Monday, June 2, 2014

Wedding in Massachusetts, Reception in Colorado?

The latest homofascism involves a cake baker in Colorado who is going to stop making wedding cakes.  Unlike some of the other cases, such as the cake baker in Oregon, and the photographer in New Mexico, this is a real stretch to see as anything but a setup.  From May 30, 2014 CBS Denver:
Jack Phillips owns Masterpiece Cakeshop. In 2012, David Mullins and Charlie Craig went to the shop to order a cake for their upcoming wedding reception. They planned to marry in Massachusetts and have a reception in Colorado.
Yeah, I really believe that the reception was going to be 2000 miles away from the wedding, don't you?

6 comments:

  1. The wedding was planned in 2012, and Colorado has a state constitutional ban against gay marriage, and has only recognized civil unions since 2013. New Mexico or California would be physically closer, but once you're planning an out-of-state marriage, with current air fare, Massachusetts may well have been more economical.

    My brother's wedding ended up involving ~1200 miles travel (by car), and that was for a very very barebones wedding (<20 people, justice-of-the-peace and a small rented area), since Ohio doesn't recognize gay marriages and we have family in New Hampshire.

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  2. This does sound like a setup, but.

    It's not uncommon for people who've moved away from their families, or their college area, to have a wedding near where they live, and a separate reception "back where they came from" - for the family or the college friends who stayed in the area. My wife and I had two receptions, in the Bay Area where we live, and in Iowa, where her family (including her adult siblings) lives.

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  3. There can be legitimate reasons to have a wedding reception a long way away from the wedding. A friend of mine got married in California, but had family and friends in Chicago who were not able to attend for reasons of age and personal finance. They wound up holding a second reception a couple of weeks later in Chicago on behalf of those people -- and yes, they had another wedding cake.

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  4. I am impressed with the alacrity with which the happy couple were able to select the only cakemaker in town who might have a qualm about making their wedding cake; and then the chuzpah to insist he was the only possible solution.

    Cheers

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  5. I find it hard to believe that this guy was the first cake baker that they asked. More likely, they asked until someone hesitated.

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  6. There's a Yelp review from May 2012 describing a different (lesbian?) individual who was refused service, while the lawsuit in question here revolved around refusal of service in July 2012. If you're presuming it's a manufactured case, there are far simpler explanations and methods of manufacture.

    I don't think the court's decision here is the right one, but that's on the merits : freedom of association and freedom of speech. Insinuating that the case shouldn't matter because it seems unlikely in a statistical sense isn't very compelling to start with, and I'm somewhat skeptical that conservatives really want to start arguing that.

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