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I find that the use of test cases triggers about as tribal of a response as I have to anything. When Dick Heller has the strength for the Second Amendment, he is a hero. When Charlie Craig rings up Masterpiece Cake for refusing to bake the cake, he is an obnoxious little troll and the people backing him should go find a real problem instead of creating one intentionally. Of course, the facts of the cases matter, but it does seem more than a little like having this be the path to creating precedent will tend to create even harder feelings than would otherwise exist.
The thing with that, though, is that gay marriage was illegal and unrecognised in Colorado when the pair asked for a wedding cake. If they had gone to court to sue the state of Colorado for discrimination, fine. But taking a baker to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission seems like the easy way out.
Craig and Mullins got married out of state in 2012. Colorado legalised same-sex marriage in 2014. When the baker refused to bake the cake he was, like it or not, in harmony with Colorado law.
Except that Colorado law made the baker's discrimination illegal, so it was obviously not in harmony with that law. Your argument would be stronger were the baker somehow being asked to provide acake necessary for the wedding ceremony, as opposed to a cake for a reception. It is like saying a plumber who refused to fix a pipe at a gay married couple's house was acting in harmony with Colorado law. The legal status of SSM is a red herring.
Well no, it was specifically a wedding cake, which is nothing like fixing a pope at a house that happens to be owned by a gay couple.
As a matter of civic responsibility, please spay or neuter your popes.
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Martin Luther: world's greatest plumber?
#nailedit
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Just because the marriage would have been unrecognized, though, does not make the ceremony illegal in and of itself. If two people get married in a church and comply with all the requirements that that particular religion imposes, but don't get a marriage license with the state, then they'll be married as far as the church is concerned but not as far as the law is concerned. If the baker in question refused to bake the cake on the basis that he was opposed to the couple's religion, I doubt he could get out of a religious discrimination lawsuit based on the fact that they didn't have a license.
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Yeah. Laws should be read as one body so as not to contradict as much as possible. So if Colorado has a law that you can’t discriminate based on sexual orientation AND Colorado had a law that gay people couldn’t get married, it doesn’t really make sense to apply the first rule to a situation where a person’s alleged discriminatory action wouldve been in furtherance of a non permitted activity. Instead, the first rule should be read to be limited to discrimination related to activity that is not non permitted.
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