Rogers vs . philly Dak vs . Washington ? <| sep |> You need to learn to be able to understand things <| sep |> I feel like the SH are turning the table now . <| sep |> Hope that makes sense . It certainly does inasmuch as I think I understand where you ' re coming from and I feel compelled to start off by saying that the sober tone of your comment was a soothing balm to my brain , which has been severely saltirritated in the past by similar conversations . I believe that you can make a distinction between discriminating against an idea and discriminating against a person . This seems to be the central line from your comment and without getting into tangents I may well agree in that there are instances when you can separate discrimination against an idea from discrimination against the person who holds the idea with it as a statement by itself . I ' m not sure I could agree with it in this case as the idea homosexuals should have the same marriage rights as heterosexuals and the person the homosexual who wants to get married are inextricably bound together . A political view or a religious stance can change in the way a sexual orientation cannot , and often when we ' re attempting to block a view becoming law , we ' re blocking some people from being able to take an action that affects others for example , when one blocks the view that life begins at conception from becoming a noabortions law . That ' s not the case here one homosexual ' s gay marriage affects a disagreeing heterosexual only in terms of how the heterosexual feels about the marriage . The law has no actual physical affect on the person as a law banning abortion would have an actual affect on a woman seeking abortion , as well as affecting how they feel . Now , I also don ' t think that the distinction is crucial to this debate , but your comment was fairly lengthy and thoughtful so I figured I ' d include issues around the main point that you brought up . I like that kind of conversation and it would seem a bit rude to ignore your central point without commentating on it . Why I don ' t think it ' s crucial is because even if we assume that one can distinguish between discriminating against an idea and discriminating against the person who holds the idea , I think Ashers is still in the wrong both legally and morally . This comes back to the ideas in the first and second bullet points putting a message on a cake doesn ' t entail that you support that message , and Ashers and every other custom bakery , print shop etc . etc . etc . puts out dozens , possibly hundreds or thousands of messages per year that they don ' t technically support or agree with . So if anyone can potentially at any time pick any particular message they disagree with out of a pile they disagree with but don ' t want to act on , where are we left ? At a point where arbitrary discrimination against customers is a legal right that a business has . I can ' t see any other option if what Ashers did is legal we ' d have to allow the same freedom to all religious believers . And , extremely crucially , establishing what isisn ' t ' legitimate ' matter of conscience is going to be a crapshoot of literally insane proportions t h e o l o g i c a l s c ripturalhistoriographical debate about what is and isn ' t endorsed by a slew of different religious and interreligious denominations ? And all nonreligious matters of conscience ? How do we exclude those without legally privileging a religious viewpoint over a nonreligious one ? And if we allow nonreligious ones , then all bets which were already extremely loose are now off . This is complex , and my view it pokes at the very idea of what it means to have free expression . I ' d be inclined to agree with you on both points there , and on the overall point , I ' d restate that I think the Ashers case has it right on free expression these people are free to believe what they like , and they ' re free to say what they believe in newspapers , in television interviews , in their own homes , churches , on the street etc . , they ' re free to not attend a gay wedding , but if they want to trade , they have to accept that they can ' t pick and choose which jobs to acceptrefuse based on some ideological aspect of the work their customer is asking them to do provided the aspect isn ' t illegal etc . , obviously . I ' d move that this gets free expression in a modernliberal country right they have all the free expression they want as private citizens , but when they become public c i t i zensbusinesspeopletraders , they don ' t get to offer their services to customers with some ideas , but refuse their services to customers with other ideas , because servicing those customers does not imply they agree with or support those ideas . They have the free expression as private citizens to turn homosexuals away from their home all the live long day they don ' t have the free expression as public traders to refuse a service to a gay man when they ' d provide an equivalent service for a straight man .