07-02-2016, 11:04 AM
Laws against discrimination in public accommodations and in housing have withstood Constitutional challenges. Licensed professions can remove people for discriminatory behavior. So I own a bakery shop. What sort of cake can I reasonably refuse to make? Obviously anything that violates copyright or trademark laws. If someone asks me to create a party cake that has Mickey Mouse on it and I do not have the rights to put those Disney characters on a cake that I sell, then I had better say NO very quickly to the request.
If I were asked to make a slanderous or libelous statement as a message on the cake (let us say "XXXX is a pedophile"), then I had better not make that cake.
Something utterly distasteful, as mockery of human suffering? It might be perfectly legal to create a cake with a depiction of the gate of a Nazi concentration, labor, or extermination camp and change "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" to "IT NEVER HAPPENED" on a birthday cake for Holocaust denier David Irving, which would likely get protests from Jewish organizations. I have no duty to do something that would hurt my business. Pornographic, seditious, blasphemous, racist, or extremist material might have the protection of the First Amendment, but I have no duty to create or transmit it. An insulting message like "DIE IN A FIRE!" would offend anyone who knew that I was in the business.
If I were asked to make a slanderous or libelous statement as a message on the cake (let us say "XXXX is a pedophile"), then I had better not make that cake.
Something utterly distasteful, as mockery of human suffering? It might be perfectly legal to create a cake with a depiction of the gate of a Nazi concentration, labor, or extermination camp and change "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" to "IT NEVER HAPPENED" on a birthday cake for Holocaust denier David Irving, which would likely get protests from Jewish organizations. I have no duty to do something that would hurt my business. Pornographic, seditious, blasphemous, racist, or extremist material might have the protection of the First Amendment, but I have no duty to create or transmit it. An insulting message like "DIE IN A FIRE!" would offend anyone who knew that I was in the business.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.