‘Gay Cake’ case now going back to court

[FeminismandWomensFights]

This case is an important one to watch for those interested legal protections for personal freedom of belief. It is now going back to court.
Gist seems to be that the complainant tried to order a cake with a message on it saying ‘support gay marriage’ from a baker who doesn’t support gay marriage. Bakery says no to that specific order.
Complainant feels it’s about discrimination because he couldn’t make that supplier supply him with that specific message on a cake. Baker says that any different message on a cake would’ve been completely fine to provide to him, it’s not personal discrimination, it’s about people having a right not to endorse political statements that they don’t believe in. (Possibly making arguments about religious freedom of expression too, but I haven’t read into the details). It‘s easy to see how this case could relate to GC people’s rights, at work and so on.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-49350891

I think businesses and individuals should be treated differently anyway as long as the individual does not have to physically do anything that is not in the realms of their business.

Waxing balls - not what the business does, can deny.

Decorating a cake with a customers request - what the business does, shouldn’t deny unless illegal.

It’s completly different to the ball waxing case. If that case was ‘we do wax balls but are refusing to do yours solely because we/I don’t like transwomen’ that would not be acceptable either.

Does that mean racist and sexist ‘opinions’ are ok as well?) is pretty dodgy ground

Of course people can express racist and sexist opinions. They can’t do so free from consequences, and they should accept that. No one has argued that an opinion is right or wrong. And you can’t ask people to only express the “right” opinion because what is “right”?

arguing your points about transgenderism and feminism by referring to an incident that is linked to homophobia - and implying that it is fine to have such views as we’re all entitled to our beliefs and opinions (and as a pp pointed out where does that end? Does that mean racist and sexist ‘opinions’ are ok as well?) is pretty dodgy ground.

Oh for goodness sake.

You cannot legislate people out of their personal feelings and beliefs. You can legislate against behaviour expressing those feelings and beliefs to the point of harm to others (and the line of what consists of actual 'harm' is currently under debate), but you cannot inflict one political 'rightthink' on the world. And no one should be seeking to do this. People have the right to their personal feelings and beliefs, they just don't have the right to actively harm others. And I would want 'harm' to not mean 'refused to ice words on a cake' or 'hurt my feelings', but mean actual harm, otherwise the whole concept becomes devalued and silly.

Point two: yes this is a serious case for feminists and the trans agenda. Of course it is. If someone goes to court and gets it established there that people no longer have a right to personal belief and can be compelled to perform speech and enact beliefs they don't hold under threat of legal punishment - for a start we just entered a totalitarian nightmare, and secondly the right to personal belief is all that's standing between women and having to pretend TWAW/ surrender single sex spaces regardless of their religion or disability or anything else.

These two situations are absolutely linked, they are absolutely relevant points to make.

And that if you defend person A's right to free speech then you agree with person A's opinions.

Yeah but why go out your way to defend them? And let’s face it, OP doesn’t care about their rights at all, OP just wants to start a discussion on free speech in relation to transgender issues - no problem with that, but then find something appropriate and relevant to base that on.
The people in this incident are homophobic - do I think they should have to write something on a cake that goes against their religious beliefs. No. Do I care enough about homophobics’ rights to free speech to defend them - definitely not. There’s more important people who are denied free speech who deserve our attention.

This is very relevant to my case - as Girlguiding is asking leaders to say that men and boys are now girls and women. Which I don't believe.

The people in this incident are homophobic

I support your right to hold that opinion, but it could be false and be considered defamatory.

See? You can express views other people don’t agree with, but there may be consequences. Works for everyone.

pixie how were the bakers homophobic? Not supporting gay marriage doesn't mean you're homophobic.

No of course it doesn’t

Decorating a cake with a customers request - what the business does, shouldn’t deny unless illegal.

What even would be illegal in terms of cake decoration?

So, you should be able to ask them to show a sex act? Or as others have said a message of "Gays are going to hell"? How about a swastika? None of those things are illegal.

And this is going to be for small business about closing every damn loophole that some tedious twonk can exploit.

So yes, Early, if you want to demand that someone must obediently pipe on any slogan demanded no matter how offensive it is to them, whatever. The businesses will just say fine, we either don't pipe slogans at all for anyone, or we ONLY pipe from this selection of slogans, here's the list. Likewise WaxMyBalls will be personally responsible for a whole lot of sole trading women stopping advertising and taking clients via personal contact/personal recommendation only.

There's a small section of society that is eventually going to have to accept that they can't control everyone and everything via endless wittering, litigation and tantrums, and that if they try people will just get better and better at stepping away from them.

Yeah but why go out your way to defend them? And let’s face it, OP doesn’t care about their rights at all, OP just wants to start a discussion on free speech in relation to transgender issues - no problem with that, but then find something appropriate and relevant to base that on.

This case absolutely is relevant. If it succeeds, it establishes in law, for the first time, that people can be compelled to state beliefs they do not hold.

Oh my word. This has been eloquently, clearly and patiently explained several times above.

The point is not the rights and wrongs of gay marriage. Or, for that matter, cake. We are discussing whether speech can be compelled.

(I couldn't give two hoots about who marries whom, gay or straight, for what it's worth.).

pixie so, just to clarify, are you in favour of compelled speech?

Pixie is in favour of compelled speech so long as she gets to personally approve the list of 'right think' opinions, judging by her posts.

OP doesn’t care about their rights at all, OP just wants to start a discussion on free speech in relation to transgender issues - no problem with that, but then find something appropriate and relevant to base that on.

Pixie I am the OP. This is totally a relevant current case affecting everyone’s freedom of thought, belief etc. I’ve said I don’t support the baker’s views (as it happens) but my support or not of their views is totally beside the point.
Other posters have already put it a lot better than I can but freedom of thought is vital to defend and this is for everyone’s benefit.

@CassianAndor this is what I previously wrote:
do I think they should have to write something on a cake that goes against their religious beliefs. No.

Unless you don’t know what ‘no’ means, I really don’t see why you needed me to clarify 😄

so what's your problem with what the bakers did? They didn't refuse to serve a customer on the basis of the sexuality (which may or may not have been known to them). They refused to be compelled to express a view they didn't hold, and the Supreme Court upheld that.

So what's your problem with it? Unless you agree with compelled speech you can't think that the bakers did anything wrong.

do I think they should have to write something on a cake that goes against their religious beliefs. No. Do I care enough about homophobics’ rights to free speech to defend them - definitely not. There’s more important people who are denied free speech who deserve our attention.

Do you not understand the concept of precedent, and that this is effectively a test case on the right to refuse compelled speech? It's the principle which is at stake here, which has to be upheld impartially. If you yield the rights of people you disagree with, you've yielded the rights of those who you might later wish to defend.

Yeah but why go out your way to defend them?

If anything defending the rights of people I disagree with to have free speech is more important than lazily saying "well I agree so of course they should be allowed to say it".

You never know when your own views will fall out of favour and suddenly free speech becomes incredibly important.

I remember having this argument about 30 years ago. It was all theoretical then as all my views aligned with progressive types, but I still realised that it could change.

The people in this incident are homophobic
How do you know that they are homophobic?

Do I care enough about homophobics’ rights to free speech to defend them - definitely not.
This is not about defending homophobia, it's about defending Free Speech. This thread is not about individuals, it's about the LAW, which applies to EVERYONE, homophobes, LGBT people, religious folk, individuals and businesses.

There’s more important people who are denied free speech who deserve our attention.
Feel free to start a thread about them.

If you don't believe in freedom of speech for those you disagree with you don't believe in freedom of speech at all.

It is easy to defend those you agree with. The real test of your belief comes when it is someone whose views you personally find abhorrent. So I'm going to have to agree with dancingcamper here.

Those of you opposed to free speech and in favour of compelled speech - you seem very confident that only views in accordance with your own will ever be protected by these case studies.

Make the following imaginative leap for me, if you will. Imagine you live in Alabama.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Life_Protection_Act

The "Human Life Protection Act" has been passed by the state legislature. Opposed by the Democrats, but passed according to democratic process, by a body of law makers elected by democratic process in that State. Arguably, their views, hideous as I (and many Democrat voters in Alabama no doubt) find them, are actually representative of the majority public opinion there about what counts as "moral."

Would you want Alabama, on top of these laws, to also be able to enact laws forcing women to assert "abortion is wrong", and denying them the right to say "abortion is perfectly okay, and what's more, here's sources of funding, travel and overnight accommodation to enable you to travel out of state to get the medical care you so desperately need"?

Fortunately for the women of Alabama, freedom of speech (and freedom from silencing of dissent) is protected under the constitution, so although Alabama's legislature can in effect de facto ban abortion in state, they can't prevent women accessing information about how to get an abortion out of state.

Now do you see why freedom of speech matters? Because you have no guarantee that the laws you want to enact forcing people to recite your chosen credo, and denying them the right to express dissenting opinions, won't one day be turned against you.

Before you propose a law restricting people's freedom, even if your intention is that it should only apply to people you think are the most immoral, indefensible bigots and evil-doers, always ask yourself "how would this law pan out for ME in the hands of my political opponents?"

If you fail to do this, one day you'll be hoist on your own petard. But not before screwing up the liberal democratic society many of the rest of us value so highly.

I think that it's fair for the OP to use the "gay cake" case to open the discussion since it's a current news item. I think that centring the discussion around cake specifically misses some of the crucial points though. A better example would be campaign material, such as Posie's "AHF" billboard, which the billboard company took down after they decided the message didn't align with their values. I think that's a pretty good parallel to the cake message, in that the company weren't obligated to enable a message to be shared that conflicted with their beliefs. However in the cake example: 1) the person commissioning the cake could have piped the message himself 2) not having that message piped would have been, at worst, upsetting and annoying. But extending that to campaign material - most people can't generate that themselves, and stopping people being able to create campaign material effectively kneecaps their ability to advocate for their beliefs.

Generally the way we look at this depends on a) whether we personally agree with their beliefs and b) whether there is sufficient diversity of opinion for our personal stance to matter. Right now there is enough diversity of opinion for gender critical campaign material to be produced by an alternative retailer, if the first choice refuses. But what if opinion on the subject was homogeneous? What if no one would print GC material or host GC websites or allow GC bank accounts? Is your right to refuse to support/ enable a specific message contingent on someone else not refusing to do so? And does it matter what the reason for wanting to refuse is? If the bakers had refused to pipe "I support gay marriage" because they oppose all marriage from a feminist perspective, and it had nothing to do with homophobia, would that make a difference? Who is the judge of what is or isn't "hateful" or "bigoted"? If an Islamic customer asked someone to produce campaign material advocating all women be required to wear a niqab, can I refuse on the grounds that I find that message hateful towards women? Can they then sue me for being Islamophobic? I think there's a lot more nuance in it that just free speech/ freedom from compelled speech/ freedom of belief and expression.

And I think we should look at this, and all issues, with a view to what is fairest for society as a whole not just what is going to support our specific cause at the moment.

So what is okay to compel others to write or say?

"Support sharia law".

"Decriminalise paedophilia now".

Neither of those things are unlawful to say.

I feel like most adults in this country have lost the ability to assess a situation and look ahead to its unintended consequences.

Because of this case succeeds, extremists like the far right will have a field day. They will seek out immigrants and lesbian and gay businesses and force them to write all sorts of "Sharia law is wrong", "Tommy Robinson says no to immigration", "Say no to gay sex".

Why can't supposedly intelligent people see this?

What do they think is going to happen?

Time for a bit of Vaclav Havel, "Power of the Powerless." The question you have to ask is do you really want to live in the sort of totalitarian regime Havel is describing, the sort of regime he and many millions of eastern Europeans lived in for most of the second half of the twentieth century, the sort of regime people still live under in China and Russia? Do you want to see Pussy Riot imprisoned, or detention camps for thousands upon thousands of Uighurs in which they're taught "right think"? Is that really the sort of society you think is a good thing?

“The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite! Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moments thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?

I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life “in harmony
with society,” as they say.

Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit; he does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: “I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.” This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocers superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogans. real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocers existence.