| I think there's a pretty clear line with this sort of thing that we'll eventually settle around. Let me start with the hypothetical illustration. Michaelangelo was a devout catholic. If a Muslim sultan had captured him and forced him to create works of art that offended his personal values, do we really believe that he would have been capable of producing his best works of art, or even items of the same caliber as those he regularly created? Of course not. He would have created art for sure, but without the spark that comes from his passion, there is no physical force in existence that could have prodded him to paint his best masterpieces. So then neither should a court force a modern day expression of artistic creation when it goes against the personal values of the creator. Most of these cases boil down to someone wanting work involving a not insubstantial amount of creativity by a craftsman who holds opposing viewpoints. Even if we force them to do so at gunpoint, they won't create at the same standards because it will be intrinsically impossible to coerce creativity. Should we then punish them for that? Of course not. Now on the other extreme, I don't think there's any real principled disagreement that can be had by forbidding McDonalds from discriminating who can buy a cheeseburger. It's a mass produced item, devoid of creativity at the point of production. What I mean is that all the creativity has already happened at the corporate office and we see merely the works of distributed assembly. There's no discernable difference between a McChicken assembled under coercion and one by incentive. Of course there's a murky line in there, but insofar as a work involves creativity, it ought not be compelled. For example: a wedding cake bakery. Mixing the dough and baking it is not a creative act - it's a well practiced procedure sourced previous creative endeavors that don't need repeating. A bakery serving the public ought not to be able to refuse an undecorated, baked rectangular cake to anyone if its part of a product regularly produced. Beyond that, you start to get into exercising creativity with frosting, however simple and I think you should not be compelled to exercise your creativity. |