Been too busy to respond, so gonna just start with a few of the earlier responses.
Sir Xsarus wrote:
Gbaji you're not helping your argument by continually conflating a scenario where you ask for something someone doesn't sell with choosing not to sell something they do have to someone they don't agree with. Everything else aside, that analogy just doesn't work.
It's the analogy being used in the other direction though. That's part of the problem. You also can't conflate a custom service with an over the counter sale of an existing product. If a gay person walks into a store and buys a box of cupcakes, the person on the other side of the counter will sell them to him. That's not the same as asking them to make a custom cake for their wedding. Same thing with flowers. Want to buy some flowers on display in the shop? No problem. Want me to make a custom arrangement for your wedding? Whole different ballgame.
The difference is that you're asking the other person to participate in an activity they do not agree with. That activity isn't "making a cake", or even "selling a cake to a gay person". It's "participating in a gay wedding". Note, that while the story about the pizza parlor is often repeated as though they refused to sell pizza to a gay couple at all, they were actually asked (hypothetically, I assume) if they would be willing to
cater a gay wedding. Again, that's an entirely different thing.
Quote:
Also the issue isn't forcing a cake decorator to make a specific decoration, it's the ability to refuse to sell a cake at all. The issue isn't that a cake store would be asked to make a cake of two guys ******* and they refused, the issue is that a cake store won't sell them a cake at all.
Again though, while that's how the story is being misstated, that's not the actual case at hand. If you pay attention to the news stories about this, they tend to cut around the actual question being asked and go right to the misleading statements made in response, giving the viewer the impression that the person just refuses to do any business at all with a gay person. BTW, I'd tend to agree that if someone refused to sell something to a gay person they should be vilified for it. But that should not be confused with refusing to cater a wedding, or make a custom cake for a wedding, or anything else that requires the person to engage in an action specific to the event itself. In those cases, the opposition is to the event.