Joe asks: “should a Muslim baker be allowed to refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding ?”

An excellent question for exposing double-standards.

Here’s an ever better one:

Should a Muslim baker be allowed to refuse to bake a cake for a bar mitzvah?

Or what about for a Christian confirmation?

The sheer level of cognitive dissonance triggered by both questions would be bound to make some heads explode.

I'd be fascinated to see if such cases would rack up 19 posts in as many hours. Somehow I don't think they would.

Dear Paul,

«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.»

This is a good theological question, which I will endeavour to answer.

I would consider such a connection between religion and refusal to serve quite rare indeed, certainly not mainstream, yet I can see three theoretically possible cases how that could happen:

1) If God told someone not to do it.
- homosexuals may be nice and wonderful people, but so could the pig's meat possibly be wonderful, tasty or even healthy, but if God said 'No', then it's a 'No'.

I don't recall any scripture (including the bible) where God said "don't serve homosexuals", but who knows, perhaps there's some scripture that I'm unaware of or perhaps S/He told someone personally - who can tell? certainly not the courts!

2) Avoiding to support evil.

Very commendable and religious, but are same-sex marriages evil?
Firstly,love and marriage are distinct from sexual acts.
Secondly, if homosexual acts are evil, then so are heterosexual acts (so the baker would then have to be celibate him/herself and serve only celibates).

But suppose someone is truly and genuinely convinced that SSM is evil. I believe them to be wrong, but they don't know it. The answer here is education and spiritual guidance, but until then one must never support what they genuinely believe to be evil.

Can an earthly court determine what one genuinely believes? No!

3) Keeping a vow.

The vow could have been made in error, perhaps even while drunk or under coercion - one may know better now and even regret it, but vows must be kept nevertheless.
(in this case, I as the baker would place a sign on the door saying: "Sorry, I made such-and-such vow which I cannot undo, I hope you understand")

Can an earthly court tell whether a person truly made a vow, what exactly it was and whether his/her intention was purely directed to God at the time? No!

Note how Paul has used "hate" above; when he it totally ignorant I have close friends homosexual living together, and another a cross dresser. Which he believes that because I do not consider marriage is sanctioned between homosexuals I hate them. In fact Paul expresses more hatred toward me than I do toward my friends. Under Foxy's terms of feelings I could be offended by Paul and that would be hate speech by Paul. However in my world, Paul has every right to express his opinion of me, because I know it does not represent me or harm, just identifies Paul's state of mind.

Hasbeen,

I suspect the nature of the nuptials would have been brought to the baker’s attention to provoke him; he was set up. Unfortunately for the ‘girls’, the baker was made of sterner stuff than they anticipated, he refused, and they slipped on their bums because the court found for the baker.

I agree that homos can, and will, get all the cakes they want by just ordering the bloody things and shutting their mouths. A few of the bitchier ones will make a fuss trying to have a win against society. There is no reason to believe the stirrers and activists will get any further than they did in this case. Hope they have to pay court costs,

Again, the baker wasn't refusing service to these gentlemen, he was refusing to make them a cake that celebrated something he didn't think should be celebrated. They could have bought a cake from his shop and stuck a couple of grooms on top, and he would have allowed that to happen. But they wanted to force him to compromise his values to satisfy their values.

Try this scenario...most Muslims think depicting Mo is a sin. Imagine there's a Muslim artist who does oil paintings on commission? Should that artist be forced to accept a commission to draw a painting of Mo?

Equally, what type of person would seek to, or even hope to, force him to do so by threatening his livelihood? A person who hasn't the faintest notion of civilised behaviour?

Mhaze,

To come back to Berlin's distinction between negative and positive freedom: in a 'positive freedom' regime, one would be forced to do whatever was legal, because it would be the law, prescribed behaviour; while in a negative freedom regime, one is penalised for doing what is illegal but can't be forced to do something just because it is legal, one has choice.

In repressive societies, such as theocratic, socialist or fascist [TSF] societies, where behaviour is prescribed and all else banned, one would be required to carry out functions regardless of personal likes. In democratic societies, a person can refrain from doing something which she doesn't want to do, even though it is quite legal. Choice.

In democratic societies, the law simply sets down what one can't do - all else is permitted. In TSF societies, what is permitted is set down, and almost nothing else is permitted.

In a TSF society, if it was so inclined, our baker would be compelled to bake that bloody cake with the two blokes/sheilas on top, or face punishment, or worse. It's notable that, in such societies, the thought police are pervasive.

We can make choices in our society. We can refuse to do what we don't want to do. So what society would each of us choose to live in ?

Joe