bubbadog said:At the very least, I'd say you wanted the courts to take seriously the claim that baking a cake was an matter of freedom of speech and expression -- a claim that had not seriously been considered before.D. C. Bear said:bubbadog said:If you feel strongly enough about the issue, then you have every right to ask the abortion doctor not to come back to your restaurant. First, it's not like he's homeless and hungry and depending on your Christian hospitality. Second, moral issues like this go deeper than traditional political disagreements over, say, budget deficits or infrastructure spending. Opponents of abortion have already done things like stake out clinics and picket the homes of abortion providers. Why, really, should restaurants be any different simply because they're a venue that hasn't been used in this way before.Forest Bueller said:
But, it is my job to feed people, not to determine their unworthiness. Even if a known abortion Doctor came in for a meal, unless part of serving him included him asking me to affirm abortion, he would be served and treated as kindly as anybody in the Restaurant. I mean the man just needs a meal, and it would be my business to meet his needs.
For opponents of Trump who come from backgrounds in both the Republican and Democratic parties, aiding and abetting Trump is a moral issue, just as aiding and abetting abortion is a moral issue for pro-life folks. I have heard many Trump supporters from rural America (which is where I came from and my values were formed, as you and I have discussed via PMs) and from the Rust Belt say that they felt forgotten by the "coastal elites," that their voices were not being listened to and their needs were being ignored. Their world was crumbling under their feet as jobs were moving out and drugs and crime moved in, and nobody was seriously doing anything.
The problems are real, and the complaint rings true. The forces of globalization may be irreversible, but they also have taken a disproportionate toll on people in rural America and the Rust Belt. Nobody in either party has been able to figure out how to respond to something that's bigger than any government, but worse, nobody acts like they really even care. Instead of talking about how we respond to the toll of globalization, the elites of both parties act like globalization as an unalloyed victory. They point out how it's raising standards of living in the Third World, which is little comfort to people in our own country whose own living standards have fallen and whose futures look dim. That's the void Trumpism fills, and the elites in both parties (but especially the Democrats, which used to be the party of the working man) need to listen more and judge a little less.
But the listening works both ways. People who would go so far as risk their businesses to make a statement against what Sarah Sanders does and represents are not on some mindless lark and are not crazy. If she was serious enough about her beliefs to do this, then she ought to be taken as seriously as social conservatives wanted everyone to take the baker who sincerely believed that making a cake meant he was actively participating in a gay wedding. Just as people from rural America and the Rust Belt have legitimate complaints about how they've been treated, people like the restaurant owner have legitimate concerns about what they believe Trump is doing to American democracy and traditional American values. If Trump supporters want their concerns to be heard and taken seriously, then they also need to recognize that Trump opponents need to be taken seriously, too.
I didn't want people who disagree with him to take the baker seriously, I wanted him to have basic First Amendment rights.
The courts didn't consider whether "baking a cake" was a matter of free speech, although that is a nice effort on your part to minimize the importance of freedom of speech. I wish they had ruled on whether a person can be forced to create a work of art agaisnt his wishes, but they punted on that one. The question the court ruled on was that the Colorado commission was hostile towards his beliefs.