"If a gay baker refused to make a cake for a Muslim, who would liberals side with?"
This is the latest meme a former colleague of mine posted on Facebook, adding the question, "Well?"
Well? It depends on the circumstances under which the cake was refused, doesn't it?
Here's how I answered:
If a business offers particular goods and services to the general population, it must provide them to anyone who is willing to pay for them. Otherwise, it's discrimination. So if a baker makes a vagina cake for a straight woman's baby shower but refuses to make one for, say, a lesbian bachelorette party, the baker is a bigot. If the baker thinks that cakes resembling genitalia are tacky and does not offer them to anyone, no problem.
The latter takes care of the "ordering a ham sandwich in a Muslim deli" meme as well. If a deli doesn't carry bacon, no one can "force" the owner to provide it, just as Victoria's Secret cannot be "forced" to sell choir robes.
So what about messages on cakes? If the hypothetical baker considers them offensive because they are sexually explicit, inciting violence, or discriminatory (for instance, anything that starts with "God hates..." or "death to..."), it's his or her right to refuse to write the offending sentence on the cake -- as long as he or she applies that policy consistently to all customers.
What about "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone"? That policy should be based on how people behave, not who they are. If the hypothetical gay baker tosses out a customer because she is rude and obnoxious, he has every right to do so. If he throws her out because she is wearing a head scarf, he's got a problem.
What about "No shoes, no shirt, no service"? Well, I've yet to encounter a religion that prohibits the wearing of shoes or shirts.
My former colleague never responded; otherwise I might have added that right wing memes going around are based on fallacious premises: they seem to assume that minorities respond to "the other" in the same way as RWNJs do. In reality, few gay business owners, for instance, are offended by straight customers, as long as they behave themselves. Most Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu shopkeepers are glad to sell the products they do carry to their Christian, Pagan, atheist, or whatever neighbors.
Another fallacy is the assumption RWNJ make that being gay and Christian or any other religion is mutually exclusive. At my church, half the council members are gay, and the organist, cantor/choir director, head ushers, and cemetery sexton are gay too. Each of them would be offended if their faith were to be questioned. But of course, in the RWNJ parallel universe, only their own flavor of Christianity (Supply-Side Jesus) is the real thing.
Today, the first thing I saw on Facebook was a picture of a bacon cake, with the question if anyone knew a Muslim bakery to order it from. Sigh. Feel free to contribute your own "favorite" false analogy meme in the comment section.