Seems I have ruffled some feather in another post.

No folks, I am not say *I* would run a business that exclude others as many have suggested. Yes, the steak thing was a bad example. Yes, the Bakery was already making a product, but they did not want to make the customers cake.

I am stating I support other businesses who choose NOT to serve others and they have a right to do so. There is not need to sue them. If a white supremacy, anti-gay, misogynist Bakery opened up in my town and I asked them to make a black lesbian wedding cake...and they said NO. DO I really have a right to force them to service me? Businesses come and go all on their own with this type of attitude to the public. They do not LAST ANYWAY.

The businesses that last are the ones that have great personal service, fabulous end products and know how to make people feel appreciated for their business.

Demanding others meets your needs should not impose on the rights of others. With each right, you also have responsibility to co-exist with others.

Sometimes, you just have to get over that not everyone is going to like you, support you, or do business with you because its within your rights. Forcing someone to so anything against their will is never a good thing.

The strongest action you can make against a business, like the Bakery, is not do business with them. Simple as that.

*Peace*
RMM

But the truth is that that wouldn't happen. Certain groups are more marginalized in society than others. For every 1 straight couple that MIGHT be turned away from 1 exclusively gay bakery, there would be thousands of gay couples turned away on a daily basis, and not just for wedding cakes but basic services, like what used to happen with hospitals, bars, etc. Same with whites vs. blacks, able-bodied vs. Disabled people, etc. It would be nice if the market would control for such things, I agree with you there, but history and human nature prove otherwise. That would put marginalized groups in constant danger of being denied services. A small town in Georgia just recently desegregated their high school prom. Even the police refused to enforce the law. Do you think in that town, the kind of policies you're suggesting would be effective, or even safe? Nope. Sorry, our society just isn't evolved enough for that. This one bakery isn't the end of the world, but its illustrative of what happens everywhere and doesn't get challenged.

Recovered Molly Mo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am stating I support other businesses who choose
> NOT to serve others and they have a right to do
> so.

But that's the point -- they *don't* have a "right" to do so. See, businesses aren't self-contained isolated units existing in a vacuum. They depend on publicly paid for roads to get customers to them. They use publicly subsidized water and sewer and power grids to operate. Their business benefits from publicly subsidized mail; they depend on publicly paid for fire and police services, road repair, street sweeping, snow plowing, traffic lights, courts, city/county administrations, etc. etc. etc. Without all those publicly-paid for services and infrastructure, their business would go nowhere. So there are two "prices" they pay for getting to use all that stuff to make money for themselves: one, they pay taxes to support it, two they have to abide by laws about non-discrimination. Since ALL of the public contributes to the services they use to make money, they don't get to arbitrarily exclude PART of the public in their business.

They don't have any such "right." They agreed to that when they opened a public-accommodation business.


> Businesses come and go all on their own with this
> type of attitude to the public. They do not LAST
> ANYWAY.

In the very, very long run, maybe. Admittedly, a lawsuit is sort of a "fast-track" approach. Instead of waiting for public pressure to shame them out of business, a suit brings the issue to a head, quickly.

The thing is, in a place like, say, San Francisco, that public shaming will happen *fast.* Nobody running a business in San Francisco will last probably even a few months if they refuse business to gays.

But how about in a place like St. George, Utah? The business there has no more "right" to discriminate than the one in San Francisco does, but it can "get away" with doing it without public pressure or shaming for a lot longer than the one in San Francisco -- because there are a lot fewer gays in St. George, and because the overall population is very likely to support the discrimination. Suing the business there for discrimination will stop the discrimination, rather than waiting a long, long time for social pressure to work.

Black civil rights history provides many fine examples for this. Laws were passed nationwide prohibited discrimination; many places already didn't discriminate, many others stopped when the laws were passed. A significant bunch, though, in communities where discrimination was the "norm," still discriminated (and sometimes still do). Lawsuits are effective and sometimes necessary to get those "holdouts" of bigotry to comply with the law.

A public accommodation business uses public resources, and by law must serve the public. ALL of the public. Its owners do not have a "right" to not serve some part of the public they happen to hate for no good reason. It's that simple.

> Demanding others meets your needs should not
> impose on the rights of others.

There is no "right" to discriminate, and there's no "demand others meet your needs" here.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2015 01:41PM by ificouldhietokolob.

Perfectly stated. Supported by all taxpayers, serve them all. A public business is not an inalienable right.

Thank you for the excellent use of reason and logic, kolob.

I cannot abide the "just get over it" retort thrown around so easily as a default position when there is no reason or logic to someone's argument.

No one is asking anyone to "like them." They are asking for decency.

Outstanding post.

Although I totally get RMM's point, and even support it to some degree, unfortunately that is not the society/world we live in. If you are going to have a public business you have to serve the public. ALL of the public. No picking and choosing. That might require you to turn a blind eye to things you disagree with but that is the price you have to pay.

What Happened to a Business' Right to Refuse Service?

If someone comes in and wants a 14-tier, gold-leaf covered cake and I don't do 14-tier gold-leaf covered cakes I can refuse to service them, right?

Why does that principle change with other unrealistic requests?

Can you please explain how someone requesting a wedding cake from a business that makes and sells wedding cakes is in any way unreasonable?

All you did here is replace RMM's steak with a 14-tier gold-leafed cake. What you fail to recognize is that no one is asking the bakery to make or sell something that they don't already make and sell.

If you missed the previous thread, you can read it here: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1649120

Asking for a wedding cake from a wedding cake business is far from unreasonable.

Recovered Molly Mo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>If a white
> supremacy, anti-gay, misogynist Bakery opened up
> in my town and I asked them to make a black
> lesbian wedding cake...

There is no such thing as a "black lesbian wedding cake." There are "wedding cakes" period.

If you establish that you bake wedding cakes, you bake them for everyone. If you choose not to write messages and/or names on any of them, you can't be forced to do so. If you establish you will write "congratulations ____ and ____" for one couple, then you can't pick and choose which couples you will do that for.

The hypothetical bakery owned by gays can't be forced to write "gays are going to hell" anymore than a bakery owned by Christians would be to write "Christians are going to hell", or have a professional signmaker make either. The law doesn't require a business to promote hate speech as part of their business.

Anyone who can't distinguish the difference between a cake that says "Death to fags", "@#$%& should be shot" or "Christians should be fed to the lions" and a cake that says "Congratulations Jill and Mary" has serious problems.

Okay --What about signs that read ""NO SHOES NO SHIRT --NO SERVICE"" Does that discriminate against those who wish to dress that way !!! It may not be relevant in Alaska however it may be an acceptable sign in California

JB

Those signs are unenforceable and always have been. It may make it clear what the business owner would prefer, but if the customer pushes the issue in court, the customer wins.

Shirts and shoes is a health and liability issue for one thing. Also they are required for everyone. A business that says "blacks must where shirts and shoes but everyone else can wear whatever they want" is discriminatory. Setting a rule that applies to everyone equally isn't really discriminatory.

Even in a nudist gathering, where a group of nudists has taken over a hotel or other facility (so they CAN be nude "anywhere" on the premises!!!), there is a rule that you MUST have top and bottom covered in any "public," or "can be seen by the public" area (like the lobby)...

...and you MUST have a bottom covering on when you enter any of the facility's inside dining areas. (By the pool, etc. are exceptions.)

No one objects...the rules are self-evidently sensible.

Those signs are not the law. Moreover, they are not applied only to certain marginalized groups of people. "People who don't wear shirts" are not a protected class.

Just Browsing Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Okay --What about signs that read ""NO SHOES NO
> SHIRT --NO SERVICE"" Does that discriminate
> against those who wish to dress that way !!! It
> may not be relevant in Alaska however it may be an
> acceptable sign in California

Such signs announce health and safety regulations that stores either get from the state or set themselves depending on their business.
They apply to EVERYONE equally. A man, woman, white person, black person, gay person, Asian person, child, etc. can't come in without shoes (because it's unsanitary and possibly dangerous).

You know, you could have spent ten seconds thinking about how that's different on your own, and figured it out. I wonder why you didn't bother to do that?

This is a wedding cake:

http://ruffledmedia.ruffled.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/upLoads/enchanted-forest-wedding-ideas-from-emily-steffen/enchanted-forest-wedding-ideas-14.jpg

It is neither gay, lesbian or straight. It is simply a wedding cake. Cake does not have a sexual preference.

Businesses can discriminate based on what a person does if it has a reasonable business purpose. Shoes and shirts in food service areas, credit report for major purchases, disruptive behavior, ordering something that the business does not normally provide.

Businesses cannot discriminate based on what a person is, i.e. female, black, Muslim, etc. There are some exceptions. Discrimination based on age, for example (admission to R rated movies).

So, businesses do have limited rights to discriminate if there is a reasonable basis. They do not have the right "to refuse service to anyone". That was not their right in the first place, so they can't "reserve" it.

What kind of a person would seek out a company owned by people who they knew would hold views antipathetic to their own views?

Would a person of -say- African ancestry decided to have a cake baked for Kwanzaa by a rabid member of the KKK?

Of course not.

Why would one assume that a wedding cake bakery would be against gays? It's not explicitly Christian, nor is it a conservative or church organization...

What happened in one case was they targeted someone of known religious beliefs and then decided that they just MUST have a caked made by them. Yeah, right...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2015 06:30PM by matt.

Fine. Its still true that businesses do not have rights and have to serve the public; otherwise they can have a private home based under the table business and not use tax dollars to operate it. Take public money, serve the public. Also, for every 1 targeted business there are many more couples turned away that never report due to embarrassment, shame, fear of a lack of public support, etc. In that way they are standing up for them.

matt, do you think the black students that sat at the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth lunch counter in 1960 were there for the lunch? No. They were there to fight injustice. I applaud and support anyone who does that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2015 06:38PM by wine country girl.

You make a good point, WCG.

matt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What happened in one case was they targeted
> someone of known religious beliefs and then
> decided that they just MUST have a caked made by
> them. Yeah, right...


No different at all from deciding that you just MUST have a hamburger and Coke at the Woolworth's lunch counter.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2015 06:38PM by tevai.

Or you must stay at the front of the bus.

So it's OK for Denny's restaurant to refuse to serve black people ?

Not according to these lawsuits: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/25/us/denny-s-restaurants-to-pay-54-million-in-race-bias-suits.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2015 07:03PM by wine country girl.