Well I can say that cases explicitly involving people not making wedding cakes for gay couples the bakers have lost. As I mentioned before, I find the case that baking a cake for someone violates their religious freedom utterly unconvincing. A disapproval of gay sex is so far removed from making a cake for a ceremony involving gay people that it's absurd.
he keeps dodging the same question over and over and over and over again, "are they or are they not allowed to refuse service to a gay couple legally under this law ..." Well it's a question he simply cannot answer because it's a definite YES. He's in a complete passive aggressive mode here, he did exactly what he wanted to do yet refuse to admit he did it.
I still cannot believe this type of thing that used to happen maybe in the 50s/60s is gonna start happening again in 2015! businesses with signs that says:
this is a past, I cannot imaging anyone would like to return to! Shameful, positively shameful!
You can bet that at least Scalia and Thomas will somehow find a different rationale to carve out an exception to their ruling in Hobby Lobby when the precedent they created in that case bites them with a liberal set of teeth.The Republican "intellectuals" on SCOTUS didn't think that far when they backed Hobby Lobby. That for profit corporations can have religious beliefs, and use those to get around laws. That's not just one, but two cans of worms they opened with one swing.
Now the dominoes are starting to fall, and the consequences of their stupidity are being exposed in the real world.
I remember in college reading feminist authors who were anti-marriage because it was (allegedly) 'enslavement' of women, subservient, etc. What if some radical feminist owned a bakery and refused to make straight wedding cakes (because patriarchy!) but was OK with gay wedding cakes (because of course). Should her rights be protected by the law? I'd say yes, as long as she wasn't otherwise refusing take any straight people's business. It's not always going to be a religious issue.
You can bet that at least Scalia and Thomas will somehow find a different rationale to carve out an exception to their ruling in Hobby Lobby when the precedent they created in that case bites them with a liberal set of teeth.
If the state she was in prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, she should absolutely not be able to refuse service to any straight person. (I also believe all states should have such a prohibition)
If you want to serve the public you have to serve the public. Our country has plenty of experience with what happens when you allow business owners to say 'we don't serve your kind here'. The outcome wasn't good.
If the state she was in prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, she should absolutely not be able to refuse service to any straight person. (I also believe all states should have such a prohibition)
NASCAR is just afraid that someone would say that their religion demands that they should be able to turn right.
One guy on the radio last week was saying that we should be allowed to put "we don't serve X" signs in front of business because he's banking on it backfiring and the owner going out of business.
One thing he wasn't considering was the sheer amount of closeted bigots and like-minded people in this world.
Its a bit more murky than that. No doubt Jim crow was popular, but I think part of the reason it lasted as long as it did, was because the state was used to enforce the laws. Even if a business wanted to serve both it could not legally. Had people been free to serve both, it would have been very different I bet.
The US does not have much experience with owners saying not your kind here with out law being involved.
The racist people were pushing law to further their racism. This meant that everyone bore the costs for racism and that hid those costs and made them seem small when they were seen. If you allowed people to be racist and bare those costs, you would see people change. We live in a world where people can hold beliefs that dont hurt them because of rules of society.
Again, I think the nuances matter here. You can't simply say "You can't refuse service to [member of protected class]" without looking at the specifics of any particular case. Literally every single person is a member of at least one protected class.
Here's another example - should services like JDate (Jewish singles matchmaking site) be shut down? They probably don't let Muslims participate.
Again, I think the nuances matter here. You can't simply say "You can't refuse service to [member of protected class]" without looking at the specifics of any particular case. Literally every single person is a member of at least one protected class.
Here's another example - should services like JDate (Jewish singles matchmaking site) be shut down? They probably don't let Muslims participate.
It is not that You can't refuse service to [member of protected class], it is that you can't refuse service to a person because they are a [member of protected class].
It is perfectly acceptable for me to refuse service to a black man because he does not have a shirt on, or because he bounced checks at my establishment in the past, or because he was rude to my waitstaff, any number of other complaints that have nothing to do with him being a black man. As soon as I say that I'm not going to serve him because I don't like black men I am in trouble, even if I follow that up by saying that I don't like them because they keep being rude to my waitstaff about bouncing checks while not wearing shirts. In one I have a specific complaint against a specific individual, in the other I'm saying that an entire class of people are not acceptable.
I would not agree.
The most famous example is the Greensboro sit in. Lunch counters were not segregated by law in Greensboro, as well as in numerous other places, and yet they were segregated in reality. Hell, in Greensboro the white community actively turned out to fill up all the lunch counters that black people were trying to sit in so that there were no seats left.
None of this was hidden and they weren't simply willing to 'bear costs', they were open about it in many cases actively proud of it.
More to your point of the law allowing it to persist, even after laws mandating segregation were abolished business owners and patrons continued a process of harassment and intimidation against black people who chose to patronize formerly segregated areas.
I thought the Greensboro lunch counter was segregated but the store part was not?
Yes, it was true that large parts of the country were racist. Part of the reason Jim Crow laws were passed was because those racists wanted to formalize racism. When you pass a law making racism forced, you get racist people justifying their beliefs as simply following the law.
If you look at the US historically, you see that it grew more racist after its founding. The reason it did this was because racism gave a big benefit to the majority that lived here.
Yes, only the lunch counter was segregated. It wasn't required to be by law though, Woolworth's said they did so because of 'local custom'. Then when asked to desegregate it they refused because they claimed other stores nearby hadn't desegregated theirs.
So isn't the takeaway that the store trying to stay segregated caused protest that got the public on their side to end the practice? My whole point is that if a business wanted to be segregated without the support of the law, people would take it upon themselves to deal with the problem. No longer could an establishment say they had to, and it would become a choice. We then as the public could avoid those places and promote the non-racist ones.
Greensboro was a great example in that the public got behind those kids and popularity grew. You are never going to change the mind of a hardcore racist, but the hope is to change the young minds.
But how is all that not similar to the bakery example?
Gay customer #1 comes in and orders a college graduation cake. Bakery takes the order, no problems.
Gay customer #2 comes in and orders a gay wedding cake. Bakery won't take the order.
Gay customer #3 is a wedding planner and orders a straight wedding cake for a client. Bakery takes the order, no problems.
Gay customer #2 gets straight friend to go to the shop and order gay wedding cake. Bakery still won't take the order from the straight person. Can the straight person sue?
What I'm saying is that tons of systemic racism existed without the force of law, and even after the force of law abolished that massive resistance continued. I find it highly unlikely that the south would be desegregated today without federal intervention considering it had maintained it for several centuries.
You had systemic racism for sure, but you were coming out of a time where laws forced upon society. The fact that people were protesting shows that the establishment would not have been able to practice its policies for very long. Segregation had just started to end at the time, so its reasonable that some would still cling on.
I'm not saying its right of course, just that its how dumb ideas work. I think today its even better, because overt racism is not popular like it was int he 60s. Now, its almost impossible for a big chain to be bigoted like it was then. You let people show their true colors, and you will see a huge backlash from society. No longer can people hide behind the idea that racism is not a thing.
You had systemic racism for sure, but you were coming out of a time where laws forced upon society. The fact that people were protesting shows that the establishment would not have been able to practice its policies for very long. Segregation had just started to end at the time, so its reasonable that some would still cling on.
I'm not saying its right of course, just that its how dumb ideas work. I think today its even better, because overt racism is not popular like it was int he 60s. Now, its almost impossible for a big chain to be bigoted like it was then. You let people show their true colors, and you will see a huge backlash from society. No longer can people hide behind the idea that racism is not a thing.
The laws weren't created and then people became racist. People were racist and demanded the laws be changed to accommodate them. That's exactly what's happening now.