Why do conservatives and libertarians fight the "wedding cake" cases?
Constitution Pretty Irrelevant to Libertarian EthicsWell, Ill let other folks opine about the meaning of the Constitution and debate various past cases. We libertarian ethicists are pretty unimpressed with legalistic arguments. What some guy wrote 230 years ago, and what some other guy thought about those words 100 years later, and how some third guy interpreted that 25 years ago, these might be fun distractions that keep historians and lawyers employed, but they are irrelevant to libertarian ethics. Libertarian Ethics Starts with Self-OwnershipLibertarian ethics starts with self-ownership: We have the absolute ownership over our own body. Universal human ethics trump laws and constitutions and legislators and Supreme Court Justices. So, we could have a Constitution where some framer explicitly wrote, You do not own your own body. or we could have some Supreme Court Justice His Most Honorable Dumbledork who rules, Rulers are the supreme owners of your body. And libertarian ethicists wouldnt give a rats behind for their opinions. We only care about the ethical requirements under universal human ethic of self-ownership, and self-ownership in this case is pretty clear. Freedom of Labor and EthicsBecause I own my own body, I may move it however I choose. As owner, it is absolutely my choice whether to move it in a way that provides you a service or not. If some guy comes in and demands that I move my body in a way that I dont want to, it is my absolute right, derived from my absolute ownership over my own body, to refuse to move it in that way. For this guy to threaten (legal) violence against me, he is saying that he has a superior ownership of my body. That conflicts directly with my absolute right of self-ownership. (Note: We call owning someone else, slavery.) Whether the Constitution or the Supreme Court agrees doesnt matter. If they violate the cake-makers self-ownership, they are committing an evil act. And the Masterpiece owner could ethically use violence to protect himself from their unethical attempts to enslave him. (And would be unwise given the overwhelming number of government guns pointed at him .) But thats basically the endpoint for libertarian ethics. Nonlibertarians Arguments for Violating Self-OwnershipNonlibertarians have a lot of rationales for why the gay couple can threaten violence to violate the self-ownership of the cake shop owner. They like the couple who is demanding the service. This is totally irrelevant to universal human ethics. To think that one can enslave someone else because you really want something, is not an ethical argument its just a selfish bully argument. They dont like the person who is refusing service. Again, totally irrelevant. One may not enslave others simply because you dont like them. The shop is public which means that the ruler ultimately owns the shop and may force the owner to do as the ruler prescribes. This ignores how property is justly acquired from self-ownership and conflates ruler theft with just ownership. So-and-so wrote something. Irrelevant, as discussed above. Contract and EthicsOne argument that does hold ethical water is that the owner had already agreed to use his body to serve the customer, and then reneged on the contract. As the owner of my body, I can promise my body to certain performance. But the details of the agreement are relevant to the agreement. I may offer to dance for you, but if you then insist that I dance naked, we never came to agreement on that point! The details of the deal matter to the agreement. And even had we contracted, Im not your slave! I can pull out. I then would owe you compensation to pay for any out-of-pocket costs to make you whole. In the cake case, perhaps $1 to pay for the gas to drive to the next cake shop down the street. So, conflating conservatives with libertarians in this case may not answer your specific question. We libertarians are generally not authoritarian so what some authority wrote way back when, even if it was in The Constitution, and how some authority will interpret what he wrote, is not something that we are going to blindly follow. We are much more interested in understanding and following universal human ethics how we can respect each persons ownership over how we each choose to use our own body. And I think that this is an approach that gays should think really hard about before ignoring. Because there are a lot of people who want to control how other people use their bodies. See related: What is the most important right a person has? Why is self-ownership most important to libertarians? How does self-ownership justify private property? What is the opposite of libertarianism? If universal healthcare providers refuse to work at the assigned wage, is forced labor ethical? Should a Jewish baker be forced to bake a Nazi cake? Do libertarians support transgender people? What are the different branches of libertarianism? How do human ethics differ from individual morals? Essays on by Dennis Essays on by Dennis Essays on by Dennis