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by ashtonkem 1533 days ago
The reason why the “bake a cake” thing was ever an actual point of controversy is because it centered around an immutable aspect of people; their sexual orientation. There is leagues of difference between denying service due to who they are vs. their behavior.
4 comments

There was a relevant discussion earlier today in which I commented [0]. Read the parent comment too. The point we were making is that nondiscrimination against homosexuality (or anything) should be automatic, and not have anything to do with whether it's genetic or not. The argument that somehow it's more important because its immutable" is ridiculous- if some later study decided it was learned, would that change something? Anyway, that has no bearing the the "cake" business because that was about the cake, not the attributes of the client. And the analogy is very relevant regardless, because it's about hypocrisy in telling private businesses what to do.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30968739

Muslims can simply renounce their faith whenever they like.
As can Christians, aethists, or whomever else. Are you arguing that we should remove religion from the list of protected classes? A bit harder than most of the others since it happens to be in the constitution, but whatever, I'm open to that idea...
> Are you arguing that we should remove religion from the list of protected classes?

Of course not, the idea is completely bonkers. The point is that protections are not extended solely on the basis of "immutable" or inborn characteristics.

I will repeat a part of my comment I posted in another thread:

It’s a weird legal meme that immutable characteristics should somehow be treated differently for the purposes of moral blameworthiness. I am not really sure where it comes from and why people seem so eager to parrot it, but it looks completely baseless.

> The reason why the “bake a cake” thing was ever an actual point of controversy is because it centered around an immutable aspect of people; their sexual orientation. There is leagues of difference between denying service due to who they are vs. their behavior.

So sexuality is immutable?