Cake is Speech

Marc Chagall was completely entitled to refuse to sell a bunch of stained glass windows bursting with Jewish imagery to the Catholic church of St. Stephan, Mainz, Germany. Although he didn't. I guess his moral standards just weren't as high as those of a Muncie cake shop. He was probably in it for the money.

Hannity insanity:

D'Souza then explained that opposition to the Indiana law "is a selective attack on Christianity."

"Not only do you not see the left talking about gays and lesbians abroad, but even at home, you’ll rarely find homosexuals trying to force a Muslim baker to bake a cake for a gay wedding," D'Souza said.

Of course the desperate plight of LGTBQ people under hostile governments and in dangerous environments in Christian countries like Uganda and Russia and Muslim countries like Iran and Pakistan and so on has long been an important cause for liberals and people of the left, as many writers have already noted.

What I wondered about was D'Souza's fantasy of the Muslim-American baker getting away with discrimination against gay brides and grooms because we powerful leftists give them a free pass, focusing our ire on Trinitarian confectioners. If I were Jon Stewart I'd certainly be sending a crew out to Brooklyn to check out whether the Muslim baker presents an actual problem. I'll bet you fifty bucks it would make some fun TV:

FEMALE CORRESPONDENT: I'd like to order a wedding cake, please.
AHMAD: OK.
F.C.: That's for me and my girlfriend.
AHMAD: You're both getting married?
F.C.: To each other.
AHMAD: No way. I have to see that! You want to invite me?

The concept of the Muslim baker as a particular type of person doesn't come up too often. If you Google "New York City Christian Baker" you get to start with a bunch of references to Christian Science (founded by Mary Baker Eddy) and a dude named Christian Baker who works for American Express, so I'm pretty sure that Christian bakers as a thing don't exist in New York at all. That's not exactly the case for Muslim bakers, who are noted especially for the two Pakistanis who bought Coney Island Bagels and Bialys in 2011, after the family that had been running it for 90 years gave up, and have gladly kept it kosher, as reported in the Forward:

When asked about the patchwork of neighborhood ethnicities that makes possible the Muslim ownership of a landmark kosher Jewish bialys store, Ali said with a smile, “That’s America.”

Well, at least it used to be America. Now America could be the Muncie, Indiana Baptist pastor who explains with a straight face that cake is speech, in which creators exercise their artistic powers for the glory of God, and can't be expected to perform on behalf of people who violate God's laws as they see them. Unlike, say, the owners of hotel accommodations, because the pastor is certain that a Baptist innkeeper would not be entitled under the terms of the Indiana RFRA to deny a room to a same-sex couple even if they weren't married. I think. Rooms are not speech, it seems.

Thus explaining why people often say "if these walls could talk" and never "if this cake could talk." It's because the cake is already talking.