Poor kid

[Rog]

storm in a teacup really......anyone who calls his kid adolf hitler ......or aryan nation........ is a fuckin idiot...end of. the cake thing is not even worth talking about and has fuck all to do with religion

[cacophony]

^ finally, a rational reaction.

[Deckard]

Well I was kind of hoping this would move into a general (rational) discussion of whether businesses should or shouldn't be able to legally discriminate against certain groups, and if so, which groups. I don't have links for each of these, but a private housing development in the US banning black people, a hotel in the UK banning homosexuals, a pub in Australia banning heterosexuals - I don't know about everyone else but I've always found this issue less cut-and-dried than I'd like.

[cacophony]

i think discriminating against PEOPLE is different from discriminating against MESSAGING.

[Deckard]

It is. So?

[//\/\/]

i have no problem with discrimination against white supremacists.

[Deckard]

You know that's pretty much the sort of thing I'm talking about. Really I'm not trying to be a smartass here. Discriminating against people is different from discriminating against messaging, but there are times when I see the line between the person and the message as fuzzier than I'd like it to be, because a message can be tied up so closely with the belief and the believer.

[Strangelet]

Originally Posted by Deckard

Well I was kind of hoping this would move into a general (rational) discussion of whether businesses should or shouldn't be able to legally discriminate against certain groups, and if so, which groups. I don't have links for each of these, but a private housing development in the US banning black people, a hotel in the UK banning homosexuals, a pub in Australia banning heterosexuals - I don't know about everyone else but I've always found this issue less cut-and-dried than I'd like.

my reply was kind of a vague, snarky answer to this question. If this discussion has to delve into issues like democracy or freedom of expression, I think these concepts get strained to the point of breaking in the context of little hitler's cake.

these heady concepts are for the realm of public policy. not private business. So yes, businesses should be able to discriminate the hell out of everyone if they want. allowing this just doesn't seem to fit under the heading of "tolerating intolerance" because tolerance has nothing to do with birth day cakes.

I mean are we going to be intolerant of the minority of birthday cake makers who have personally or knows someone who have suffered from racial prejudice? And then we force them by law to make a "fuck non white people" cake?

In other words, when two people agree to do business, business is done. That's because business is inherently free. In government, people don't have any choice about living with each other. That means equality must be enforced by law as a consequence of this lack of choice.

But anyway, I think you cut right to the essence of the point here, decks. How do you separate intolerance towards the person versus intolerance towards the ideology?

Would the perfect world be such that everyone would be free to hate and discuss and be intolerant towards ideologies but the people would be completely free to participate and patronize any business, even to bars that don't approve of their sexual ideology?

I think you reveal the difference between the virtue of making employers, lenders, and landlords practice equal opportunity business, but telling hitler jr to buzz off. Work, money, and housing are essential to life, to conduct business prejudicely in this way would really become an intolerance towards the person. Telling white trash hillbillies their pathetic attempt to prop up their race as a reason to feel superior in the absense of any other possible candidate is repugnant my cake making artistry, and up with which I will not put, that's something else.

[cacophony]

Originally Posted by Deckard

It is. So?

so i'm not going to get my panties in a bunch over messaging rights.

[cacophony]

Originally Posted by Strangelet

How do you separate intolerance towards the person versus intolerance towards the ideology?

being tolerant of the person means not preventing him/her from saying what's on his/her mind.

being tolerant of the ideology/message means being the instrument through which what's on his/her mind is expressed.

they have a right to name their kid adolph hitler. they have a right to make their own cake and put hitler on it. they don't have a right to force others in private business to be the instrument through which their message is delivered.

in summary: birthday cake is not a right.