The Gay Wedding Cake Conundrum

[The Nehor]

What makes a wedding cake gay? Is it an aberration in the ingredients? Composition of the flour? Sugar clumping? Or is it an environmental effect? Is it influenced by the attitude of the baker? The temperature where it is allowed to cool? Whether the icing is applied lovingly or harshly? Nature or nurture?

Thoughts?

[Jeanne]

What makes a wedding cake gay? Is it an aberration in the ingredients? Composition of the flour? Sugar clumping? Or is it an environmental effect? Is it influenced by the attitude of the baker? The temperature where it is allowed to cool? Whether the icing is applied lovingly or harshly? Nature or nurture?

Thoughts?

That s just it.  There is no difference..they are equal when the main ingredient is love.

[The Nehor]

That s just it.  There is no difference..they are equal when the main ingredient is love.

I think the quality depends more on the quality of the icing as opposed to love.

[Gray]

The only kind of wedding cake that ISN'T gay is German chocolate with bacon sprinkles on top. 

[The Nehor]

The only kind of wedding cake that ISN'T gay is German chocolate with bacon sprinkles on top.

Oh no......I have been ingesting pure homosexuality at every wedding I have been to........

[CV75]

What makes a wedding cake gay? Is it an aberration in the ingredients? Composition of the flour? Sugar clumping? Or is it an environmental effect? Is it influenced by the attitude of the baker? The temperature where it is allowed to cool? Whether the icing is applied lovingly or harshly? Nature or nurture?

Thoughts?

I just hope it uses a condundrum.

[Jeanne]

I think the quality depends more on the quality of the icing as opposed to love.

But then what really counts of quality  is what is inside.

[Gray]

Oh no......I have been ingesting pure homosexuality at every wedding I have been to........

 

That's why I insisted on having little fondant hand grenade decorations on mine, in addition to the bacon sprinkles. You can't be too careful. 

Edited April 8, 2015 by Gray

[The Nehor]

That's why I insisted on having little fondant hand grenade decorations on mine, in addition to the bacon sprinkles. You can't be too careful.

But I like the tasty white cakes...especially the ones with cream in them.

[Flyonthewall]

There is no such thing as a "gay" wedding cake. A cake is a cake and is a-sexual.

There might be a cake served at a wedding of 2 gays, but there is no such thing as a cake that is gay.

Now I am very attracted to cakes - what does that make me?

[The Nehor]

There is no such thing as a "gay" wedding cake. A cake is a cake and is a-sexual.There might be a cake served at a wedding of 2 gays, but there is no such thing as a cake that is gay.Now I am very attracted to cakes - what does that make me?

You suffer from TCA (Tasty Cake Attraction). It is only a sin if you act on it.

[smac97]

Food for thought:

 

Thanks,

 

-Smac

Edited April 9, 2015 by smac97

[Kenngo1969]

... Now I am very attracted to cakes - what does that make me?

Fat?

 

(At least, if you act on your sinful cake attraction. )

[Damien the Leper]

The shear ignorance of pseudo-conservative thinking is astounding. Perhaps the bakers should start asking what religion is observed or whether the couple live together or if they've had premarital sex. Gotta cover all bases when choosing to "righteously" discriminate. No need for an evangelical baker to make a cake for Mormon "cultists" or the other sexually depraved.

[Brian 2.0]

Every gay wedding cake I've eaten shared similar ingredients:

 

Lemon

Gelato

Butter

Tangerine

 

They were all really good.  Fruity, sure.  But good.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Brian 2.0

[why me]

What makes a wedding cake gay? Is it an aberration in the ingredients? Composition of the flour? Sugar clumping? Or is it an environmental effect? Is it influenced by the attitude of the baker? The temperature where it is allowed to cool? Whether the icing is applied lovingly or harshly? Nature or nurture?

Thoughts?

The problem is not with the cake. It may have to go with what goes on the cake: two men, two women, the names etc. Lets put it this way: should an orthodox jewish bakery be forced to make an erotic cake? Should a muslim baker be forced to make an erotic cake complete with a penis? This issue has much more to it than the gay topic. Should a jewish baker be forced to bake a cake with a swastika on it?

 

The gay issue is the timely one but it does have implications for all bakers.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

The problem is not with the cake. It may have to go with what goes on the cake: two men, two women, the names etc. Lets put it this way: should an orthodox jewish bakery be forced to make an erotic cake? Should a muslim baker be forced to make an erotic cake complete with a penis? This issue has much more to it than the gay topic. Should a jewish baker be forced to bake a cake with a swastika on it?

The gay issue is the timely one but it does have implications for all bakers.

Have there been any court cases where anything like this has happened. I thought all they had to do was bake one of their generic cakes. Don't we have a thread going on this?

[Gray]

But I like the tasty white cakes...especially the ones with cream in them.

 

I'm sorry, but tasty white cakes with cream are an abomination. A delicious abomination. 

[smac97]

Fascism.  It's in the air these days (emphases added):
 

Gay NY Times Columnist Wants Christians To Be Forced To “Embrace” Homosexuality…
 
Via NY Times:
 

THE drama in Indiana last week and the larger debate over so-called religious freedom laws in other states portray homosexuality and devout Christianity as forces in fierce collision.
 
They’re not — at least not in several prominent denominations, which have come to a new understanding of what the Bible does and doesn’t decree, of what people can and cannot divine in regard to God’s will.
 
And homosexuality and Christianity don’t have to be in conflict in any church anywhere.
 
That many Christians regard them as incompatible is understandable, an example not so much of hatred’s pull as of tradition’s sway. Beliefs ossified over centuries aren’t easily shaken.
 
But in the end, the continued view of gays, lesbians and bisexuals as sinners is a decision. It’s a choice. It prioritizes scattered passages of ancient texts over all that has been learned since — as if time had stood still, as if the advances of science and knowledge meant nothing.
 
It disregards the degree to which all writings reflect the biases and blind spots of their authors, cultures and eras.[…]
 
So our debate about religious freedom should include a conversation about freeing religions and religious people from prejudices that they needn’t cling to and can indeed jettison, much as they’ve jettisoned other aspects of their faith’s history, rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity.
 
“Human understanding of what is sinful has changed over time,” said David Gushee, an evangelical Christian who teaches Christian ethics at Mercer University. He openly challenges his faith’s censure of same-sex relationships, to which he no longer subscribes.
 
For a very long time, he noted, “Many Christians thought slavery wasn’t sinful, until we finally concluded that it was. People thought contraception was sinful when it began to be developed, and now very few Protestants and not that many Catholics would say that.” They hold an evolved sense of right and wrong, even though, he added, “You could find scriptural support for the idea that all sex should be procreative.”
 
Christians have also moved far beyond Scripture when it comes to gender roles.
 
“In the United States, we have abandoned the idea that women are second-class, inferior and subordinate to men, but the Bible clearly teaches that,” said Jimmy Creech, a former United Methodist pastor who was removed from ministry in the church after he performed a same-sex marriage ceremony in 1999. “We have said: That’s a part of the culture and history of the Bible. That is not appropriate for us today.”
 
And we could say the same about the idea that men and women in loving same-sex relationships are doing something wrong.
 
...
 
Creech and Mitchell Gold, a prominent furniture maker and gay philanthropist, founded an advocacy group, Faith in America, which aims to mitigate the damage done to L.G.B.T. people by what it calls “religion-based bigotry.”
 
Gold told me that church leaders must be made “to take homosexuality off the sin list.”
 
His commandment is worthy — and warranted. All of us, no matter our religious traditions, should know better than to tell gay people that they’re an offense. And that’s precisely what the florists and bakers who want to turn them away are saying to them.

 

Again, for emphasis: The New York Times just published an article stating that "church leaders must be made 'to take homosexuality off the sin list,'" and that this "commandment" is "worthy" and "warranted."  A few thoughts here:

 

1. I am beginning to see the wisdom of LDS church leaders who have distinguished "homosexuality" (same-sex attraction) from homosexual/same-sex behavior, with only the latter being on - as the article puts it - "the sin list."  I concur with the second-to-last quoted sentence above about people with SSA being told that "they're an offense."  These folks are the children of God.  They are sinners, as are we all, but they are still the children of God.  They have tremendous worth.  But I reject the last quoted sentence which equates declining to participate in celebrating a same-sex marriage with categorical hatred of gay people.  I think this cartoon is apt:

 

 

 

2. I do not think the people quoted in the article would concur with the distinction described above.  That is, I think the call that "church leaders must be made 'to take homosexuality off the sin list'" pertains to both same-sex attraction and same-sex behavior.

 

3. Let us all step back and consider, for a few moments, the implications of a secular news media giant, The New York Times, advocating compulsory changes in the religious doctrines of religious groups in America.  "Church leaders must be made 'to take homosexuality off the sin list.'"  

 

"Must be made?"  Who will "make" church leaders do this?  Is it fair to surmise that this "worthy" and "warranted" "commandment" published by a secular newspaper is a call for the secular government to compel / coerce / force / punish religious groups into capitulating on their beliefs about what conduct is or is not sinful?

 

We have all recently seen various governmental actions punishing religious opposition to being compelled to endorse/embrace same-sex marriage.  To decline is now a crime.  To recoil against compelled speech which violates religious belief is now a crime.  This is the coercive power of government being brought to bear against religious people with reasoned, principled beliefs about a controversial topic.  And the New York Times appears to be calling for secular government to step in and "make" religions, their leaders, and their adherents capitulate on those reasoned, principled beliefs.

 

"Church leaders must be made..."  Yep.  Fascism is in the air...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

-Smac

Edited April 9, 2015 by smac97

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

The shear ignorance of pseudo-conservative thinking is astounding. Perhaps the bakers should start asking what religion is observed or whether the couple live together or if they've had premarital sex. Gotta cover all bases when choosing to "righteously" discriminate. No need for an evangelical baker to make a cake for Mormon "cultists" or the other sexually depraved.

Actually, what is ignorant is not recognizing that the problem lies with not the cake but the private event that the public business owner is forced into participating in. There in lies the real issue.

 

So no, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

 

 

 

And..... what Smac said.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Mola Ram Suda Ram

[Kenngo1969]

If I were in the cake-baking business, and if Bill and Ted asked me to bake a cake celebrating their union, I would probably bake the cake and would wish the happy couple well, even though their union is outside the realm of traditional marriage, and even though my faith teaches that: (1) only marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and (2) sex outside of marriage is wrong.  (My religion, as I understand it, does not embrace forcing people to accept my paradigm.)  That said, I can understand the objection of religious cake-bakers who feel that being forced by the government, through law, to bake such a cake is a violation of their religious conscience. Would I still allow a couple denied service under this scenario to sue?  Yes, but they should have to show that reasonable efforts to obtain a comparable cake at a comparable price were unavailing, and their recovery would be limited to the difference between what the religious cake-baker would have charged them, if he had baked their cake, and what the cake-baker who did bake their cake charged them (accounting also, perhaps, for, e.g., mileage, if they were forced to go far out of their way to obtain the comparable cake).

 

This argument has occurred over and over on this board, with posters on one side touting, "Fourteenth-Amendment Equal Protection!" and posters on the other side touting, "First-Amendment Free Exercise!"  But if the government, via the law, can force a cake-baker to violate his religious conscience, then that emasculates First Amendment Free Exercise protection.  And to those who protest, "But if the government cannot force the religious cake-baker to bake cakes for all comers, even though he claims that, by doing so, the government violates his Free Exercise rights, then that's the first step back to Jim Crow," I respectfully disagree, because isolated, nonsystemic, de facto discrimination is a much different thing than widespread, systemic, de jure discrimination.

 

Any other solution than what I have proposed essentially tells religious cake-bakers (along with religious people in an untold number of other professions), "Save your religion for your holy day and for within the walls of your own church." As messy as the business of trying to suss out religion's proper role in public life is, that can never be what the First Amendment intended, and any solution that involves government coercion of the type favored by those who think it's perfectly OK for the government to force religious people to violate their conscience largely renders supposed First Amendment Free Exercise protections moot.  To borrow and to slightly alter a well-known axiom, in the case of religious cake-bakers, "A man forced to act against his will, is of the same opinion, still."  

 

There are those of us of good will, who, in good conscience and good faith, can make a well-reasoned, intelligent, logical argument that U.S. Supreme Court Free Exercise jurisprudence took a wrong turn when the majority decided Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), and that it has been trending wrong ever since. We're not bigots. We don't hate gay people.  Our actions are borne, not of animus, but of deep-seated moral and religious convictions that law should not be allowed to override.  A cake-baker should be allowed to refuse to bake a cake he feels would violate his religious conscience, and a cake-buyer should be allowed to seek out a willing baker.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Kenngo1969

[smac97]

If I were in the cake-baking business, and if Bill and Ted asked me to bake a cake celebrating their union, I would probably bake the cake and would wish the happy couple well

So would I. What they do with the cake is their business, really.

But if they ask me to decorate the cake with an obscenity, or with statements or images which I find objectionable, then I would decline.

Thanks,

 

-Smac

[thesometimesaint]

One man's deeply held religious belief is the other man's antithesis of his deeply held religious belief. How should the law decide which to enforce? We as a country have decided that neither are subjects for the law. But that when in commerce open to the public the business owner must agree to sell to all regardless of race, creed, color, religion, national origin, sex, and increasingly sexual orientation.

[smac97]

A few more:

 

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

-Smac

[Brian 2.0]

duplicate post 

Edited April 9, 2015 by Brian 2.0