Friday, December 8, 2017

Wedding Cakes and Conscience: A Twitter Discussion of the Heart of the Matter






"Wedding cakes and conscience," Chicago Tribune Editorial: 

The lawyers for the couple claimed that allowing the bakery to refuse them would be akin to letting a business bar black customers. But race has an exceptional status in anti-discrimination law, supported by constitutional amendments. And the places once closed to blacks — restaurants, motels, bathrooms — served more urgent needs than those at stake here. Blacks traveling in the South during the Jim Crow era might be unable to find any place to attend to basic bodily functions. A lawyer for Phillips argued that if a merchant refuses service to a black person, the merchant’s objection clearly is to the person, not to expressing a message. 
Gay couples in Colorado have far more options for their wedding confections. Mullins and Craig could have easily gotten what they wanted without forcing a baker to swallow his objections. There are plenty of other Colorado bakers who would be happy to design a wedding cake for a same-sex ceremony. 
Phillips is in dwindling company in objecting to gay marriage. But it’s not too much to ask that he be granted the freedom not to play a part in it.










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