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Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2017 10:28 pm
by Tor
PDXFashionPioneer wrote:Because you see Tor, the anti-discrimination laws apply to small businesses and large alike. As well they should; either you're in business to serve the public or you're not.
Well, where do you draw the line at who is serving the public and must not discriminate, and who can't be stopped? For example, I've done work as a roving tech doing on-site service at people's houses. Granted it isn't likely, but things do happen. Do I not, for my own safety, have to be able to reject any potential client I don't feel comfortable working for? Here I'm actually on the receiving end of racial prejudice. Don't I still have that right, even though that means I'm significantly more likely to reject working for people of some skin colours?

I've also had reason to do work on commission. Why should I not have the right to reject a customer who I feel, rationally or irrationally, is likely to be more trouble than they are worth, or if for any other reason I'd rather not deal with them? Some people are great to work with, while a few are never satisfied, demanding endless changes. It seems to me the person who is going complain about being discriminated against is much more likely to end up in the category of "more trouble than they are worth," even aside from discrimination laws.
The Oregon Department of Labor levied a significant fine against the mom & pop bakery shop in a small town that refused to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. Even though the shop owners have appealed their fines to several layers of the judiciary and become a cause celebre amongst the religious right in this neck of the woods, the state Secretary of Labor's finding still stands and their bakery is still shuttered.
And what has been the real result of that? People have fewer choices in where to get baked goods. Any jobs that they'd created were destroyed, and the couple themselves may now end up looking for jobs where before they were creating jobs. And for what? So someone doesn't get their feelings hurt because someone chooses to make their opinions known and risk the repercussions of acting on them? While at the same time sending the message that certain views are forbidden to make known and must be locked down to fester until they boil over?

Furthermore, the problem cases I've always heard are cases of custom special pieces requesting work to be done in the future, never anyone being refused sales of already made goods. Would you complain about a cake shop refusing to make a cake that read "$CAKESHOP Sucks!". I've heard of of a cakeshop refusing to bake a cake for young Master Adolf Hitler, and not heard that they got slapped with a similar fine. Especially in the latter case, I haven't figured out what the difference between that and refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding is.

In the case of a request to make a special piece, my understanding is there is no agreement until both parties together agree upon what is to be done, a price, and a timeline for completion. In the case of a random walking into a cakeshop for a custom cake there may be agreement on price based on the billboard in the shop stating a price, but neither of the other essential parts of the agreement exist until after the shopkeeper and customer discuss the matter, and I have never heard anyone make an argument that there are no requests for a custom cake that the cakeshop owner may refuse. And it is right that the shopkeep may refuse requests, for otherwise he (or she) is in a way an indentured servant to anyone who walks through that door requesting a custom cake. Last I checked there are various laws that prohibit that.

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2017 10:46 pm
by Caultron
Tor wrote:...where do you draw the line at who is serving the public and must not discriminate, and who can't be stopped?...
This is tricky business because sometimes you can refuse to do business with someone and sometimes you can't. It depends on the reason.

If the reason an overdue credit balance, safety, or drunkenness, business hours being over, or lack of capacity, for example, you can refuse to do business with someone.

But if the reason is racial, ethnic, or sexual discrimination, then you can't.

So if the bake shop owners had simply said, "Sorry, we're already booked up with all the cakes we can bake on that day," or, "Sorry, we're going to be closed for vacation that day," they would have been fine.

But since they said, "Sorry, we don't bake cakes for lesbians," they were guilty of sexual discrimination.

It's often said that intent is nine tenths of the law. Think about the difference between murder and a shooting accident. The difference is what the shooter was thinking at the time.

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2017 10:49 pm
by Caultron
Here's what you get into when you start granting exceptions to the law for religious reasons:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pas ... da34897b27

We had a similar case here in Arizona.

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 12:42 am
by crfriend
Caultron wrote:Here's what you get into when you start granting exceptions to the law for religious reasons:
Pastafarians? I think I could get on board with that. It seems non-toxic enough -- even nutritious.

Contract law is an interesting thing, and there are no reasonable prohibitions on what individuals may establish contracts on if the terms are mutually agreed to. If the bakery doesn't agree to any of the terms -- for pretty much any reason -- then there is no contract and no work will get done.

A number of years ago somebody pinned me about my opinion of homosexual marriage. I'd been mulling the concept for a while since the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts had recently told the Massachusetts legislature to "stuff it" and legalised it by fiat. I didn't care much about it at the time, and really still don't, but when pinned on the matter explained it as a matter of contract law. Since the license to marry is granted by the State -- which must be above the random vagaries of assorted cults -- and since marriage has always been a matter of State and a binding contract between individuals (and formerly families) then the State has no business restraining individuals from making contracts with one another. What business would the State have in denying my desire to hire a carpenter to fix something? A plumber? The latter are contracts as surely as the former, so why distinguish? The overall result of my argument "in favour" resulted mainly in much head-scratching and a recognition of, "I've never thought of it that way, but it makes sense."

It doesn't matter -- unless, that is, you belong to a cult where it does, and that fact does not confer unto you the power to compel anybody else's behaviour outside your cult. If you -- as a private citizen or businessman -- don't want to do business with somebody you don't have to. There may or may not be repercussions beyond a lost sale, but you own that. The State should keep its nose out of the equation.

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 2:18 am
by Caultron
What about segregated lunch counters?

The issue there was protecting the rights of those being turned away, which were ruled predominant over the rights of consenting parties to make or not make contracts.

Rights issues are always messy this way. Two people claim mutually exclusive rights. Which do you pick?

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 2:32 am
by Tor
Caultron wrote:Here's what you get into when you start granting exceptions to the law for religious reasons: ...
That looks more like what you get when you get Procrustean government involved in things that don't lend themselves to such - which is all too many things.
crfriend wrote:Contract law is an interesting thing, and there are no reasonable prohibitions on what individuals may establish contracts on if the terms are mutually agreed to. If the bakery doesn't agree to any of the terms -- for pretty much any reason -- then there is no contract and no work will get done.
...
If you -- as a private citizen or businessman -- don't want to do business with somebody you don't have to. There may or may not be repercussions beyond a lost sale, but you own that. The State should keep its nose out of the equation.
Once again, you have managed to write what I was thinking far more eloquently than I could come up with.

As I said, the reason I see the religious getting so up in arms is because in the contentious cases it is a request for specific work to be performed after the signing of the contract, the contract being rejected before the contract is signed. Last I heard, there hasn't been one of these cases over any of the alphabet folk being denied service when they simply wished to purchase what was already made. I even seem to recall in one of the cases the baker was happy to sell existing stock to gay folk knowing they were gay. The problem came when there was a request to make and decorate a special cake, which, in my mind, is of a similar order to commissioning a work of art. It may be that due to volume the price is already set, but for such a custom piece a price and agreement to pay that price still do not a contract make.

Regarding segregated lunch counters, if the shopkeepers want them, they can have them. My recollection of what I've heard has laws put in place and enforced with tax dollars mixed up in the whole mess of that era. That's a horse of an entirely different colour.

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 4:31 am
by moonshadow
crfriend wrote:Contract law is an interesting thing, and there are no reasonable prohibitions on what individuals may establish contracts on if the terms are mutually agreed to. If the bakery doesn't agree to any of the terms -- for pretty much any reason -- then there is no contract and no work will get done.
But the problem is, people come in all types of beliefs and configurations.

Lets scale it out a little and look at a bigger picture...

As long as we're talking about private business and contract law, what if the bakery's supplier takes an issue with their flour being sold to a bigoted cake shop owner, and they cut the shop owner off on the grounds that he (the shop owner) refuses to serve certain people? Is it not the same scenario?

But he can always go with a different supplier...

What about a utility, such as the electric company or natural gas supplier? Many of which are NOT government entities, but rather privately owned. If you think this sounds asinine, think again, Amish people have a religious prohibition from electricity off the grid and thus do not subscribe to it. That's their right, but to reverse the example, what if Appalachian Power chose not to provide electricity to bigoted customers....

But wait... Appalachian power is regulated by the state... right?

Not so fast, we're talking about removing the states influence from all private contracts, thus under such a society, the power company would be in their right to deny service! Electricity is not required for life, it is not required for an effective society or government (we survived thousands of years without it after all...), it's a luxury that most people int he world do not even have, so lets not think it's "our right" to be plugged in.

Nobody, or at least very few people want the states involvement in private matters, however we do not live in a perfect world, we live in a world that has it's share of trouble makers and folks who want to have it all their way. As a result of which, the state must step in and draft laws and codes in an attempt to keep people as fair as possible.

The cake shop owner doesn't want to sell to gays? But he doesn't have a problem driving on roads that for all he knows may have been paved by someone in the LGBT community, his car may have been built by a lesbian, his heart surgeon may be bisexual, the lady who issued his license plate at the DMV may have been a transgender woman. But he doesn't have a problem with that though... he wants to enjoy the spoils of living in a MODERN society, yet when it comes to doing HIS PART to play fair, he wants to hide behind 3,000 year old dogma....

I'm all for religious freedom, but the irony here is if these so called "Christians" would practice their own faith, stop playing God and judging everyone, the world would be a much better place. I'm not saying that ministers should be required to perform homosexual marriages, but then again, a church is not a secular establishment, rather it is a religious one. I'm saying there is nothing religious about a damned cake! If someone can point to me in the bible where is says "thou shall not bake a cake for sinners", then I will yield this debate. Because I'll turn around and point out "let he who is without sin cast the first stone"!

They can not claim religious freedom because their own bigotry and prejudice puts them in conflict with their chosen religion!

And for all fairness sake, it should be noted that most Christians do see it this way: that it is not their place to judge. Whereas they may not agree with certain lifestyles, most Christians I know would not only bake the cake, but would most likely invite any sinner to their home, and have dinner with them. They may witness and testify, but shun and scorn they will not, because most Christians seem to understand that they too are sinners.

Perhaps what makes me so ill about this is the perversion of what is supposed to be a religion of God's love by these bigoted "fake Christians" that go on TV and vomit their self righteous hate speech.

They are COWARDS, who can't even stand straight and just say "no you make me sick and I'm not baking your cake"- at least that I could somewhat respect (even if disagree with), rather they jump through a legal loop hole, cite the message of Christ as their justification to play God, judge everyone, and then pat themselves on the back for the papers and news programs. They do not represent God's love, they represent pure evil.

THEY are the liars, THEY are the manipulators and system gamers.

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 5:23 am
by Fred in Skirts
moonshadow wrote:They do not represent God's love, they represent pure evil.
THEY are the liars, THEY are the manipulators and system gamers.
AMEN!!! :hide: :twisted:

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 7:33 am
by pelmut
Tor wrote:I've heard of of a cakeshop refusing to bake a cake for young Master Adolf Hitler, and not heard that they got slapped with a similar fine. Especially in the latter case, I haven't figured out what the difference between that and refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding is.
The difference is that one relates to a matter of choice and the other does not.

I can choose whether or not to overtly support a hated political viewpoint (which may even be illegal in some places) and it is quite right that I should face the consequences if I decide to do so. I cannot choose whether or not to be born homosexual (or black or transgender) and people should not be allowed to discriminate against me on the basis of something over which I have no control.

There is the complication that marriage is a choice, so the baker would be allowed to refuse to bake a cake that supported a wedding (if he strongly disagreed with marriage) as long as he applied his ban equally to every betrothed couple regardless of their other, unchosen, characteristics.

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 9:20 am
by crfriend
Caultron wrote:Rights issues are always messy this way. Two people claim mutually exclusive rights. Which do you pick?
"Messy" is an understatement.

The issue of wholesale racial bigotry is something that should, hopefully, be behind us now -- and it's a rotten shame that it persisted for as long as it did (and continues in some places). Ditto overt sexism. However, I do not believe that the answer in either case was to elevate one group of citizens above another. Gentler means should have been tried rather than the ham-fisted technique which was used. Note that I am not a supporter of bigotry or discrimination in any way; what I am firmly against is being compelled by law to behave in ways that I do not agree with or to. Do what you will in your own space, but do not presume that if you believe it's OK to punch me in the nose that I won't take exception.

To Moonshadow's comments about regulated monopolies, those are, indeed, special cases that are semi-governmental in nature because of the nature of the way they operate. Since they are the only avenue available to receive some necessary service (and anybody that thinks that electricity isn't necessary in the modern world is welcome to go without for a winter or two and see if they survive) then some form of social responsibility needs to be in place; that does not exist for random individuals or businesses. There may be social fallout from personal decisions, and that fallout may affect a business (for good or ill), but just as if I was selecting a plumber or a carpenter to do some work for me does not mean that the government can compel me to go to a certain one or that another one must accept my tender of a contract offer.

As far as "God's love" goes, is this the same god that demanded the sacrifice of a first-born son so a prayer might be heard? That's hardly love.

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 1:54 pm
by Caultron
Tor wrote:Regarding segregated lunch counters, if the shopkeepers want them, they can have them. My recollection of what I've heard has laws put in place and enforced with tax dollars mixed up in the whole mess of that era. That's a horse of an entirely different colour.
No, it isn't.

A private business may not discriminate among customers based on race.
A private business may not discriminate among customers based on sexuality.

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 2:00 pm
by Caultron
pelmut wrote:There is the complication that marriage is a choice, so the baker would be allowed to refuse to bake a cake that supported a wedding (if he strongly disagreed with marriage) as long as he applied his ban equally to every betrothed couple regardless of their other, unchosen, characteristics.
So, it'd be OK not to bake a cake for a lesbian couple as long as you won't bake a cake for any couple? Is that right?

Or you can only discriminate against lesbians if you discriminate against all lesbians?

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 2:08 pm
by Caultron
crfriend wrote:...I am not a supporter of bigotry or discrimination in any way; what I am firmly against is being compelled by law to behave in ways that I do not agree with or to...
So, you're against bigotry and discrimination, but also against preventing them. Is that right?

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 3:46 pm
by crfriend
Caultron wrote:So, you're against bigotry and discrimination, but also against preventing them. Is that right?
I'm not at all against trying to preventing bigotry and discrimination, but I am against ham-fisted tactics by the State because almost every time those get employed they go too far and can make matters worse instead of better.

Bigotry and the like are things that this society should be ashamed of; yet, some still laud that bigotry. We're seeing that now in spades, and I sincerely hope it's the dying gasps of a corrupt society (or at least a significant subset thereof).

Re: Delhaize America Earns Top Marks in 2017 CEI

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 7:27 pm
by pelmut
Caultron wrote:
pelmut wrote:There is the complication that marriage is a choice, so the baker would be allowed to refuse to bake a cake that supported a wedding (if he strongly disagreed with marriage) as long as he applied his ban equally to every betrothed couple regardless of their other, unchosen, characteristics.
So, it'd be OK not to bake a cake for a lesbian couple as long as you won't bake a cake for any couple? Is that right?
That's right, because you are not discriminating against a characteristic over which they have no control. They can choose whether or not they become a couple and, if having one of your cakes is supremely important to them, they could choose not to be a couple in order to have you bake it for them.
Or you can only discriminate against lesbians if you discriminate against all lesbians?
No, because you would now be discriminating on the basis of something they did not choose to be and cannot change. However much they might want your cake, they cannot un-lesbianise themselves in order to get it. Neither could they could be re-born white-skinned if they were black-skinned, or cis-gendered if they were transgendered; so those are 'protected' characteristics which deserve protection from discrimination.

[You would be perfectly within your rights to refuse to bake a cake for one particular lesbian couple who still hadn't paid for the last one. That would not be discrimination because they were lesbians, it would be because they chose not to pay you.]