[Tao3300]

I still think the cake thing was weird. I mean, why would you want someone who doesn't like you or hates your lifestyle to make you a cake? You really think they're going to do their best work?

Hey, Person-Who-Doesn't-Like-Me, commit to this creative project celebrating what you don't like about me. I can't wait to see it.

[TulliusCicero]

If a generally-open-to-the-public business refused to service women or black people or Muslims, should we be okay with that too, because hey, they probably don't want someone who dislikes them to provide them a product?

[Tao3300]

You must be replying in the wrong place. I didn't say it was okay. I said knowingly forcing someone to do this is a good way to get a shitty cake.

[paulmd]

At the end of the day the person coming to a public accommodation for a service or good doesn’t and shouldn’t need to know anything about the religion of the owner. Why should they? What does that have to do with me buying a muffler from their store or a bouquet of flowers?

Living in a world where we have to follow all the weird -isms of each individual proprietor (including, yes, racism) would be a social nightmare and incredibly disruptive to social order. Which it was.

[Tao3300]

You must be replying in the wrong place. I didn't say anything about buying mufflers or flowers, or "all the weird -isms of each individual proprietor".

I'm not talking about broad principles and generalities here. The cake thing was weird. I wouldn't expect to get a very good cake by pressing the issue. I should think it much more likely I'd get some haphazardly-assembled, bare-minimum, passive-aggressive excuse for a cake.

[paulmd]

No, I’m not replying in the wrong place and i cited the portion of your comment I was responding to.

I think your idea that a proprietor reducing the quality of the product because they disagree with someone’s private life is literally the problem in a nutshell, you have just said that we need to just tacitly tolerate discrimination in public accommodations. The quality of the cake should simply have nothing to do with the implicit characteristics of the customer at all.

Furthermore, you’re suggesting that since they will just discriminate anyway in lower-key ways if we ban overt topline discrimination, that we should just legalize overt topline discrimination and let it happen. That’s wrong/bad too.

Like you’re just suggesting open discrimination should be legal because we can’t stop 100% of it. That’s a fucking shitty take/shitty belief system you hold.

[smitty1e]

"The issue is not the issue: the revolution is the issue."--David Horowitz

We absolutely cannot read minds, but leaving open the possibility of other, less positive motives might be prudent.