The Mexican Dream

[Steelgrave]

^Complaining, of course, begs the question...are video games and digital media a form of free speech that deserve a platform?

My own sense is, while games like that should most certainly NOT be illegal, I'd rather the commercial sites that I use not feature such content.  They're totally welcome to make their game and try to sell it.

I just don't want a platform I use to carry it.  That's all.

Good answer. I don't have a problem with porn websites carrying porn, but I don't want those titles to pop up when I'm searching Netflix with my grandsons.

[Jarhead0331]

^Complaining, of course, begs the question...are video games and digital media a form of free speech that deserve a platform?

Interesting question. I don't think a retailer should be forced to carry a product. The game designers don't have to sell it through Steam either. They can market directly to the public or find other vendors. If the government stepped in and said they couldn't sell the game at all, there would definitely be a free speech violation.

Yes, I also agree that retailers shouldn't be forced to carry products, but haven't the courts already held that businesses may be forced to provide certain goods and services, or face severe penalties? I know of at least one bakery in Colorado that probably has a strong opinion on this.

That bakery wasn't forced to supply a particular product, they were ordered to supply a product they regularly created and sold to a person they had refused to sell their regular product to. While that case is now up on appeal, it seems to me like a standard issue civil rights case, just like the seminal civil rights cases of the '60s where motels on federal highways were ordered to provide rooms to black people. Sexual preference has been a protected class for a few years now, so no, you can't refuse to sell your standard goods to gay people.

It wasn't like they were forced to produce a sexually explicit gay wedding cake, it was just a regular wedding cake that they refused to make for a gay couple. From the CO Civil Rights Commission's appellate brief:

Respondents Charlie Craig and David Mullins are a Colorado same-sex couple. In 2012, they planned to marry in Massachusetts and have a reception afterward in Colorado.

Accompanied by Craig's mother, Craig and Mullins went to Masterpiece to buy a wedding cake for their reception. Id. at 5a, 64a. At the shop, the couple was met by Phillips. When they told Phillips that they were interested in purchasing a wedding cake for their wedding, he replied that it was his standard business practice not to provide cakes for same-sex weddings. He explained that he would sell the couple other baked goods, including "birthday cakes, shower cakes, ... cookies and brownies." But, he said, "I just don't make cakes for same-sex weddings." Id. at 4a–5a, 64a–65a.

Craig, Mullins, and Craig's mother immediately left. They never discussed details about the cake that Craig and Mullins were seeking, such as the cake's design or whether it would include any special features or messages. Id. at 4a, 65a.

Here's the thing though. In 2012, same sex-marriage wasn't recognized in CO. Why should the baker be required to provide a cake for a wedding reception when the state didn't recognize the wedding as valid at the time?

Not only that, but the case implicates issues involving religious freedom and separation of Church and State. Its not as simple as protecting "gay people from discrimination".

[SirAndrewD]

I don't have a problem with porn websites carrying porn,

As a man ten years married and twenty overall years with the same woman, neither do I.

[Steelgrave]

I don't have a problem with porn websites carrying porn,

As a man ten years married and twenty overall years with the same woman, neither do I.

8) O0

[BanzaiCat]

Consider something like "Shower With Your Dad Simulator." That's some creepy shit, and apparently rather popular on Steam, but whatever floats people's boats.

[bayonetbrant]

(warning, potential thread derailment)

As I understand it, the business owner gets to choose what products / services they will sell or provide, but once they have decided what to sell / provide, they most do so equally to everyone.

So a movie theater can decide not to show R-rated movies, but they can't only show R-rated movies to white folks.

The bakery gets to decide if they're going to make wedding cakes or not, but once they decide to make them, they have to make them for any customer.  They can always choose not to make wedding cakes and you can't sue them because they don't.  It would be like suing your plumber for not building your treehouse.

[Gusington]

Please tell me Shower With Your Dad Simulator is not real.

[SirAndrewD]

Please tell me Shower With Your Dad Simulator is not real.

Well, we could tell you that but...

http://store.steampowered.com/app/359050/Shower_With_Your_Dad_Simulator_2015_Do_You_Still_Shower_With_Your_Dad/

[Gusington]

Oh my frikkin God

[mirth]

God has nothing to do with it.

[Gusington]

That makes me want to die.

[SirAndrewD]

That makes me want to die.

There's worse.  I promise you. 

[Gusington]

GO AWAY EVIL GAMING NECROMANCER

[glen55]

[/quote]

Here's the thing though. In 2012, same sex-marriage wasn't recognized in CO. Why should the baker be required to provide a cake for a wedding reception when the state didn't recognize the wedding as valid at the time?
[/quote]

Because it was unconstitutional. State law is completely irrelevant to that, as states aren't allowed to write unconstitutional laws.

Caveat: I don't know the deep facts of this, and if there is an issue of enforcing law for pre-change behavior, I'm not commenting on that. I was really just commenting on Jarhead's statement that" I don't think a retailer should be forced to carry a product," which he linked to the Colorado bakery case.

[/quote]
Not only that, but the case implicates issues involving religious freedom and separation of Church and State. Its not as simple as protecting "gay people from discrimination".
[/quote]

Well, it "implicates" them, but in only in a way that is already well-settled in American constitutional law. Your religious beliefs do not entitle you to discriminate commercially against members of a protected class. If they did, that would be a mile-wide loophole in anti-discrimination law: just join the Church of Universal Enthusiastic Bigotry and open your whites-only restaurant chain nationwide.

[bayonetbrant]

Not only that, but the case implicates issues involving religious freedom and separation of Church and State. Its not as simple as protecting "gay people from discrimination".

\

As I understand it, a similar case was pretty much sealed when it was discovered that the bakery made cakes for people married at the courthouse that were never married in a church, thus completely invalidating the whole "we only make cakes for religious ceremonies we agree with" argument.  I might've misread the details, but I think that was the gist of it.