Comments

1
Oregon Commenters Council Compares Paul Constant to Festering Pile of Horse Manure.
2
Teresa Harke is a fucking sociopath. Every time she makes a comment in public, it contains so many logical fallacies and non sequiturs, I'd like to see them broadcast far and wide. So everyone can see the basic incoherence in the mindset of people like that.

I mean, you're not taking a principled stand based on your religion: you're just being vindictive and small when you refuse to sell someone a fucking cake.
3
It's called a rhetorical question. One nobody seems to have answered, by the way.
4
It's a poorly worded and crappily conceived rhetorical question. All that was missing from it was, "not to painfully overstate it, but..."
5
That's the most ridiculous comparison I have ever heard. The LGBT community did not exterminate millions of people and preach hateful messages to infringe upon the rights of peaceful human beings. Nazis in the other hand.. Have their basic human rights too, but would be like asking a black man to make a Klan hood. Just intentional bad form..
6
So if the Oregon Family Council, or the Westboro Baptist Church approached the Mercury (or the Stranger) to purchase some advertising, I'm sure they would be treated with open arms, right?
7
They aren't suggesting equivalence between neo-nazis and LGBT people.

They were clumsily looking for the most extreme example they could think of a business being asked to serve a person who they have ideological disagreement with.

And as Spindles points out, no one has answered it:

Should a Jewish baker be able to refuse service to a neo-Nazi?

If so, why?

How does the principle(s) you've appealed to in your response apply to the LGBT case?
8
I think no one's answered it because it's an invalid comparison.
9
So, you're still not answering it. I will assume that is because you can't.
10
Neo-Nazis are not a protected class. The end.
11
They're protected under the first amendment. The end.
12
The Christian bakery owner is in a protected class too.
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@Blabby: Businesses are free to refuse to do business with whomever they wish (there are exceptions in regards to public accommodations and stuff like that). I agree with you on this.

And in addition to businesses being allowed to refuse to do business with whomever they wish (the right of free association), we're allowed to call attention to these businesses acting like complete fucking bigoted assholes. Cycle of life and all that.
14
This too: one doesn't generally answer rhetorical questions, especially really dumb ones like this. But...
The theoretical Jewish bakery owner being compelled by law to sell products to a member of an organization that specifically wants to kill Jews is in no way comparable to a Christian bakery owner who was entirely within their rights to deny service to someone for whatever reason, but CHOSE to state that it was due to the customers' sexual orientation.

Being squicked out by then vindictive toward some people who just want a fucking cake is in no way equivalent to being compelled to serve people who want to kill you. Regardless of what some bedwetter like Teresa Harke thinks.
15
I agree they aren't equivalent, or very comparable.

On a philosophical level, I just get cognitive dissonance over the conclusion that the the Jewish baker's principled stand is sacrosanct, while the Christian baker's is not. The only difference being that we agree with the principles of the former, but not the latter.
16
I don't think political identity falls under the same legal protections as race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and sexual orientation. I think a business could refuse service to a Democrat, for example.

But who knows - this calls for a lawyer.
18
@Blabby, it's really not that simple because the Christian's "stand" isn't even logically coherent. The Christian baker isn't hating the sin and loving the sinner, he's picking out one very specific type of sinner for different treatment. He's not asking all of his other customers about their supposed sins or anything. He's not refusing to sell cakes to straight people re-marrying after five infidelity-fueled divorces. He can't point to a bible passage that says you shouldn't sell cake to sodomites. He's just being a shithead. It's actually made more galling because he's dragging religion in as a legit pretext.

As Graham said, business owners are generally free to be pricks to whoever they want, but the flipside of that is that we all have the freedom to call them out on it, and the freedom to laugh heartily when they go out of business for being pricks.

So if a hypothetical Jewish baker hypothetically refuses to make a hypothetical Swastika cake, the hypothetical Nazis are just going to have to buy their fucking rugelach elsewhere and tell their Nazi pals that they somehow had an unpleasant experience at their favorite Jewish bakery.
19
Happy thanksgiving north america! Have fun eating bison gizzards and maize!

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