I fail to see the religious connection between baking cakes and Jesus Christ! Is there a eleventh commandment; Thou shalt not bake cakes for poofters.

Where I get my hair cut, the hairdresser John is gay, always tells me about his partner Steven, so I assume Steven is male, John is male, I think he is, so you can put two and two together. Would it be reasonable the next time I go for a trim that John should refuse me a cut, because he's not sure if I'm not a redneck poofter basher, and he can't be too careful given his religious convictions in that regard.

We could extend this discrimination to the small town of Redneck where not only the baker is a member of the 'Church of the Holy Poofter Haters' so is the butcher and the candle stick maker, and everyone in between. Imagine John and Steve drive into town, firstly they try to fill up at the local servo, no petrol for poofters here the sign said. Draw a dollar out at the bank, no you can't! Feeling peckish, the boys want a burger from the Redneck Cafe, no we do not serve your types here, said Donna the waitress, who also plays the organ on Sunday nights at 'Poofter Haters' Church. This could go on all day, in fact for ever.

Rache, no people shouldn’t put up signs saying gays not welcome because that would be wrong in most cases. The baker in question was happy to serve his other goods to the gay couple, it was simply the wedding cake he objected to, not the gays themselves.
And most other businesses will say the same thing, they have no objection to providing service to gay people but in all conscience cannot promote a ceremony they don’t believe in.
As for people using religion to cover personal beliefs, well, are people no longer able to have deep personal beliefs?
In all these cases the free market would sort out the issue. The businesses who didn’t want to service gay weddings would lose that business, and others would gain it. Trying to force someone to do something that is truly objectionable to them hardly makes for good relations between groups.

Yuyutsu,

You're not much of a legal-type person, are you?

<<The baker's case occurred in the USA: don't they have a clause against slavery in their constitution?>>

Under no definition does forcing a baker to bake a cake they don't want to constitute slavery.

http://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/slavery
http://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/slave

Get a grip.

Awkward question: should a Muslim baker be allowed to refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding ?

Surely anti-discriminations laws don't mean that somebody MUST do something they don't want to do ?

Joe

Dear Yuyutsu,

All a Court can do is go by the law.

If a person says that they're not able to do/or not do
because of their religious reasons - a court has to make
its decision according to the laws that exist at that time.
The court in Colorado avoided a wider ruling on
religious exemptions. They did not address the wider
principle of whether a business can refuse to serve gay
people. This case left open the question of whether
anti-discrimination laws should supersede religious
beliefs in future cases.

What a pile of garbage. Don't you people have something more important to think about.

In the normal course of events, the baker or me or any one else should never know that a customer is a poofter as Paul so gently puts it. Hell no one should even know if a customer is stupid enough to be a greenie.

If some homosexual is stupid enough to go around shouting their homosexuality to the world, they are playing the part of some objectionable evangelist, & I & all others should have the right to ignore them, & infact ban them from a premises we control. Such people are always a pain to everyone else.

In this instance, unless specifically mentioned, or broadcast by some inscription on the cake, again the baker should have had no idea who was getting married to whom. At this stage the baker has the perfect right to decline the offered contract, whether offered by homo or heterosexual.

We should all be able to mix with homosexuals, & even greenies, without ever knowing it. If we can't the person in question is being objectionable, & not worthy of consideration.