The gay wedding cake.

No, the civilized portion of the world isn't having any problems.
The problem is everyone is born at ground zero, a clean slate, and then they learn either bigotry and ignorance or compassion and inclusiveness from their parents and friends.

The bigoted ones cause the push back...nothing we can do about that except try and educate them or, if that fails, enact laws that prohibit their bigoted behavior.

Right now we have a White House that's being run by a man who is a bigoted, spoiled child in an old man's body.
He's encouraging the push back.
He's the one doing it wrong.

 

Without government there would be total chaos and not many of us would survive.
Those that did, if there were no governments, would revert to the strong verses the weak. Which is a form of governance.

Some form of government has existed for at least 5,000 years, and that's with the formation of city states, there were tribes and strong arm leaders well before that.
The human race will always have hierarchies, one purpose of government is to attempt to bring some sort of justice to the stratification brought on by the many different forms of those hierarchies.

This refusal to serve gays is just another hierarchy wherein one group thinks they are better than another for no justifiable reason. Let me be clear, there are some groups that I would rate higher than others on different hierarchies. But excluding someone from buying a cake just because they're gay isn't very logical, or just.

 

Good point.

I've posted this before, but I worked in the school district Bush II visited to show off his "No child left behind" fiasco. One of my sons was in the audience as a student.
Now, this was a large prosperous school district with two large high schools about a mile apart. Bush visited the "good" high school. The one where the students did better than the other. One of the differences was in how the district feeder lines were drawn. Those students nearer the city, in the poorer areas whose parents had to rent because they couldn't afford to buy a house went to the "bad" high school. Guess which high school had a larger proportion of poorer blacks?

This is above the Mason Dixon Line, btw.

A few years back a proposal was made to unite the two high schools into one mega campus. It was a beautiful design, much like a college campus and very simple to do as the two schools were so close. At the "bad" high school a junior high sitting a short distance away would be converted to a 9th and 10th grade unit, and the old high school would serve grades 11 and 12.
They would be connected by a shared gym area.
The other "good" high school would be converted into a junior high.

They bought an adjacent corn field for under a million and started drilling holes for perc tests.

Then the parents woke up. Seems a certain segment didn't want their kids going to the same school as "those kids, wink wink".
So what happened?
The idea was scrapped after the land purchase, after the blueprints had been made and contractors found, and they bought an entirely new piece of land 10 miles away and built an entirely new building for the "good kids".
The "bad" kids got stuck with the 50 year old high school.
And they redrew the feeder lines to remove even more of that certain group from the new school.

I asked a black colleague of mine why the black community wasn't in an uproar over this and she just shrugged her shoulders.

 

Well, this is how I view the matter.
If the couple had asked to have a swastika and NAZI icons on the cake, I would probably support the baker.
But not just a swastika per se, unless I knew the swastika was purposely meant to promote NAZI ideals. In other words, the swastika is an ancient symbol and if it was being used by a Buddhist, Hindu, or Jain, as part of their heritage I would see no problem with requiring the baker to make a cake with that symbol on it.

But if a known white supremacist wanted that symbol on a cake, the baker would be within his or her rights to refuse.

The difference is that the use of a swastika by white supremacists is to promote the ideals of NAZI Germany, which were not good.
The use of a swastika by a Buddhist, Hindu, or Jain is to promote the ideals associated with well-being, which is good.

Having a gay couple request a cake that promotes being gay is not the same as requesting a cake that promotes bigotry, or negative ideals such as the ideas promoted by the NAZIs.

They claim their religion is anti gay so they shouldn't have to bake a cake that celebrates a gay marriage, but what if their religion is anti interracial marriage, or if it's a religion such as the Faith Tabernacle Congregation Church which prohibits medical treatment?
Would a bakery have the right to not bake a cake celebrating a medical degree or a successful operation based on religious grounds?

The test for me is, is the requested cake promoting the fellowship of man, or is religion being used to deny someone the same rights that everyone else has?
All this gay couple wants is a cake celebrating their happiness, not something that promotes discord.
What's wrong with that? A baker should be able to use a religious idea that divides us, or a couple that is celebrating love gets a cake that illustrates their love?

 

It depends on your definition of ideals.

Of course the government can institute moral behavior. The government is the people. The people decide the morals of the civilization they're embedded in.
The problem with a pure democracy is that sometimes a majority of people have poor morals.
That's why the founding fathers of the U.S. didn't want a democracy. Instead they formed a Representative Republic based on the rule of law.

The idea is that the majority is at least smart enough to elect representatives a bit smarter than themselves who will then institute rules of law in support of moral justice.

We have laws that tell us that it's immoral to have sex with individuals below a certain age for example.
Ideally I may think that there's nothing wrong with having sex with an intelligent, sophisticated, consciously advanced 17 year old.
And ideally that may be right.
But society has deemed otherwise.
In every case will having sex with an under age individual harm that individual? There's no evidence that in every instant harm would result. What's the difference if you have sex with someone one day before their 18th birthday, or the day after their 18th birthday? Not much. But the peoples' representatives have passed a law that prohibits underage sex. It doesn't matter what your ideals are in this matter, the people through their government, have decided for you.

There are many moral laws passed by the government without regard for every person's singular ideals.
How could the government agree with everyone individually?

I don't get this lack of understanding about governments and what their function is.
Why would you think that everyone can have their own morals and act on their own ideals without regard for others? That would be anarchy.

 

You can have any ideals you like, but society doesn't necessarily permit you to act on all of them.

In the main our government has done pretty well. It's the first government ever conceived to be of the people, and to enact certain limits and checks on absolute power. It's had its ups and downs. Right now I feel it's in a down cycle, but it'll bounce back if the people apply enough pressure.
I see lots of elected officials that I can support. Just because there are those I don't support doesn't mean the entire government is corrupt.

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Do you want me to list the positive things the government has accomplished in 241 years?
If you can't see any, I'll gladly take the time to research them and provide a list to you.

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I'm not comparing apples to oranges, in my view.
A law aimed at preventing people from denying a child the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness sans sexual activity that he or she isn't mature enough to understand or consent to is no different than one aimed at allowing a gay couple to their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of their happiness sans being treated like they're sinning against a god they may or may not believe in.

What's the difference between someone who believes it's morally right to have underage sex and someone who believes they have a right to withhold a public service because of the sex their customers choose to engage in?
They both hold a belief based on their ideals and morals.

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No one said you should trust any government, that's why we have separation of powers, both lifetime and self terminating governmental positions, written laws, and special powers such as impeachment which don't rely on set laws but are purely political. Here's a few:

The only ones I see trusting any portion of the government are the Trump supporters who trust anything that comes out of the executive branch no matter what it is.