Wedding Cake Case in Supreme Court

Events occurring and how they relate/affect Anabaptist faith and culture.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Wedding Cake Case in Supreme Court

Post by Bootstrap »

ken_sylvania wrote:
PetrChelcicky wrote:I pray that a rule will be established which protects just that party that has more to lose. This can be the one or the other party depending on the situation. If there is only one hostel in town and they refuse to give the homosexual couple a bed, the couple has more to lose. But if a baker is at risk to close his business merely because of a cake, the baker has more to lose. We all ought to side with the weaker party.
What Biblical authority would you cite as authority for this idea?
Probably wouldn't fly constitutionally either.

The Supreme Court works for Caesar, and one of their main jobs is figuring out how to balance the rights of one party against the rights of another party. When there are major changes - like the new right to gay marriage Caesar has created - the Supreme Court always winds up figuring out how to balance these new rights against existing rights of others. Like us.

We're likely to see similar rebalancing as the legal system tries to figure out how new open carry laws figure in to 1st Amendment rights of expression and association, as we saw in Charlottesville. So praying for Caesar's wisdom is particularly important as these kinds of things shift.
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temporal1
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Re: Wedding Cake Case in Supreme Court

Post by temporal1 »

Sudsy wrote:
Bootstrap wrote:The Supreme Court has decided to take on the Wedding Cake case (Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission). This is a particularly good time to be praying.
And what exactly should we be praying to happen ?
God's will.
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Most or all of this drama, humiliation, wasted taxpayer money could be spared -
with even modest attempt at presenting balanced facts from the start.


”We’re all just walking each other home.”
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PetrChelcicky
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Re: Wedding Cake Case in Supreme Court

Post by PetrChelcicky »

ken_sylvania wrote:
PetrChelcicky wrote:I pray that a rule will be established which protects just that party that has more to lose. This can be the one or the other party depending on the situation. If there is only one hostel in town and they refuse to give the homosexual couple a bed, the couple has more to lose. But if a baker is at risk to close his business merely because of a cake, the baker has more to lose. We all ought to side with the weaker party.
What Biblical authority would you cite as authority for this idea?
Well, I have rather a Quaker background, and I don't use biblical texts as authorities (For me, Quakers are good in "foundations of theology", whereas Mennonites are much better in matters of practice.)
If I look back, I suppose that my ideas come from Karl Popper's critique of the utilitarian ethicists - he demanded to replace their goal "maximal happiness for all" by the goal "minimal pain for all".
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Bootstrap
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Re: Wedding Cake Case in Supreme Court

Post by Bootstrap »

PetrChelcicky wrote:Well, I have rather a Quaker background, and I don't use biblical texts as authorities (For me, Quakers are good in "foundations of theology", whereas Mennonites are much better in matters of practice.)
If I look back, I suppose that my ideas come from Karl Popper's critique of the utilitarian ethicists - he demanded to replace their goal "maximal happiness for all" by the goal "minimal pain for all".
Caesar is neither a Mennonite nor a Quaker.

In the United States, Caesar doesn't read Popper either, and our constitutional tradition and law are quite different from most European countries. Which is probably one reason that people were surprised by your earlier post.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Wedding Cake Case in Supreme Court

Post by Bootstrap »

Scotusblog has a really great Summer symposium on Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, featuring legal articles from many points of view, discussing how various legal scholars think this case should be handled.

A good place to start: Wedding cakes v. religious beliefs? In Plain English..

A lot of this hinges on the degree to which decorating a cake is artistic expression that is protected by the 1st Amendment. And that might also affect wedding photographers (the Supreme Court did not weigh in on that yet, deciding not to hear Elane Photography, LLC v. Willock).

But there are lots of shades of grey here. Driving a cab is obviously not artistic expression, nor renting a hotel room to someone. What about cutting hair or doing makeup for a wedding?

I think this opinion is clearer, because it focuses on freedom from being forced to participate in religious activities:
The First Amendment’s protection of religious conscience prevents government from forcing individuals to actively participate in religious activities to which they object. The justices in Lee v. Weisman, though divided on many aspects of the case, all agreed that the government “may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise.” Preventing religious coercion is sometimes seen as a function of the establishment clause, but it is also properly within the purview of the free exercise clause. Just as the protection for free speech includes a protection against government-compelled speech, the guarantee of free exercise likewise forbids the government from compelling religious exercise.
!!! SNIP !!!
Even if a particular wedding celebration leans toward the secular, a religious person like Phillips cannot be faulted for believing weddings are religious exercises.
Phillips thus reasonably argues that Colorado is forcing him to participate in a religious activity to which he objects by requiring him to craft elaborate, custom wedding cakes to celebrate same-sex unions. If refusal to participate in another’s wedding were not protected by the First Amendment, other participants such as photographers, florists, wedding planners and potentially even officiants would not be sheltered by the Constitution’s prohibition on religious coercion. Neither would the freedom of religion preclude the government from requiring a Jewish band to perform at a Christmas party, a Muslim event planner to coordinate a Wiccan ritual or a baker specializing in communion wafers to bake them for desecration at a Satanic “black Mass.”

Of course, none of this is to say that any purportedly religious objection automatically exempts the objector from all laws to which he objects, including anti-discrimination laws. Phillips himself is happy to create baked goods for gay individuals and couples for non-religious events, such as birthdays or baby showers. He also refuses to create baked goods for other spiritually significant activities that do not align with his own religious beliefs, including Halloween celebrations and polygamist marriages. In short, Phillips does not seek to discriminate based on sexual orientation, but rather only desires freedom from being forced to participate in religious activities with which he disagrees, including same-sex weddings.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
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PetrChelcicky
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Re: Wedding Cake Case in Supreme Court

Post by PetrChelcicky »

bootstrap -
I didn't claim to give legal expertise in American Constitutional Law.
As for Popper, he enjoyed a thorough liberal Protestant upbringing. He thought that "minimal pain for all" was just what Jesus would have wanted - and I am inclined to think that he was right.
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Re: Wedding Cake Case in Supreme Court

Post by haithabu »

PetrChelcicky wrote:bootstrap -
I didn't claim to give legal expertise in American Constitutional Law.
As for Popper, he enjoyed a thorough liberal Protestant upbringing. He thought that "minimal pain for all" was just what Jesus would have wanted - and I am inclined to think that he was right.

"What Jesus would have wanted" - I'm not sure about that. I take it as an axiom that Jesus wants whatever God wants- at least that is what Jesus claimed - and I'm not sure that is what God wants. I believe that He does want fullness of life for all, but life often involves pain. A loving God is not necessarily the same thing as an analgesic God.
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Josh
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Re: Wedding Cake Case in Supreme Court

Post by Josh »

If God wants us to have “minimal pain”, he failed to mention so in scripture and he’s not doing a very good job of it.
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Re: Wedding Cake Case in Supreme Court

Post by Bootstrap »

I listened to the oral arguments in the case.

Kennedy will probably write the opinion, and he clearly wants to see tolerance flow both ways, and is trying to find a legal principle to fit that. To Colorado, which wanted to say Masterpiece must treat gay marriage the same as any other marriage, Kennedy said this:
Kennedy wrote:Counselor, tolerance is essential in a free society. And tolerance is most meaningful when it's mutual.

It seems to me that the state in its position here has been neither tolerant nor respectful of Mr. Phillips' religious beliefs.
To the lawyer for the baker, he asked a similarly challenging question:
Kennedy wrote:If you prevail, could the baker put a sign in his window, we do not bake cakes for gay weddings?
!!! SNIP !!!
And you would not think that an affront to the gay community?
I like the idea of tolerance flowing both ways, and would love to see them find a legal standard for that. I'm not sure what that would be.

Colorado compared this to a religious person who opposed interracial marriage. Justice Roberts explored a difference based on whether decent people hold a particular view:
Roberts wrote:And the racial analogy obviously is very compelling, but when the Court upheld same-sex marriage in Obergefell, it went out of its way to talk about the decent and honorable people who may have opposing views.

And to immediately lump them in the same group as people who are opposed to equality in relations with respect to race, I'm not sure that takes full account of that -- of that concept in the Obergefell decision.
That feels about right emotionally, but I am not sure how that translates into law. Who gets to decide what decent and honorable people believe, and which views are not held by decent and honorable people?

Justice Ginsburg asked about who would be covered by a ruling - the florist? the photographer? the person who designs the invitations? the jeweler? the hair stylist? the makeup artist?

I think that points out a flaw in seeing this as covering only artistic expression, and Kennedy at times seemed to be implying that recasting this as a basic First Amendment case would be better.

You can follow developments here:

http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/ca ... hts-commn/

Better yet, pray that the justices will find a way to preserve religious liberty in this case. It's going to require fresh approaches.
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Re: Wedding Cake Case in Supreme Court

Post by RZehr »

Bootstrap wrote:Who gets to decide what decent and honorable people believe, and which views are not held by decent and honorable people?
God does.


Thanks for the update.
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