Good for you!

loved being gone from the madness...and happy to be back...will go back every summer until I can't...

Well, welcome back!

yes...there are only "individual" rights...I was in the Air Force as a pilot and was told to leave because of my Objectivist positions...went to the airlines...had a great career and life...(only responding now because I have been in Yellowstone for the last 6 months...no cell ...no internet...)

And why would anyone want to give their money to a business that doesn't accept them? If a business discriminates against gay people then why would a gay person (or folks who don't support discrimination) want to give them money. It is better to allow discrimination so folks know who they don't want to support.

Well, it DID work for her...er him....er whatever. I agree they do get worse and worse, the original CR law has mutated into the "everything under the sky" law, and has become just a tool to impose any and all restrictions on free people they want.

Conscientious Objector status was not a right to say no. It was a classification that was granted only if the draft board decided that the applicant qualified; it included a religious test. Once granted, the draft board determined an assigned alternate service. There was no right to say no to anything as any part of it. With those kinds of statist premises there is no precedent to a right to avoid anything, and the laws and their interpretation are getting worse in all realms.

Perhaps a closer analogy is the civil war draft under which those selected had a legal right under the law to pay for someone else to go. But that was not included in later draft law. Once again, your "rights" were whatever they said they were by their permission only. Maybe the Bradley strategy would work: the baker puts himself into the process, illegally steals and gives classified information and cakes away to the world public, goes to jail for it and while there gets an entitled taxpayer funded sex change mutilation to get a same-sex the same as something or other, gets pardoned as an entitlement to celebrate lunacy, and then goes to Harvard as a celebrity.

No, my point is that their "law" is false, because it assumes you MUST participate in their social structure, you do not "get a vote in it, because there is no vote to be had". My point is that the conscientious objector shows no law is absolute, when conscripted, a person may follow that law, but then not fight, based on their beliefs. So there is legal proof that you CAN say no, and not be prosecuted. In this case the baked did just that, he said no, and offered to help them find someone (which I think he did), who made their cake, so he never did commit any crime, except by not kowtowing to what they wanted him to do, the way they wanted him to do it. Which is the real evil in all of this. They do not have the right, or authority, to tell anyone what to do or how to do it, especially when they actually go out of their way to accommodate the other person.

I would say that is the point of the DOJ, that you cannot force somene to conduct busness, and exchange value for value, when they do NOT believe that the value is equivelant. In this case, the baker places his belief about marriage as a greater value than what the cake costs. I would say he could sell his beliefs, if he wanted, for a much higher price, but he still would have been screwed for "discriminating". That seems to me to be the falsehood in all of this, no law can impose "value' as an arbitrary thing, just as "wage controls" have no validity.

It is the point of "participation" seems to be one of the key points the law wants to try ti impose on everyone. The law is trying to make everyone "participate" either in doing it, or not doing iit. So the negative participation question is what does that constitute? Is it legal to require someone "participate: by baking a cake for someone , even if they do not want to? The DOJ was saying that the act of requiring him to bake the cake was forcing him to "participate" in something that violates his freedom of expression, and so, his First Amendment right. Susanne seems to be questioning if baking the cake constitutes "participation". I would say they were correct in their position, because he was not inclined to make the cake, and he viewed that if he did, he was "participating" in their wedding. Your point is exactly right, it doesn't matter in the end, because "participating" or not it is not the laws place to force anyone to do anything, especially in a business context.

We don't, but does it matter? Their choice of who to deal with for what is morally entirely up to them whatever anyone else thinks of it. Even if they made a bad decision it is theirs to make.

Yes, the principle of trading value for value, with neither side sacrificing to the other, is throughout Atlas Shrugged. Producers are not to regarded as sacrificial fodder. The plot in Atlas Shrugged was designed to show the importance of the mind in human society, and what happens when it is withdrawn.

What path for what purpose? The bakers did nothing that should be regarded as criminal at all. You want them to have to bake free community service cakes for a charity to mitigate nothing?

The real 'crime' they are accused of is a thought 'hate crime' of not believing what they are told to believe. The left will never let go of that.

Good point. I never thought about it the way you worded it, the idea that producers are the for the benefit of the purchasers rather than them existing for their own and each other's benefits as traders.

And that is one of myriad of things that struck me as I re-read and re-listen to A.S.: to the society she created, "trader" is a 4-letter word, the equivalent of something stuck to the bottom of one's shoe.

Said it before, I'll say it again: If I could go back in time and interact with one individual with the guarantee that it would not alter the future, Ayn Rand is on that very, very short list of people.

The conscientious objector argument is good. I hadn't thought about that one. VERY GOOD.

That is an interesting argument. I like it. I haven't had too many people take strong positions on this issue. Everyone seems to realize that there is no shortage of this commodity, and the whole issue is just silly.

And, they want you to demonstrate YOUR respect to their misguided ideals, constantly and forever, or face their rightous wrath. Anyone else who is offended, has no right to be so, which is why their battle over the White Supremacists and statues fell over. They wanted to impose their will on others, using the same egregious methods they are supposedly fighting. The sad part is, they never see it that way.

Exactly, the new social order has bred a race of whiners who cry at the first slight, or inference of a slight to them. What if it was due to some issue like "body odor". The baker just cannot handle the odor of a person, who is in his shop and refuses to do what they want, by extension, they can force him too serve. It is a ridiculous assertion that anyone has the right to force another to do their will simply because they can.

We do not know the extend of "participation" What id it required 2 guys on the cake, holding hands? I am sure that something was included to identify the fact it is 2 persons of the same sex. It is the "Forcing" part that is more in the line of argument, as you said later.

Ah, but it does illustrate the principle of an alternative path for the same purpose. So, as long as these people got their cake, was any "crime" committed? That was my point in using it, since it showed that such a method has precedence and none of these "social morality laws" are really immutable.

We have a whole herd of social judges who interpret laws differently, the Supreme Court should censure every judge who found for anyone but the baker in this case and remove them from the bench, the 9th Circuit would be a barren wasteland....

Logically, I am good with it, since any transaction is always an exchange of goods and services. There for, you analogy is correct. People look at producers as some kind of slave caste, who must do their bidding, not as free people excercising their right to commerce. This all goes into the idea of what rights do the government have to restrict ANY commerce, as long as it is between 2 people and does not impinge on others.

The judges and lawyers in these cases violated the CONSTITUTION AND NEED TO BE CHARGE!!!

Conscientious Objector was a classification that pertained to military conscription, which we don't have today. I don't know about objection to particular activities within the volunteer military now and what regulations are supposed to pertain to it, but as a part of the draft law it always required an approved "alternate service", demanding acquiescence to the principle of conscription. It never recognized a Constitutional exemption for servitude as a way to avoid it.

Freedom of Association -- and by extension -- Freedom not to associate, codified in numerous Supreme Court decisions clearly supports the artist/baker/decorator's right NOT to commit art for any reason. The Couple is in no way harmed by his decision as there are virtually limitless number of bakers -- including the little blue-haired lady at Walmart -- willing to make a cake for them. As one of the "ladies" on the View pointed out, "it's bad business." So be it, there is not law (yet) mandating that business people only commit good business decisions (I give you "New Coke."). Just as the baker has the right not to commit commerce, the potential buyers have the right not to buy a product (Obamacare not withstanding).