Next, they came for the bakers
We all knew this sort of thing was bound to happen:
The Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission has ordered a suburban Denver baker named Jack Phillips to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples, finding that his religious objections do not supersede the state’s anti-discrimination statutes…
Jack Phillips isn’t discriminating against gay Coloradans. Gay customers, as far as all the news stories have suggested, are free to shop in the bakery and purchase (at the same price) any of the cakes, cookies, pastries they like without ever being asked by anyone who they love or what the gender equation is in their sex life. Public accommodations, fine. But the fact is that Phillips does not want to participate in a specific ceremony because he holds authentic, well-documented, age-old religious objections to such an event…
It’s not clear what authorities can force Phillips to do. My guess is not all that much. But their action is no doubt intended to have a chilling effect on anyone who might want to act as Phillips has. This is an assault on religious freedom that is antithetical to the liberty on which our country was founded.
It’s ironic that gay marriage isn’t even legal in Colorado. The plaintiffs were married in Massachusetts and live in Colorado, and wanted the cake for a home town celebration of their nuptials.
Still, after all of this Phillips doesn’t seem too worried. He says that “his bakery has been so overwhelmed by supporters eager to buy cookies and brownies that he does not currently make wedding cakes.”
I like Mr Phillips solution !
The Constitution cannot protect people who are not willing to literally fight for their rights … perhaps against their own neighbors and relatives.
That said, I think that pretty much everyone realizes that the rights concept ship sailed some time ago in the U.S.
The new watchwords of the progressive class are the old community terms: “inclusion”, “affirmation”, “solidarity” and so forth.
No Marxist or progressive has any interest in political rights or “negative liberty”; those concepts can only provide a framework for a meaningful life, if the person who enjoys them is capable of finding meaning in a world – private, metaphysical, whatever – that reaches below or beyond the hive. But for the progressive, there is, ex hypothesi, nothing else “out there”.
In order for the progressive type to feel what it needs to feel, everyone everywhere must be accepting, enabling and affirming. After all, what good are rights and property to someone whose need for emotional fulfillment and the esteem of others is not being met by those cold hearted others?
Given however, that there is no secular way to reason your way to this obligation, especially in the context of the progressive’s own deconstructive and nominalist presuppositional stance, those who would have the world the way they want it, must simply take the bull by the horns and will themselves to power.
Emotional conditioning can take the place of reasoning, once power is gained. And after all, in a world where all is uncertain, the one reality of which we can be certain is how we feel … as social animals … don’t you know.
I think we have also all seen this trend accelerate in the news … the horror of ostracism and all that.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2644101/Being-ignored-WORSE-bullied-Ostracism-psychologically-damaging-claim-experts.html#readerCommentsCommand-message-field
The “study” of course originates in a Canadian university. Canada: assortative selection in action.
The WSJ had a somewhat more balanced take on a closely related theme.
Some enterprising gay couple couple would do well to open a shop specializing in wedding cakes. But then I don’t suppose that is the point. So much better to make someone bend to your will and spend all the money that they could reinvest in their business on the attorneys they will need to defend their rights to religious freedom.
Good on Mr. Phillip’s to come up with a solution to continue to serve all his customers.
This issue reprises in my mind the entire argument about Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Act.
Being of a Libertarian persuasion I find such regulatory dicta reprehensible. In the case of Jim Crow, to mandate that one must not serve a person because of race precluded any other merchant from saying “Well, if X won’t serve someone because s/he is [fill in the blank] I can do just that and profit from all of the business that they lose.” The Civil Rights act was a similar dictum but its intent was to neutralize the former Jim Crow laws. However reprehensible it might have been as regulatory interference, it was a necessity to correct earlier reprehensible regulatory interference.
It now seems that this entire Progressive culture has taken that 1960s corrective idea as a point of departure to mandate who must be served as opposed to canceling out who must not be served. This, to my mind, is an absolute reversal of intent; it is tyrannical interference more like the original Jim Crow laws than the error correction remedy of the Civil Rights Act.
From an essay by 16 year old student, Caroline Clausen, writing about freedom:
“Congress shall have the power to regulate the mixing, baking, serving, labeling, selling and consumption of food. Did James Madison’s secretary forget to copy this provision into the Constitution?”
Just about says it all.
I fully support the bakers’ fight to not violate their religious beliefs in this case, but one option I never see mentioned in these cases is to actually bake the damn cake, and put all the effort into it that you think it deserves. Ie, make a really s@#&%y cake that the customers would derive no pleasure from. You ruin my day, I’ll ruin yours.
The bakers supporters would know why the cake was so bad, and would still support them, as bakers. The customers and their friends forcing them to make the cake will not support the bakery in the future, regardless of how good it is because they know where the bakers’ hearts are. As you say, all they want is the satisfaction of forcing the bakers against their will. So, give them the satisfaction as you see fit.
Well, it’s not like the Democrats said they would allow choice.
Jim Crow was the Democrat’s way of continuing their political superiority that they took a hit to when their military lost US Civil War I.
Republicans and abolitionists could not make the Democrats treat blacks as equals (Dems treated them as animals, born to work in the fields, it was why slavery in the South was different from normal slavery elsewhere).
So without local support, people default to a force them to it policy, but never forget that their first priority was to get the Democrats to fix their own system. The Democrats refused to fix their own system, in fact they tortured and killed any other Democrat that wanted to fix their own damn system.
This ended in disaster because counter insurgency cannot be fought if the local tribes are intimidated into killing you all the time.
I would never trust a baker to bake a cake that he didn’t want to. I’d want my wedding band and photographer to be on-board, but above all I’d want my baker to be completely supportive of my wedding.
What is a Colorado Civil Rights Commission?
It’s sort of like Canada’s freedom of speech commission or human rights commission
The one that was on M Steyn.
If I were the baker I’d hire a lawyer and sue the state of Colorado for violating my constitutional rights. The Federal courts have uniformly held that the 13th amendment prohibits all forced labor. You can’t force someone to work for you or penalize them if they refuse to work for you.
“It’s not clear what authorities can force Phillips to do.” neo
They don’t have to do anything more. Now that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission has ruled that the baker’s (service provider’s) religious objections do not supersede the state’s anti-discrimination statutes, it opens the door to civil lawsuits. Where the ‘preponderance of the evidence’ (rather than reasonable doubt) demonstrates that the baker, florist, photographer, service provider is violating the state’s anti-discrimination statues by refusing to participate in the same-sex ‘wedding’, it establishes the legal infrastructure needed, to use economic compulsion upon those reluctant to ‘get with the new ‘paradigm’…
In any socialistic system, eventually ALL thought, speech and behavior is declared to be either forbidden or mandatory…
making sense of communisms grab for power doesnt make sense as the things it grabs for dont give in equally or in some form of order.
so the idea that it would be legal first before such would apply has no bearing to the reality of a power grab and so forth.
ie. your default settings are to assume a certain validity or logic is there, so that you dont have to check everything, and so, you keep saying stuff that to someone that knows how it works as a system, is an inanity.
and yet, all the pieces are there so that one would not do that… ranging from “if only stalin knew”, which is really an inanity of this kind of thing, and if you take the example to yourself, then thinking that they are following a logical progression when all llogical progressions would have them lose is SILLY.
if this was the normal, american way, he would refuse, and somehwere out there is a person who makes dirty pastries who would make a fortune (if that was one of the issues).
but note that this all started with removing the right to serve who you want undewr the auspiices of skin color (which is not racism a la trotsky the tersm inventor), and sex (women) and now gender
we allowe them to make people more equal, people protected fromt the discriminations that the unprotected are not protected from. like white men, and and… hmmmmm….
cmon, its another feminist vitory!!!
or do you think the rules really solidified for ex slaves and not all the women getting into bed with the state and creating all these offices for women, equality, and so on?
feminism was always a communist movement, and is their largest army, making up more than 50% of the population!!!!
i tried to lay down the lineage that was bringing all this along, but as i said, the victims are too buys making up reasons to figureout the reality they are stuck in.
we would violate the constitiutyion for our women
once done, and its broken, then the population will expect somethign whole cause no one told them it dont exist any more, nd collusion means that no one will push it too hard to let us know.
and remember.
this is all sold or predicated on the idea that what will come from it will be MORE succesful than the past, better than before, more prosperous, less desased, and os on
but since they invert everthing they say to turn a losing position they can dominate into a winner, you only havew to notive that the women self exterminated and very very shortly, they will learn that they had the power to make this change, but not the power to revert it.
you cant change a pickle back to a cuciomber once the ladies make it all sour.
or do you think gays and blackcs would have succeeded so wonderfully if not for feminsits?
and notice the change to law
this is the first time law is compelling people to act when there are alternatives!!!!!
ie. totalitarian
i said a while ago its a done deal
now we are to learn inch by inch what it means
the discussions of fixing things are null and void as its only old dying irrelevent people discussing it
they think they are important, but they no longer exist or count… which they wont get… as that is a thought they wont accept, and thoughts they wont accept are ignored as there are too many entertaining things and alternative points purposefully created so you can shop for a wrong answer you like more…
by the way…
you guys are missing the reality of this by a wide margin
ie. everythign done has to reflect the goals of the whole, not the tiny part your paying attention to.
ie. the sujbect is what the hammer hits, not that there is a hammer and its being swung around
what its hitting is luxury
and bourgegie luxurues
so you cant havse horses in central park, as homeless people cant ride them
you cant have custom cakes, as only the priveleged can afford them…
you cant have pet dogs or cats as that is an expense that only a wealthy person with cash to sare can afford.
its all the points of communism
but since you dont know the pointst of communism
you cant figure out the logic behind it
ie. like wathing a game without knowing the rules or the langauge and trying to guess how its played, and mixing it up with three other games.
oh. and out of that passing analysis you hope to grasp enough to say advisory things that can set the stuff back on track, and yet, you still dont know the game, how its played, what the rules are, what are its goals, how the mecanisms work…
and your going to win!!!
at least i can assess that people in that position, done win
If I knew of a bakery that refused to serve Jewish customers, I wouldn’t sue. I’d like to know where the Judenhauss is so I can avoid it. Palm Springs became the town it is today because the Jewish movie stars couldn’t get admitted to the existing Beverly Hills Country Clubs. So they bought up a bunch of land in the desert and created their own resorts.
But that is all logic and reason and the left has no interest in either concept. The Colorado Commission has nothing to do with liberty and everything to do with fascism.
Jim Crow was not individual businesses refusing to serve blacks. Jim Crow was the law of the land, both in individual states and in some aspects of the Federal Government. The state forcing businesses to work with certain customers is the same wrong that the state forbidding businesses to work with certain customers.
Ray:
The cost of fighting the State via litigation is a de facto tax. That’s why Wall St. settlements total multi-billion dollars without any admission of guilt; the costs and risks of litigation are even higher (Extortion by the State and its agent, E. Holder).
We do know the only two sure things are Death and Taxes, don’t we? The State will win, bankrupting the plaintiff in the process.
Don Carlos,
That’s why you have tort lawyers and class action suits. It’s lotto for lawyers. The lawyer has to put in some time and effort, but if he wins, he stands to make millions. What the state of Colorado is doing is defacto illegal. The state can’t force you to bake a cake for someone because they are homosexual.
Geoffrey Britain: “In any socialistic system, eventually ALL thought, speech and behavior is declared to be either forbidden or mandatory…”
Yep, they’ve turned rational thinking into a hate crime!
I think Mark in Portland needs to rethink his solution. Is the answer truly for the Baker to compromise his product and risk the fall out? Gotta be a better answer than that.
This is nonsense is heading down a path to confrontation. It will be interesting to see how long it takes; and what form it takes. But, it is inevitable. The American people cannot tolerate this indefinitely.
US Civil War II is not the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is that there is no conflict, merely some rioting, and all change is accepted. And then Islamic Jihad gets nukes from Europe and uses it on us.
Could this happen?
Now some folks are going to say . . . that . . . other folks don’t deserve help, don’t deserve access to affordable health care, don’t deserve their god given right to birth control, don’t deserve heat or warmth or even food.
But these same folks already have it all …and…that just isn’t fair. This isn’t the America of our hope, or the America I’ve tried to make happen.
Now, I know many of you are frustrated. You can’t find a job that lifts you out of poverty. I’ll make sure your frustrations are heard, and because you have spoken, I will act. So, I am sending Congress home. All further laws will be passed by me on your behalf. I am suspending the division in our government by the executive authority granted by our Constitution. My emergency directive act will authorize my staff, the Department of Justice, and certain valuable organization such as Organizing for America and Planned Parenthood, to act as my direct agents for change, until you cease to be victimized by those who wish to prevent the fundamental transformation of the United States.
The Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission has ordered a suburban Denver baker named Jack Phillips to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples
Mr. Phillips should say “Bite me” and ignore them. As far as civil lawsuits go, he should do what Sharpton did: simply ignore any judgment against him and not pay. And them the usual suspects can piss and moan and then bend over and take it up the tailpipe. (thanks to Liar, Liar for that line).
Actually, the great moral hazard is selective exclusion. They have normalized homosexual behavior, but selectively exclude other dysfunctional behaviors. With the normalization of abortion/murder, there are few behaviors which can be legitimately denied. The Democrats are confirming their legacy and demonstrating a principled support for creating moral hazards.