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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Anyone want to talk about test cases? Rosa Parks' name has come up again to remind us that there is a group of people who didn't know the incident was staged by the NAACP as a way to put segregation on trial. I hope that everyone knows test cases are a thing and I'm a little curious what percentage of the famous judicial cases this would apply to. I guess it tarnishes people's fuzzy feelings about the scrappy individual with pure motives facing off against evil oppression but it doesn't change the facts of the case. Personally I have the impression that the judicial system is skewed against the poor and un-savvy and rewards those who have resources behind them and know how to work the system. So it does seem to the outsider as if everyone could benefit from having an organization behind them to raise attention and mount a strong defense. Rosa Parks may have been one person but her case ended up helping the many not-so-sympathetic individuals who were also victims of the unjust system. So when you hear about a high profile case, does it matter if the person was specifically set up as a test case, and if it matters, why?

I find that the use of test cases triggers about as tribal of a response as I have to anything. When Dick Heller has the strength for the Second Amendment, he is a hero. When Charlie Craig rings up Masterpiece Cake for refusing to bake the cake, he is an obnoxious little troll and the people backing him should go find a real problem instead of creating one intentionally. Of course, the facts of the cases matter, but it does seem more than a little like having this be the path to creating precedent will tend to create even harder feelings than would otherwise exist.

When Charlie Craig rings up Masterpiece Cake for refusing to bake the cake, he is an obnoxious little troll and the people backing him should go find a real problem instead of creating one intentionally.

The thing with that, though, is that gay marriage was illegal and unrecognised in Colorado when the pair asked for a wedding cake. If they had gone to court to sue the state of Colorado for discrimination, fine. But taking a baker to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission seems like the easy way out.

Craig and Mullins got married out of state in 2012. Colorado legalised same-sex marriage in 2014. When the baker refused to bake the cake he was, like it or not, in harmony with Colorado law.

Except that Colorado law made the baker's discrimination illegal, so it was obviously not in harmony with that law. Your argument would be stronger were the baker somehow being asked to provide acake necessary for the wedding ceremony, as opposed to a cake for a reception. It is like saying a plumber who refused to fix a pipe at a gay married couple's house was acting in harmony with Colorado law. The legal status of SSM is a red herring.

Well no, it was specifically a wedding cake, which is nothing like fixing a pope at a house that happens to be owned by a gay couple.

Yeah. Laws should be read as one body so as not to contradict as much as possible. So if Colorado has a law that you can’t discriminate based on sexual orientation AND Colorado had a law that gay people couldn’t get married, it doesn’t really make sense to apply the first rule to a situation where a person’s alleged discriminatory action wouldve been in furtherance of a non permitted activity. Instead, the first rule should be read to be limited to discrimination related to activity that is not non permitted.