Another "religious liberty" wedding cake conundrum

[Indy Texas]

The Christian baker being forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding is often cited as an example of the tension between religious liberty and civil rights. To those on either side of the issue, what would you say is appropriate in these situations:

1) A gay person goes to the Christian baker to buy a wedding cake. However, the wedding cake is not going to be used in a wedding. Rather, this gay person simply happens to like wedding cake.

2) A gay person goes to the Christian baker to buy some cookies. The gay person intends to serve the cookies at his/her gay wedding.

Is the baker required to provide service in either of these situations? Both?

[Indy Texas]

I get that. I get why people disagree on this. What I don't get is why they these arguments keep devolving into minutiae and technicalities such as the hypothetical in this thread when, at the end of the day, it's a simple either/or question. Either you believe religion gives you a right to discriminate, or you don't. There's nothing to say or consider beyond that.

This is an internet forum dedicated to arguing minutiae Tony. What else would you expect

More seriously, we live in a pluralistic society where no 'side' of most issues is likely to achieve 'total' victory, so we'll have to reach some sort of muddled compromise. In that sense these issues are relevant insofar as they help us suss said compromise out.

My old debate coach used to always say that if we couldn't reasonably argue our opponent's point, we didn't really understand the issue. The gay wedding cake issue is a prime example of this.

The 'muh religious freedom' side often doesn't see where some are abusing religious freedom in the name of bigotry, or how we sometimes single out homosexuals out in a way that we don't other sexual or family issues like divorce. Likewise the 'muh equal rights' side does themselves a grave disservice when they immediately dismiss conscience concerns as bigotry and ignore how such attitudes would work when applied to other issues (e.g. the draft).

The point of the question was to point out how ludicrous the whole thing is.

A wedding cake is not a part of a civil marriage ceremony or of a Christian marriage ceremony. Baking someone a cake that will be served after a wedding isn't "participating" in the wedding or somehow "aiding and abetting" the wedding.

If the Christian bake shop had a couple of routine customers who would stop in evenings for coffee and pastries and it eventually became known that this couple were having an affair and cheating on their respective spouses, could the baker throw them out of the shop and refuse to sell them any more pastries because he didn't want his special cupcakes to be their adulterous post-coital treat?

[Indy Texas]

Apologies for making assumptions.

But I really don't understand the logic behind wishing, for instance, that gay people would suffer discrimination rather than that one person who doesn't like gay people should have to set that aside and sell them a cake.

No one is compelled by the law to have a cake at their wedding celebration.  It certainly is customary, but it is not a legal requirement.  Nor does its lack imperil anyone's inherent rights.  (I don't consider freedom form being insulted an inherent right.)  Impaired access to wedding cakes is not in any way as serious a concern as impaired access to work, lodging, or freedom to travel which the Civil Rights Act of 1964 covers.

Conversely, you seek to compel specific performance, in this case the provision of a custom-made wedding cake, from someone who does not wish to provide it to that person.  Compelling specific performance is an example of a remedy in equity and said remedies are generally reserved for when remedies at law, such as the payment of monetary damages, are insufficient to resolve the situation.  Yet the person deprived of the wedding cake has not suffered economic harm and as I said before, I don't see the courts as being the place where we should deal with people being insulted.

That said, I do find a difference between a case where the baker refuses to take the order and where the baker tries to cancel the order when ey discovers that it is for a non-traditional marriage.  In the latter case, the baker is seeking an equitable remedy (rescission of a contract) and it can be fairly argued that eir laxity in finding out who is being wed before accepting the order is an example of laches that makes the desired remedy unavailable to the baker.

My point is, why should the baker care if they're selling a wedding cake to a gay person if they wouldn't care if they were selling a "regular" cake to a gay person?

We've already established that a fancy white cake is completely divorced from both the Christian sacrament of marriage and the civil contract that underlies secular marriage.