religious bakers, gays, and wedding cakes

So here's a question that popped into my head just a while ago.

So there's been same controversy recently wherein a group of bakers declined based on their religious beliefs to sell a wedding cake to two lesbians, some have inaccurately said that the bakestore owners refuse to serve homosexual persons, but that's not true, they would have been fine to serve them doughnuts or a birthday cake or what not, just not a wedding cake because that would make them an accomplice to an act that violates their religious beliefs. Any way they were sued and fined a large amount of money (I'm not sure who got most of that money the state or the "victims" though).

I don't want to start a debate on whether bakers should be able to object or not to furnishing these weddings. I just am wondering: in some states they are legally required to sell wedding cakes to same-sex couples, but what about the toppers, most cake toppers have a bride and a groom, but presumably a same-sex wedding would use a topper with two men or two women. So if the business is legally required to sell a cake to a same-sex wedding, are they also legally required to stock up on same-sex toppers, or are they legally fine if they only carry the normal ones? I think technically if they only carried the bride and groom toppers it wouldn't really be discrimination since they would still be offering the same topper to each customer who requests a wedding cake, right? So that's treating all the customers equally, besides there aren't just religious/moral reasons for not having same-sex toppers, there are business reasons as well: they don't sell in as much volume so buying them makes less business sense. Also if anti-discrimination laws generally regulate how businesses treat customers, but I don't think they require businesses to sell (and therefore to buy) certain products (perhaps in general it would even be unconstitutional to require businesses to buy certain things, I don't think the government can force people to buy things against their will, unless it's like car insurance).

Buy single man and women toppers and just give the same-sex couple two men or two women. Problem solved lol.

Didn't think of that. And then they can charge per topper, right (on the flip side they would have to buy more toppers). Then they also could use three or four toppers if there's a polygamous wedding.

But legally they wouldn't have to do that right? If they did, then wouldn't they also need to buy black an asian toppers too?

I don't think so since each kind of topper is a different product. So a black male is a different product than an Asian male or so on. They can only provide whatever toppers they want, they can't be forced. The cake comparison is different because there is literally no difference between a cake in a straight wedding and a cake in a same-sex wedding - it is essentially the same product. Having to order different kinds of toppers just to accommodate everyone would place undue hardship on the baker.

It is too late in the day for me to be reading. "Religious bakers, gays, and wedding cakes" is too sing-songy of a phrase to passover though, so here I am.

If you don't want to cater to gay weddings then you shouldn't have gotten into a business that involves weddings. You could always go into software development.

As for your comment about toppers, what utter gibberish. Next you'll be arguing against interracial marriage as that will require stocking toppers of different races.

Hey, that's an idea:

"Religious bakers, gays, and wedding cakes/

gotta make a living, do whatever it takes"

good hook, now I just need to add some stanzas and I can sell the song to Bieber for a million bucks. Edit: Or should I sell it to "1D" (which is a terrible nickname for a music-group I might add, makes it sound like they're one dimensional... or between the whole group only one of them has a functioning private part).

This is what Jesus said about gay people.

"........."

To be Christian is to be Christ like. You guy's live by grace now, not law. Do the people refusing to serve gays also not wear mixed fiber clothing? They ever enjoy some steamed crab legs? Thats a sin too. Ever force a girl not engaged to be married to marry a man who rapes her after he pays a small fine?

Of course not. They pay those things no mind. Just the OT stuff on gays, because hating is so easy.

That's correct.

I also find it humorous that the party that howls about regulations creating crushing burdens on businesses comes up with a cluster***** of a law like this. As a business, there's no way I would want the liability of being able to heuristically determine what will be considered genuine religious belief, undue burden, and discrimination in court.

I know the case you're talking about, people got hold of their records and the bakers had sold wedding cakes to Jews, pagans, polygamists, and several extremely decadent weddings. All of those things violate their religious beliefs yet they served cakes to those people.

Can you just be honest for once? Like ever? These people are picking and choosing things to justify their hatred of a minority.

Uh, yes they can, and they do it all the time for businesses. Have a plant that stores chemicals? Got pass inspection and buy the proper storage equipment. Have a barber shop that offers shaves? You have to use disposable straight razors depending on the locality. Own a grocery store? You may have to only carry paper bags instead of plastic. Own a toy company? Better make sure they don't have certain chemicals in them. And so on.

I don't know the legality of keeping same-sex topper for bakeries selling wedding cakes, but I would imagine that it's not an issue since it's not the toppers that are being sold but the cake itself, and the topper is merely a decoration. Saying "Sorry, we don't carry a groom-groom topper but we can work around that" isn't the same as "we refuse to serve you because we don't support your sexuality".

No. In fact, every cake place that my wife and I went to about our wedding required us to purchase a topper ourselves, separately. They don't have to carry any topper themselves. The topper doesn't have to be a bride and groom. We put a decorative M topper on ours.

I can't believe Christians still take anything that hateful bastard Leviticus wrote with anything more than a grain of salt. How about we leave the judgement to God, like Jesus said, and treat everyone by the golden rule?

On topic, I can't remember the last wedding I attended that actually still had one of those bride and groom figurines on top of the cake.