12 Comments

Jack Phillips did offer to bake a cake in both cases, just not one which required him to use his artistic talent to violate his sincerely held religious beliefs. In both cases, the activists could have taken a very nice cake from him and adorned it to their liking - but they didn't want that.... No, they wanted to compel him to violate his conscience through the act.

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Yep, but in a free society, he'd have the right not to do that. For any reason or no reason.

I didn't dip into public accommodation here, but I've blasted it in the past.

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Your thoughts here bring me back to my youth. Imagine a half dozen youngsters roaming the tiny town they live in in south Florida during the summer in the sixties. We are wearing as little as we can get away with and most of us don’t even have shoes. So we go to the 7-11 and the boys borrow a shirt from the one of them that has one on and the girl share a pair of flip flops and we take turns buying our Dr Peppers be cause….. there’s a big sign on the door that says NO SHIRT NO SHOES NO SERVICE. The cake case has always reminded me of that. We would have never violated a business owners right to chose who they serve even as children. We would have just went to the gas station and bought our soda from the machine out front if it came to that.

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As I’ve argued elsewhere, one should be free from coercion to engage in activities one finds objectionable, whether that objection is tied to (or shoehorned into tying into) some recognized organized religion or not.

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Yep. As I commented to Jeff above, public accommodation policy is antithetical to freedom.

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Can I conclude then that you would support the right of a racist baker to refuse to make a wedding cake for a black couple?

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In a private business, correct.

You cannot "un-racist" someone by coercion.

I wrote about public accommodation here:

https://therootsofliberty.substack.com/p/jim-crow-public-accommodation-and

I presume you are fine with coercing certain interactions?

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If libertarianism means that it's ok to discriminate against minorities then count me out. And if liberalism means that it's ok to force people to violate their conscience then count me out there too.

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If there is another business available that will provide the service without objection why in the world would someone being discriminated against PAY for the service from someone who doesn’t want to give it. I grew up in the sixties in the south. Those racist business owners were losing their businesses due to good old capitalism. It might have taken a little longer but it would have happened without government stepping in. Most of my family wouldn’t do business with someone who wouldn’t do business with a black person or a Seminole Indian. People had already started making their choices known with their wallets.

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David, how do you reconcile the two? Either you believe in coercion or you do not. If you believe in coercion with exceptions, you still believe in coercion. The exceptions are their own form of coercion, and they will be the majority imposing an illiberal set of views on the minority.

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A freedom which allows one to discriminate against others simply on the basis of the color of one's skin seems to me something which society should prohibit including the use of coercion.

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The breadth of Kamala's ignorance is staggering.

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