#BakeTheCake

This is a wedding cake. 

There doesn′t seem to be anything offensive about this particular pastry. Nobody could possibly feel disgusted by this cake. Except it was served at a lesbian wedding.

If a business offers cakes like this for sale, it should sell them to anyone who wants to buy one and is willing to pay for it. A business has to pay its employee, vendors, and credits. To turn away customers on the basis of who they are can doom a business.

There is a Supreme Court case being decided right now. The owner of a bakery insists that his 1st Amendment rights are being violated when his business is required to bake cakes for gay weddings. He argues that to force him to bake a cake for a gay wedding is to force him to say something that he doesn′t want to say.

He′s got the same right to spew hate that Fred Phelps did. If he wants to keep his mouth shut, that′s swell too. He can say that he will not put certain messages on cakes. But his business must still provide wedding cakes to anyone who wants to buy them.

We can all agree that symbols and text constitute speech. And I can understand if a business is uncomfortable with putting gay symbols on a cake, like rainbows or pink triangles. Just sell them the blank tiered cake and let them do whatever they want with it. Tomorrow they won′t have the cake anymore, but you′ll still have their money.

To allow a bakery to refuse to serve a gay couple will open many cans of worms. Will restaurants and beauty shops be allowed to discriminate as well? For that matter, how would they even know if someone is gay? Will I have to show that I′m attracted to women before I can place my order at Chick-fil-A? Investors will have to worry that the founder of a company is trying to make a point instead of a profit. Real businessmen want discrimination to be illegal. They don′t even want the option of turning down customers for the wrong reasons.

This court case is not really about free speech. It′s about making bigotry respectable again. We can only hope that the justices see through this ruse.