A Florida bakery that refuses to discriminate against gays has decided they won’t discriminate against anti-gays, either. You know, so everyone gets treated the same, because that’s how we do things in this country.* They’ve been receiving lots of harassing calls from bigots asking for cakes with anti-gay messages, so now those folks can buy their cakes — and eat them, too.
So far, no takers. It seems the bigots are just full of hot air. When you ask them to lay their money on the counter and buy the exact product they demanded you sell to them, they’re nowhere to be seen.
* Actually, that’s not necessarily how we do things in this country, at least not in Colorado, where the state civil rights enforcer ruled that a baker who refused to sell an anti-gay cake didn’t violate the state’s anti-discrimination laws. (Click here for story.)
Bakers have become Ground Zero in the cultural wars — a position I’m sure they never expected to find themselves in. A Los Angeles Times op-ed writer tackled the cake issue with an fascinating slant. (Click here for article.) Likening it to a high school debate, she asks, what if gay rights activists are hit with their own question? (A debating tactic the writer says is called “turnaround.” We’ll probably see it in next year’s presidential debates.) She wrote,
“This episode demonstrates that some supporters of gay marriage are too dismissive of the tension between gay rights and other values such as free speech and freedom of religion.”
But she acknowledges that it’s not that simple, that “civil rights laws would be gutted if business owners could routinely refuse to deal with customers who offended their beliefs, religious or otherwise,” and “a line has to be drawn.” The Colorado ruling is a perfect example of such line-drawing.
The complexity of trying to draw such lines is illustrated by another Colorado case, described in the op-ed, this one also involving a baker, who in this case refused to provide a generic wedding cake with no message to a gay couple. A judge sided with the couple, saying he was “asked to bake a cake, not make a speech.” What the outcome have been different if the couple had asked for an inscription (presumably made with cake icing)?
The op-ed writer grapples with it this way:
“At the risk of slicing the issue too fine, I’d argue that there is a difference between asking a baker to provide a ready-made wedding cake and making the further demand that she write out a message that offends her beliefs. But I also see that this bright line could blur in other situations: For example, could the owner of a photocopy business argue that he should be able to refuse to run off copies of an invitation to a same-sex wedding?”
As for me, I think that would make a law school exam question.