privileged point of view that lots of poorer people simply don't have the option of doing. Nor should they have to.

I don't give a flying fuck about the goddamn cake, but once again, IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FUCKING CAKE. It's about the precedent the fundies are trying to set.

You're all missing the most important question. Where did Dan get that perfect donut/bullets stock photo?

@36 - good answer to @31. It's about more than the cake. And there are areas of the country where options aren't easily available. I live in a town with one grocery store. If they refused to serve me, I'd have to travel an hour (each way) to get to the next closest store. We only have a handful of motels; what if they refused to rent rooms to single women or LGBT couples or whatever? (a lot of hotels these days are owned by Muslims; single women may not be their favorite customer). In our town, there aren't many options. We have one emergency room; what if they turned away a person because of their color? In the bad old days, there were hospitals who turned away blacks.

It's not just about the cake.

@31, that is a mighty privileged viewpoint.

I'm a white male with a comfortable income, living in a large liberal city. I have literally dozens of bakeries to choose from. In that context, sure, if one is owned by a bigoted douchenozzle, I can easily find another. It isn't something I've ever had to worry about. I can't even imagine a bakery in this city declining to bake me a birthday cake. So who cares, right?

But what if I lived in a small town in South Dakota, or northern Idaho, and there is only 1 bakery? What if I'm poor, and don't have a car, or the ability to drive 50 miles to find another bakery that might (or might not) be willing to bake me a cake? What if I'm handicapped, and there is only 1 bakery accessible to me on a bus route? What if it isn't a cake I need, but blood pressure medication? Or what if I'm living in a conservative town where all the bakeries have decided that none of them will serve icky gay customers.

Civil rights laws aren't for privileged people like me who have lots of viable options. They're for people who have limited options. They have a right to the same service that I (and apparently you) can take for granted.

I appreciate the thoughtful responses from everyone. Sorry I'm just getting back to this thread; I just got off work and everyone else has probably moved on LOL

@36, I agree there are larger issues. But it's also kind of about the cake too. There's that florist in Richland who potentially could be bankrupted in her 70s unless she agrees to go against her beliefs (bearing also in mind that she has already expressed her willingness to do flowers for LGBT people and the plaintiffs in particular for pretty much any situation, just not a marriage). She's clearly willing to go to the mat for this, and it's also pretty clear if you read her article that it's not hatred motivating her. On the contrary, she still professes friendship for the plaintiffs.

So what do you do with a situation like that? Maybe she's ignorant, or ill informed, or just plain wrong. But you can't really call her hateful or bigoted; quite the opposite comes through in her article. Is she not allowed to be wrong? Must being wrong bankrupt her? Because I'm not sure I would like living in a country that policed its citizens that way.

You are right: there really are cases where public accommodations must be open to everyone. Medications that are needed to cure or control diseases are one of those categories (although nota bene, pregnancy is not a disease and fertility (male or female) is not a chronic illness to be controlled; the analogy between HIV meds and birth control is a false one). Food, gas, electricity, yes, these are all requirements.

But honestly, are there really stores out there, even those in small towns in the South, that are keeping members of outgroups from buying groceries? If so, I haven't heard of it. And I've actually lived in a small town or two in my life. As a matter of fact, small towns, no matter how conservative they are in outlook, tend to place a higher priority on looking out for their own than on political posturing.

The reality is this isn't the '80s any more. Walgreens is not going to deny you your HIV meds. Yes, there are indeed haters out there, but they are much fewer, farther between and less powerful than they used to be. Churches that still oppose same sex marriage, like Catholicism, routinely preach tolerance and understanding in other ways now.

The world has moved on, but we're still acting like everyone's just biding their time until an opportunity to start oppressing us will pop up again.

But let's take all of the nightmare situations listed as a given. What about that handicapped gay person living in a town of 50 who is shunned by everyone and has no transportation? Where will they get their cake from? Well, for starters, there is, you know, your own oven. Where will they get their meds from? Well, there's a whole raft of online pharmacies. Hell, I get my own HIV meds mailed to me because it's so damn convenient and cheaper. Where will they get their flowers from? I dunno...proflowers.com?

The political process is one where we come together as a community and hash out compromises that allow everyone to live together in reasonable peace and happiness. "Compromise" being the operative word here. We can draw distinctions between niche bakeries and grocery stores. We can draw them between large corporations and sole proprietorships.

Or you can keep subscribing to the tea party model of politics, which seems to be "let's stake out the most extreme position we can and then throw feces at everyone else." Cause, like, who wouldn't want their party to be in the same shape as the Republicans today?

@Corydon.

Fuck you. Pregnancy kills.

When a doctor prescribes medication they are making a medical assessment of risks and benefits. No, a pharmacist does not get to override that assessment.

Highly paid professional asks fans to do his work for him. Hey Dan, I know you don't get the anger of the Sanders movement, but you really just demonstrated how the new economy works. So-called liberals who haven't been affected by it just don't get it. Either answer the letter or don't post it.

Everyone's tackling the cake, no one is tackling the guns.

A friend who is married to a retired cop, and who is pro gun, told me this: If someone applies to buy a gun, and the seller has not completed the background check within the legally specified waiting period, the sale cannot be declined. So, so much for "everyone has to pass a background check." Evidently, not being deprived of one's right to bear arms for any more than the minimum time necessary is far more important than being sure you are not selling a gun to a violent criminal. Thanks NRA.

@40 So we should just do away with civil rights and run on the honor system because "the world has moved on"? And unwanted pregnancy isn't your problem, so fuck it? And apparently everyone in this country with HIV, or any serious medical condition, has internet access? Do you know that many state-funded health care plans for low income people require you to go to an actual pharmacy?

Public accommodations are open to the public. You can regulate behavior to a certain extent (not serving alcohol to visibly intoxicated people, customers have to pay for your services, you can require shirt and shoes, etc.) but you cannot exclude entire classes of people (black people, gay people) simply because you don't like them. This legal construct has been in place for over five decades (when the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by LBJ).

Just because it took SCOTUS a ridiculously long time to acknowledge that LGBTQ people are people and "religious" bigots dress up their bias in the cloaks of claimed religious persecution doesn't mean that their arguments have any legal validity whatsoever.

Pro tip: any time you wonder if it's legally permissible to discriminate against gay people, try replacing "LGBTQ people" with "black people" and see if you sound like a giant asshole. For example, "I shouldn't have to bake a cake for gay people because I don't like them!" becomes "I shouldn't have to bake a cake for black people because I don't like them!" Do you sound like a giant asshole? Yes. Would this form of discrimination be legally defensible? No, it wouldn't.

See how easy it is to resolve such quandaries?

Mr Cory - If your point is that you'd let a thousand hateful bigots slip through under the wire to avoid hurting one unhateful nonbigot, that's an interesting variation on the presumption of innocence.

Maybe more later - I've started and abandoned several tries.

@5: There's no reason to resort to Godwin's Law here. There are so many examples of this kind of thing in *America* that it would make your head spin.

example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

Corydon,

I can imagine a few ways to protect gay men’s bars from annoying straight women.

1) Dress codes: No bright colours, no skirts or dresses, no updos. Leather dykes will be able to hang out comfortably with their leather daddy buds but I can’t imagine you seriously have a problem with that.

2) Bouncers to enforce standards of behaviour. If the straight women are being annoying, they get promptly kicked out.

3) Repeal of equal protection laws. Allow anyone to openly discriminate against any class of individual they feel like for any reason at all. (HIV meds? Really? HIV doesn’t jump out at you from the bushes and attack you. You have to go out and get it. Yeah, it’s a disease, but I don’t have to protect you from the consequences of your actions, you filthy, sex-driven pervert.) If someone has a problem with that, it’s their fault for living in the wrong part of the country and not having internet. Anyone who thinks the civil rights movement was important or necessary is living in a delusional fantasy land. Separate but equal is an unnecessarily lofty goal: separate and unequal is just fine. Also, slavery was good for black people.

Why you would choose 3) when 1) and 2) are both available I don‘t have any kind explanation for.

Look, I was a full-time, very out dyke for ten years and presented as a dyke for ten more even when my private life wasn’t pristine. I know what it’s like to pine for a ___-only space. But lesbian bars in my town operated at a loss; they only existed because they were money-laundering operations for the mafia. Today they’re gone and as far as I know the lesbian-friendly bars operate at a profit, which is a good thing. The city also actively promotes the gay village. Yes, there is a loss. But overall I believe the kids’ intersectionality has made things better.

@48 "But overall I believe the kids’ intersectionality has made things better."

Sure, I get it. And trust me, I have no desire to go back to how things were in the '80s, even though there are some things about those days that I do look back on with some nostalgia.

I get the arguments about living in small towns. As I indicated, I have actually lived in a small town or two over the years, and I know what it's like when there's only one or two bars for everyone in town for everyone, young, old, male, female, straight, more straight.

That is part of the price you pay for living in a small town. And, trust me, I know very well what the benefits are too. There's great community (yes, even for LGBT people) but also strong pressures to conform and being out and being part of that community means walking a tightrope.

People who live in cities benefit from the variety that sheer numbers brings. We can have things like gay bars or lesbian bars or biker bars or redneck bars or Christian bakers or bakers who are Patrick Stewart with a watersports fetish. That's what real diversity looks like, not an ersatz one where we may differ a little on the surface but deep down all believe the same things.

And, while I would love to live in a world where people from all genders, races, orientations, creeds, ethnicities, ages and economic classes can get together and hold hands and sing Kumbaya, that is not the world we live in. Nor is it a world that we can ever bring about. History is littered with examples of failures to bring that kind of world about, and they usually don't end well.

Liberalism, as in true, classical, Enlightenment era liberalism, is the only way of life that has shown any success with getting us to live together without killing each other (and, shootings in the news notwithstanding, compared with the span of human history, our level of violence is so low as to be statistically negligible).

And liberalism has just one absolute: you must be able to tolerate people who are going to act in ways you don't like. We, the LGBT community, are the most obvious beneficiaries of this. But the same rules apply to us. There are going to be people out there that don't like us. Doesn't matter if they're wrong. Doesn't matter if they're stupid. Their existence is a fact.

As long as they are willing to let us be we should extend them the same courtesy.

Yes, yes, if people exploit a position of power to cause serious harm, then I have a problem with that. But turning away a client from a bakery? Come on...

What you're doing is creating a pool of martyrs that the other side, the real haters, can use against us. Why would you hand them a weapon in the form of a saintly 70 year old grandmother forced into bankruptcy?

Corydon,

There is no bankrupted saintly 70-year-old grandmother. There’s LaGresha Fizer-Brown. Why are you making things up?

And why are you switching arguments? First you said that you want public amenities to be closeable at whim to any class of people because you want to be able to go to a men-only gay bar, and (weirdly) that pregnancy, childbirth and childcare have no impact on women’s health or well-being.

Now you’re saying that equal rights in a liberal democracy are exemplified by Jim Crow? No. No they aren’t. (If it’s important for every business owner to be able to discriminate against classes of people, then presumably in order for a true liberal democracy to flourish we should all be going around with pink triangles and yellow stars and so on prominently displayed so that anyone who wants to can assert their liberal democratic right to discriminate against people they don’t know very well.)

If I have a public bakery, I have to make cakes for the KKK if they hire me to. And if LaGresha Fizer-Brown has a public bakery, she has to make a birthday cake for a dyke. That’s the way it works. I tolerate them; they tolerate me. (Bonus: no pink triangles or yellow stars are required for this system to work perfectly.)

@50: No, you don't have to bake cakes for the KKK. Membership in the KKK is not a protected status by law.

A similar incident occurred in 2008. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthroc…

Except in that case the business did agree to make a birthday cake for the white supremacists, and to write ‘happy birthday’ on it, leaving space for the customer to write in ‘Adolf Hitler’ themselves.

If the Campbells have a legal case over the refusal, it would be that the family was denied service because of race, ethnicity or religion, said Shannon Powers, of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, a state agency that enforces anti-discrimination laws.

The Campbells, she said, would have to prove ShopRite didn’t make a reasonable attempt to provide service it provides others. She said the offer to make a cake with room for an inscription would probably count as a reasonable attempt.

“It sounds like they (the supermarket) don’t want to offend other patrons or do something offensive to their own sensibilities. If that’s the motivation, that’s totally different from discrimination,” Powers said.

Discrimination is bad for business.
Any business that turns away customers deserves to fail.

Private citizens are allowed to sell, trade or gift firearms without a background check.

Dan, the correct response to this letter would have been deleting it, not posting it.

There is no such thing as a 'gay wedding cake'.
A cake baked to celebrate a same sex couple's wedding is a wedding cake.
Cakes don't have genders, therfore they can't have a sexual orientation.

When a same sex couple marries, it's a marriage, not a 'gay marriage'. The ceremony is called a wedding, it is not a 'gay wedding'.

@52, Here is the first line from my original post in this thread, which you must have missed:

I'll tell you why I don't mind bakers/florists/other small business owners (and mind the caveat there: small businesses) discriminating.

As I indicated from the outset, I'm not in favor of a blanket retreat from the public accommodations laws. Perhaps I could have made that sentence clearer. Perhaps I could have made my definitions for the businesses I would exempt more concise (in my defense, IANAL). I would add that I'd probably put bars into the same category here, partly for my own selfish reasons as stated, but partly also because there are a metric shit-ton of bars out there, yes, even in small rural communities.

I'm hesitant to continue the discussion of pregnancy because it's really not germane, but I will correct the record. Your paraphrase of me, "[P]regnancy, childbirth and childcare have no impact on women’s health or well-being." is inaccurate. What I said was, "[P]regnancy is not a disease and fertility (male or female) is not a chronic illness to be controlled."

Now, I am not a doctor either, but I'm pretty sure that you won't find a medical professional anywhere on the planet who would contradict what I said. For the record, I absolutely agree that pregnancy, childbirth and child care absolutely do have an impact on women's health and well-being (and in the case of child care, hopefully on men's too),

Finally, on the topic of the grandmother, here is the previous paragraph I wrote on that topic:

There's that florist in Richland who potentially could be bankrupted in her 70s unless she agrees to go against her beliefs (bearing also in mind that she has already expressed her willingness to do flowers for LGBT people and the plaintiffs in particular for pretty much any situation, just not a marriage). She's clearly willing to go to the mat for this, and it's also pretty clear if you read her article that it's not hatred motivating her. On the contrary, she still professes friendship for the plaintiffs.

Link to her op-ed in the Seattle Times.
Link to an example of how she's already being set up as a martyr (not my word, btw) for her side.

My opinion is that this is a completely unnecessary fight that we are waging that can only do harm to the LGBT rights movement. The optics of this battle are absolutely horrible. It strikes me as a classic case of political overreach.

At this point, I've been reduced to literally copying and pasting what I've already written, so if you care to read my words this time, I'd enjoy carrying on the conversation. Otherwise, I'll bid you a very pleasant finish to your weekend.

Don't forget, laws in place for doing the right thing also protect businesses who do the right thing. Plenty of businesses don't care where the money comes from as long as it's green, but I guarantee you there are community churches that would direct their congregations not to buy their cakes at Smiths' because they let [minority x] in the door. Those churches can hardly object if the baker is just keeping things legal and "rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's."

Okay, just kidding, they still do. Never mind.

Marriage does celebrate two people’s love for one another, but its sacred meaning goes far beyond that. Surely without intending to do so, Rob was asking me to choose between my affection for him and my commitment to Christ. As deeply fond as I am of Rob, my relationship with Jesus is everything to me. Without Christ, I can do nothing.

Flowers do not serve a religious function at a wedding, they are decorative.
Barronelle Stutzman deserves to lose her business. Her age is irrelevant.
She is slso a hypocrite.
She said she would have sold the couple 'prearranged' flowers for the wedding. Why would those 'prearranged' flowers be ok if a custom package would be sinful?

Many christians used to claim interracial marriage was sinful. Should this 'saintly grandmother' be allowed to deny service to an interracial couple?

Don't worry Corydon, there are still places in the USA where homosexuals aren't a protected class. There are still places where bigots can legally deny LGBTQ people flowers and cakes.
And homes.
And jobs.
And civil rights.

Scott, you're acting like a bigoted asshole. Do a google search, dumbass.

oh the cake is just a smoke and mirrors diversion, but Corydon: is there even really such a thing as a strictly Gay or Lesbian bar anymore? I like all bars of all stripes, if it's gay and women are comfy or if it's lesbian and men are comfy, if it's a place where anyone can feel comfy is all I ask.

heck I lived for 10 years in SF and with a few highly significant exceptions almost nowhere was distinctly gay or straight or men or women. and that seemed right. the few misogynist guys left were a bunch of boring old queeny farts who managed to conveniently forget how much work our gal-pals put in while our bros were dying during the height of the crisis when AIDS was almost untreatable.

I can never forget that. oh women in a gay bar, keep your issues at home. boo-hoo.

This is very simple.

Why do we insist on forcing it, even on the 70 year old grandma? Because IT. DOESN'T. WORK. any other way.

That's it.

We tried it, you know, the racial civil rights. Oh, just let the south (and the north) see how its not dangerous to let black men and women have the same rights as white people. Didn't work. People had to die. They did. Not just MLK. People still remember their aunties and uncles dying or getting beaten. After 100 years, we even reversed the trend. There were, by my recollection, black senators to our congress in the 1820s. Not so much afterward.

We tried it with women's rights. Women received the right to vote in 1920. My MOTHER wasn't allowed to attend UVA as a first year and was told she could only enter teaching or nursing.

What did it take? Blood. The Federal Government and the Supreme Court ramming the Heart of Atlanta down the throats of the South. Every attempt at bias, at boohooing over how someone's right to discriminate fee-fees is being injured, was knocked aside.

Let it be knocked aside. Don't want to bake wedding cakes for the gays among us, don't bake wedding cakes. Don't want to bake birfday cakes for the gay among us, don't bake birthdays at all.

And I am SOOOO FREAKING SICK of the religious exception hoarrrrssseee-sh!!!ttt. Have you READ the bible? I suppose I should sell my two daughters off as child brides. The bible says I can! WOOO WOOO. What do you mean my husband can beat me! The bible says I can!!! Sniff Sniff.

And here is the thing. While you sit there and twiddle your thumbs saying, "oh well, we should tolerate differences... " someone's civil rights are being denied.

Dear AAs, how long do YOU think you should have had to wait until you are allowed to use the same bathroom???? I mean, you have one right over there. After all, you might offend some white persons sensibilities..,.. .I mean, can't hurt ol' grannies fee-fees. To heck with YOUR fee-fees.

So, screw it. I won't undermine the apparatus of civil rights to protect someone's fee-fees.

Maybe I'd feel more sympathetic toward people's religious "beliefs" if those beliefs didn't treat me as a second class citizen.

Sort of reminds me all the puffing on fox news over the "war on Christmas." People who have never felt the pin pricks of discrimination, day after day, are awfully dismissive about the feelings of those who experience discrimination: "oh its not a big deal...." But let Starbucks say "Happy holidays" and its a war on Christmas.

I love @DarkHorseRising.

10: A lesbian can't legally force her way into your home and make you to bake her a cake,...

True, but, as the Supreme Court ruled in Harper v. Methvin in 1994, a lesbian can legally force her way into your home and make you listen to "Galileo."

@62: 100% agree. <3

@61:
The really weird thing is that it means that these Christians are expecting the world to conform to their opinions when their scriptures tell them explicitly not to be in conformance with it.

I gather that at least hypocritical acceptance of public accomodations law is one of the things that separates Libertarian Party members from libertarian-tilting Republicans, for American values of 'libertarian' (right-wing propertarian minarchists, 'right-wing' because their programme would reënforce power relations as they exist today...left-wing propertarian minarchists, rare admittedly, would like to see us start from equality and THEN try Libertopia) . Rand Paul grudgingly accepted the doctrine when he thought he might be President, no idea what Gary Johnson...oh, he said he would have signed it, and got plenty of hate for it...but nominated.