sides with business owner who refused to provide services for same-sex wedding, citing freedom of speech.
Um, “freedom of speech” would be to say that you don’t support same-sex marriage, but refusal to provide a service based on the fact that you don’t agree with same-sex marriage seems like flat out discrimination.
Freedom of expression includes the right to receive speech (unrelated here) and could be broad enough to include freedom to have and hold beliefs, thoughts, etc, which could be relevant as this doesn’t work if one can have a belief but be forced to contradict it. Also, it’s hard to conduct wedding services without using speech, so forcing someone to host a ceremony they disagree with would also force them to utter sentences they wouldn’t choose to utter. (Edit: I realise these aren’t the facts of this case; it’s just an example of how providing a service could also be directly related to speech.)
I’m only saying this to point out how slippery of a concept are human/constitutional rights. They’re unreliable. Interesting to see that this is almost a mirror image of an Irish case about a cake for a homosexual couple. I can’t remember the exact arguments, but reactionary lawyers would’ve been studiously reading them before this new case.
And all this is to say: down with homophobes and transphobes. We can’t let them use the law to uphold their prejudice.
I think the argument is essentially that the alternative is forcing the person to literally “say” (write) something (code) and they have the freedom not to write things they disagree with. It seems like a very narrow ruling and it will be interesting to see if it is kept that way, I doubt it. I also may not understand all of the nuance.
I think of a bakery case, would the ruling mean they can’t refuse to bake a cake, which is not speech, but they could refuse to write “happy pride” on a cake, or does it now mean that they can refuse all forms of service. I don’t think it does, but it wasn’t really a question before.
One of the most interesting parts to me was an article I saw yesterday, where one of the supposed gay men who requested the website was contacted and said he was straight, married with a kid, and had never asked for such a thing. It seems like the case may have been invented out of thin air to create a precedent. (Apparently someone posted it farther down)
Um, “freedom of speech” would be to say that you don’t support same-sex marriage, but refusal to provide a service based on the fact that you don’t agree with same-sex marriage seems like flat out discrimination.
Freedom of expression includes the right to receive speech (unrelated here) and could be broad enough to include freedom to have and hold beliefs, thoughts, etc, which could be relevant as this doesn’t work if one can have a belief but be forced to contradict it. Also, it’s hard to conduct wedding services without using speech, so forcing someone to host a ceremony they disagree with would also force them to utter sentences they wouldn’t choose to utter. (Edit: I realise these aren’t the facts of this case; it’s just an example of how providing a service could also be directly related to speech.)
I’m only saying this to point out how slippery of a concept are human/constitutional rights. They’re unreliable. Interesting to see that this is almost a mirror image of an Irish case about a cake for a homosexual couple. I can’t remember the exact arguments, but reactionary lawyers would’ve been studiously reading them before this new case.
And all this is to say: down with homophobes and transphobes. We can’t let them use the law to uphold their prejudice.
I think the argument is essentially that the alternative is forcing the person to literally “say” (write) something (code) and they have the freedom not to write things they disagree with. It seems like a very narrow ruling and it will be interesting to see if it is kept that way, I doubt it. I also may not understand all of the nuance.
I think of a bakery case, would the ruling mean they can’t refuse to bake a cake, which is not speech, but they could refuse to write “happy pride” on a cake, or does it now mean that they can refuse all forms of service. I don’t think it does, but it wasn’t really a question before.
One of the most interesting parts to me was an article I saw yesterday, where one of the supposed gay men who requested the website was contacted and said he was straight, married with a kid, and had never asked for such a thing. It seems like the case may have been invented out of thin air to create a precedent. (Apparently someone posted it farther down)