Nonsense. That right belongs to the state regardless of what I say. It is, like gravity, a fact, not a conclusion.
I am not the one espousing an absolutist ideology, nor implying the right to “defend†myself from others because I perceive those others as a threat to my subjective beliefs.
In this case, I am quite certain that even Thomas Aquinas would agree that the bakers have a duty to obey this law, even if we assume it is an unjust law because it provides some modicum of protection to gays and lesbians. They have created a greater scandal by refusing to obey than they would have if they had simply baked the cake.
The bakers are wholly in the wrong here, both as a matter of positive law (the state statute) and as a matter of natural law. They had an obligation to obey the positive law because such obedience would not require them to directly engage in a morally wrong act, and the consequences of their disobedience are worse than the consequences of simply making the cake.
The Nazis passed a lot of laws. According to your logic, since they were in authority, everybody had the obligation to obey them. Hey you citizen, help us round up the Jews. Tell us where they're hiding. I guess Thomas Aquinas would say you'd have to obey the Nazis then, right?
Slavery was one time the law of the land in many states. Because it was legal, did that make it just or moral? Obviously not.
The facts are laws are supposed reflect the wishes of the public. If fifty percent of the public says one thing about a law, and the other fifty percent say another, we have a problem.So your definition of what is moral and legal is quite different from many of us on this forum.
Although you deny it, you are on the absolutist side in the wrong way. It's not enough for you that a vender is willing to sell a cake, the vender must (according to you) make the cake to the specifications of the homosexual couple.
BTW, you claimed the couple only want a general cake, but an article I read yesterday said otherwise. It's difficult to believe they didn't want some message on the cake.
We're not talking about selling something, we're talking about making something. The baker, businessman, vender has the absolute right to refuse to make something it doesn't want to make.
It doesn't matter if the business will make his product for someone else but not me. And it doesn't matter if the owner is bigoted, prejudiced, a jerk, whatever.
This is not the same thing as asking for food in a restaurant.
This demand entails making specific kind of product for a certain clientele.
All business owners of whatever race, creed, or ethnic origin reserve the right to make things only they want to make. They cannot be coerced in making something they don't want to make.
If some homosexual business only makes things for homosexual people, I have no right to demand they make something designed for a heterosexual clientele.
I have to go elsewhere. That means I'm free to buy whatever the homosexual business has for sale, but I cannot demand they make me something special. That violates their rights.
So who is on the side of people that says a business is free to create whatever they want to make, and who is on the side of people demanding a business violate their consciences?
You would be in the latter camp.