Comment by bmelton

9 years ago

> http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/masterpiece-cakes...

They have not decided anything, other than to agree to hear the case:

http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/masterpiece-cakes...

2 comments

bmelton

Wow, thanks. I still think it's an interesting case, because the people celebrating GoDaddy/Google/Cloudflare's decision largely seem to be against the right of the cake makers to refuse to make a gay wedding cake. "Wooo go GoDaddy! Hey wait a minute cake bakers!" This inconsistency is really concerning, because it betrays a simple tribalism instead of principles. I understand there are principled reasons to be for one and against the other, but that's not what I've been seeing lately. Mostly lots of celebration that corporations are censoring the speech they disapprove of.

bmelton 9 years ago

Personally, I worry about ingroup vs. outgroup tribalism, whatever the ingroup or the outgroup is. Specifically, I very sincerely worry about its effect on the political landscape. I understand that this is not an issue of government action, but given how many responses of "They're nazis, fuck 'em" (paraphrased) I see, I honestly doubt it would matter significantly if it were in fact the government shutting the site down vs. a private entity.
To head off the obvious criticism: Yes, I understand the distinct difference between first amendment protections vis a vis the government versus the absence of those protections when dealing with other individuals and companies.
That said, I'm not a Nazi, nor am I a neo-Nazi, nor am I in any way sympathetic to their causes, but up to the point that their words specifically incite violence, I'll defend their rights to speak them.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
- H. L. Mencken