SCOTUS & gay wedding cakes

[carpedm9587]

No, it actually doesn't. In your mind, no doubt it does, because that's what you want so very badly to see.

I believe at this point everybody is saying the same things over and over, but it's been interesting.

Yes- it has been repetitive.

[carpedm9587]

except that is not analogous to the cake situation. Oxmix gave you a much better analogy with the white supremacist rally in the other thread, which you proceeded to nit pick apart.

If nitpicking means, "showing where it fails," yep...

In the case of the wedding cake it had nothing to do with the people, but the event itself.

The event was about the people...you cannot separate it.

Which is more like someone asking a restaurant to cater a white supremacist rally and the caterer saying "we don't cater to white supremacist rally" and the guy trying to send in a black guy to hire him to cater to the white supremacist rally and the caterer still refusing and then the white guys claiming racism and bigotry.

It's not the food and it is not the people buying it. It is the event the food is supporting.

I showed how this failed in Jim's argument. Repeating it here will not add any value. And you've been pretty clear that your moral position is not open for examination - so I'm not sure why you're still on about this...?

[Sparko]

Actually, no, he's taking a position based on his sincerely held religious beliefs which you belittle by reducing it to "the genitals they possess".

Carp has to keep trying to find a way to re characterize the situation to be against the people and not the event, otherwise his whole argument falls apart. So no matter what anyone says, he will rabbit trail it back to "genitals" one way or another. No matter how convoluted he has to make it. Arguing with him is like arguing with Mikiel about some bible verse. No matter what you say, Micky would find a way to read back into it what he wanted the verse to mean.

[carpedm9587]

He doesn't make gay wedding cakes for anyone.

He makes wedding cakes.

He doesn't make wedding cakes for gay couples...
He only makes wedding cakes for hetero couples...

Therein lies the discrimination...it really can't be made any clearer than that, AFAICT.

[Cow Poke]

CP...if you search for "same sex" wedding cakes - you are going to find a lot of cakes with two same sex people on it - after all - you specified "same sex" in the string.

Because the case is about "same sex wedding cake".

It's a little disingenuous to search for "same sex" wedding cake and then object when you get wedding cakes with "same sex" emphasized.

So, when I Google for "same sex wedding cake" (which is what this is all about) I'm "disingenuous" for using "same sex" as part of the search parameters?

[carpedm9587]

how am I being inconsistent?

You denounce as bigotry/prejudice a practice based on genetics in one context, and accept it in another.

And since you just admitted that it is only true for you and that morality is not something that is determined by majority, then your opinion here doesn't matter.

So why do you keep responding?

Then it is you who is being inconsistent. Would you like me telling you what your morals should be?

I would expect you to do so if my moral framework were not aligned with yours. That's how morals work.

Would you stand for it? I seriously doubt it.

Of course I would. I might now agree with you - but I would listen to your argument, as I have done here. Then I would assess my own framework to see if it needs adjusting and would adjust it if your argument was compelling, and not adjust it if your argument was not.

Yet you want to impose your morality on the baker and insist that YOUR moral views are what counts.

That's what everyone does. The baker wants to impose his moral framework. You want to impose yours. The "Christian church" wants to impose theirs. The Nazis want to impose theirs. That's how morality works.

That you are completely fine with him refusing to make cakes that represent immoral things, as long as it is YOUR view of what is immoral or moral.

I'm completely fine with him refusing to make ANY cake - so long as that refusal is not made differently on the basis of the sex, race, ethnicity, etc. of the client.

Yet if someone did the same to you, you would be screaming about it and claiming they are forcing you to be their slave.

Such speculations are pointless. I'll deny. You'll insist. I cannot prove to you what I would or would not do, and you cannot prove I would or would not do it. It's pointless speculation.

You either need to "live and let live" and stop trying to force your morality down other people's throat, or admit that morals are more than personal preferences.

Nope.

But I Do think you don't actually understand what moral relativity/subjectivism is all about.

[carpedm9587]

You cannot dodge the bigotry by just slapping "halloween" in front of "cakes."

I didn't. You were the one asking about Halloween cakes.

Sparko - your arguments are kind of descending into...well...absurdity.

[carpedm9587]

Actually, no, he's taking a position based on his sincerely held religious beliefs which you belittle by reducing it to "the genitals they possess".

And the religious belief is based on the genitals the two people possess. I've shown this countless times. But if it needs to be shown again.

Person A and Person B are in love, not related to one another, of legal age, and legally permitted to marry one another and be sexually intimate thereafter.

Now tell me if this situation is moral or immoral. If you cannot, and you insist that you need more information, then I will tell you that IF Person A and Person B were of the opposite sex, this marriage would be considered moral by any Christian church. NOW can you tell me (without knowing the sex of the two people) if the situation is moral or immoral?

Of course not. Because the very position is rooted in the biology/genetic make-up of the two people marrying and being intimate. So we have an incidence of morality being dictated by genetics.

There was a time when the same thing happened with respect to race. If Person A and Person B were the same race - all was fine. But if Person A and Person B were white and black respectively, BIG red flag...immoral...even illegal. Then we came to our senses and realized that differentiating moral acts/relationships on the basis of the genetics of the participants is just not right.

The same is true here - we've just switched from race to sex.

[carpedm9587]

Carp has to keep trying to find a way to re characterize the situation to be against the people and not the event, otherwise his whole argument falls apart. So no matter what anyone says, he will rabbit trail it back to "genitals" one way or another. No matter how convoluted he has to make it. Arguing with him is like arguing with Mikiel about some bible verse. No matter what you say, Micky would find a way to read back into it what he wanted the verse to mean.

I actually don't need to "recharacterize." I am pointing out that it actually IS about the people...and you folks are blindly ignoring it because (I suspect) to acknowledge it is to have to accept that the entire position is based in bigotry and prejudice. Jim is the only one that has accepted that it IS about the genitals...and is now trying to engage age-old arguments to support the position. I don't see them working anymore than they did in the past, but I'll review what he writes.

[carpedm9587]

Because the case is about "same sex wedding cake".

Putting "same sex" in front of "wedding cakes" does not bypass the moral problem.

So, when I Google for "same sex wedding cake" (which is what this is all about) I'm "disingenuous" for using "same sex" as part of the search parameters?

No - it is disingenuous to point out that you get cakes with same-sex couples on it. This discussion is about wedding cakes and who can get them. "Same Sex" is just an attempt to justify the argument by trying to separate wedding cakes into two groups, and then eliminate one group (which only one type of couple would want) from the discussion.

[oxmixmudd]

Nor should they. As I noted, if it gets as nuanced as "the figurine," then I think the owner is being petty to refuse to stock any figurine a client may ask for, but the fact is most wedding cakes have no figurines...so it's not a big deal. The issue is not the figurines - it is refusing to provide a service provided to everyone else on the basis of the sex of the people marrying (i.e., the service is provided for MF, but not for MM or FF).

I said in my first post on the issue of limiting the of cakes it would be a compromise for this specific baker. He would have to be willing to sell a cake with non-specific symbology to a customer for a same-sex wedding. But I think that is what he actually did. He was refusing to make them a specialty cake. And although I think it ridiculous to force a fellow to make a specialty item for any one about anything, you haven't yet caught on to the problems that would create. In this case specifically, to only way that colorado could be fair would be to force the other bakers to make the hate filled cakes or to let this baker refuse to make the same-sex specialty cake.

So we appear to agree that discrimination is happening - and it is based on the sex of the participants. You simply seem to think it is justified...so let's look at that...

No we do not agree that discrimination is happening. And you should be smart enough to realize that given your claimed math background. Arguing that M/F marriages are fundamentally different from M/M or F/F marriages is orthogonal to whether or not there is discrimination happening in this case.

So first - "it's always been that way" is a poor argument, IMO. There have been many things in human history that lasted a long, long time, and we are now changing (e.g., the role of women, abolition of slavery, etc.). Your argument, generally applied provides no room for such changes. You are also appealing to marriage as construct for children, but that is only one of two of its purposes in our society, and you are completely ignoring the other. You are also ignoring the reality that there is no reason children cannot be raised in a same-sex context.

I am not arguing 'It has always been this way'. I am saying M/F unions NATURALLY produce children, and that a society - to be successful - has to provide cultural supports for families if children are to be raised to be productive members of the society/civilization. This is the way things ARE. This is what IS. The types of cultural supports that are created vary a good bit culture to culture. But the commitment of marriage makes the children the responsibility of the parents and encourages both parents to raise the children properly and in a way that is productive to the society.

Since you are appealing to nature - then you would have to make the case that same-sex relationships are somehow "unnatural." You cannot make that case because same-sex relationships happen throughout nature.

They are unnatural in the sense that sexual pleasure and sexual responses encourage sexual unions and thus create more members of the species. Gratifying sexual urges between two men or two women will not produce children.

This seems to me to be a tangent. The genetic make-up of children is not always determined by their parents. I have adopted two boys - so I know.

No - it is not a tangent. For a child to know who they are they will often need to know who their natural parents are. It helps them understand why they are who they are. It happens naturally in a M/F marriage where the marriage partners are the physical parents.

My children know who their father and mother are: my wife and myself. They also know who their biological/birth parents are, and we encourage them to be in touch. They also understand who they are.

That is nice. If they didn't know who their biological parents were, they would want to know. And part of understanding who they are requires they know who their biological parents are. Your reply doesn't negate that fact.

A repeated appeal to "nature" fails for the same reasons it did above.

Your refusal to acknowledge the point does not mean it fails logically. You have not shown any failure or inaccuracy to this point in anything I've said. You've just said you don't accept the argument as valid. Anyone one can say "That argument is not valid". You would need to actually mount a counter argument to show what is wrong with the points I've made for your claim of failure to be supported.

Based on this, I'm going to assume you have neither adopted children nor are you an adopted child. No one who has either experience would use the word "REAL" in this way. It's demeaning, condescending, and dismissive of anyone who has parented a child that is not biologically their own. My children have two sets of REAL parents each. In many respects, we are far more "REAL" than either of their birth parents. What their birth/biological parents absolutely share with them that we do not is genetics. From there the four of them exhibit wide differences in how much they have been engaged in the boy's lives. But we have been their for them day in and day out since the moment they came into our home. I suggest you ask either of our sons who their "REAL" parents are. You might be surprised by the response.

I have witnessed many adopted children of my friends go on the search to know who their physical father and mother are. You can't dismiss the need to know who we are genetically. Your children have that directly. Many do not. Your offense however at what is simply a real and acknowledge need of adopted children is misplaced. It simply is. You've met that need with your children - which is great. But when a child is adopted and has no understanding of who their parents were, they often develop an almost overwhelming urge to understand who they are/where. This is simply a fact.

Horse hockey. Jim, you've assembled here a few tried/failed arguments that the right and religion have been putting forward for a long time. They no more work now than any of those other times. You haven't made a case - you've made a somewhat emotional appeal, and one that flies far of the mark in many places.

I'd be happy to explore any of them with you in greater depth, but I have to acknowledge that I am not a fan of your "make an argument" and then accuse the other of being narrow-minded, closed, hostile, stupid, etc. when they reject the argument and provide their rationale for doing so. I prefer the model of argument, counter argument, counter-counter argument, and so forth, exploring and picking apart the issues as they come along with the assumption that the other person is taking a position and making a case in good faith.

If you think you can manage that, I'm all in. If you're just going to attempt to read my mind and accuse me (yet again) of bad faith in the discussion, I would consider the exercise pointless.

I'll leave it to you to decide.

I'm sorry you don't like the facts I've simply laid out Carpe. But All I've done is discuss the very real differences between a M/F marriage and a M/M or F/F marriage. These differences are real. They exist. And they can't be white-washed away by wishful thinking that it's 'all the same'. It isn't all the same. It never has been and likely never will be.

Jim

[Sparko]

Good summary of Jack Phillips and his cake shop and their point of view.

[Sparko]

If nitpicking means, "showing where it fails," yep...



The event was about the people...you cannot separate it.

you had no trouble in Oxmix's analogy, did you? Of course they can be separated. One is the people, the other is the thing the people are doing. You can support your cousin, but not that he is robbing banks. See? easy.

I showed how this failed in Jim's argument. Repeating it here will not add any value. And you've been pretty clear that your moral position is not open for examination - so I'm not sure why you're still on about this...?

Just pointing out the failure of your analogy. You want to force it to be about "genetics" and the people when it is clearly about the event.

he won't make divorce cakes either. Or halloween cakes, or anti-american cakes. This fact is what convinced the supreme court that he was NOT discriminating against the people, but was in fact holding to his religious principals. Who are you to say differently?

[Sparko]

He makes wedding cakes.

He doesn't make wedding cakes for gay couples...
He only makes wedding cakes for hetero couples...

Therein lies the discrimination...it really can't be made any clearer than that, AFAICT.

see here you want to force it to be about "gay couples" so you try to say "it's just a wedding cake and he makes wedding cakes for other people, so it is discrimination" - yet when we talked about halloween cakes you didn't say "well he makes cakes for other holidays so he is a bigot for not making halloween cakes"

The event is the distinction in both cases. Yet you refuse to acknowledge it.

[oxmixmudd]

Good summary of Jack Phillips and his cake shop and their point of view.

Thanks.

I hope folks recognize who is attacking who here. This fellow just said "I can't create that kind of wedding cake". The patrons then engaged in a no holes barred attack on him and on his business.

The 'HATE' is - in this case - only coming from one side.



Jim