Indy bakery could lose lease for turning away gays

[meegbear]

The owners of a cookie shop that has operated for more than two decades at the Indianapolis City Market could face eviction.

But it's the reason behind that possible eviction that is raising provocative questions that pit the rights and moral beliefs of a business owner against the obligation of the city to do all it can to prevent discrimination and encourage tolerance.

The city is investigating whether the owner of Just Cookies engaged in discrimination last week when he cited moral objections to homosexuality as his reason for declining a customer's request to provide rainbow-iced cookies for a "National Coming Out Day" event planned next week at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

"That could be grounds for taking away their stand in the market," said Wayne Schmidt, president of the City Market Board, who said Just Cookies is on a month-to-month lease. "I'd hate to lose them, but we can't tolerate any kind of discrimination like that."

A spokesman for Mayor Greg Ballard said the city's Office of Equal Opportunity is looking into the matter because it involves a tenant of a city-owned property.

"The mayor was certainly dismayed and wants to make it clear that a person's values, morality and personal beliefs are absolutely not relevant to making a purchase at the City Market," said Robert Vane, the mayor's deputy chief of staff.

<snip>

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100930/NEWS02/310010004

[babylonsister]

1. Excellent news. Rec'd. nt

[xchrom]

2. recommend

[msongs]

3. In this case vendors should be able to refuse to sell to christians based on religious belief nt

[madrchsod]

4. oops---city owned property

the reviews on google are 50-50 on this issue.

[ThomCat]

5. Wonderful News!

:woohoo:

[WolverineDG]

6. sucks to be them

He could have said "Sorry we don't make cupcakes" which is acceptable, but noooo, he had to go with the homophobic response. Hopefully, people are voting with their pocketbooks & buying their baked goods elsewhere too.

dg

[lawwolf]

14. People are voting with their pocketbooks

But not in the way you would hope. Since this story has broke and the threat of eviction has come up they have been swamped with customers. I hear they sold out twice in a single day last week and when I walked past the place today there was a guy buy boxes of cookies from them, again wiping out their shelves.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

7. Somebody should send them

Rainbow cupcakes as a parting gift

[City Lights]

8. Sounds like Just Cookies is getting a taste of just karma!

:bounce:

[bear425]

9. The business should change its name to

Just Cookoos

Edit: hope they lose their lease and their sprinkles fall off

[Erose999]

10. I think this may be the same shop that made racist charicature cookies during the '08 election.

Might want to research that. I know CNN and maybe a couple others did a piece on it.

[lapislzi]

11. I'm sure Just Cookies will be just fine with that.

They are proudly exercising their constitutional right to bigotry. Let them practice their discrimination on their own property. They should wear their eviction as a badge of honor.

[Heidi]

12. Good. Bigotry shouldn't pay.

Recommending.

[starroute]

13. But what if somebody had asked for an order of swastika cookies?

Understand -- I think the cookie shop owners' actions are morally indefensible. But I also see a more fundamental free speech issue in play.

Our society seems to be trying to apply a standard which says that anything which promotes tolerance is worthy and deserves the full protection of the law, but that hate speech is unacceptable and needs to be condemned or (in some European countries) even criminalized.

That may seem fine on the surface -- but it means that you're allowing government to decide what is acceptable speech and what is unacceptable. And I can see all sorts of potential slippery slopes as a result, right down to something like a corporate-friendly Supreme Court ruling that the oil-soaked version of the BP logo is a form of hate speech.

This issue is not the same as a pharmacist refusing to prescribe birth control pills. In that case, there's no free speech involved -- just the expectation that somebody will do the job for which they were hired. It's also not the same as whether a restaurant owner will serve blacks or a landlord will rent to gays.

But the cookie shop owner didn't refuse to sell cookies to gays -- he refused to decorate cookies with what he saw as a pro-gay message. That turns it into a free speech issue, and the rules become very different.

There are some complicating factors here, such as the fact that the property is city-owned and that the store is on a month-to-month lease. It looks like the City Market Board would be well within its rights to politely inform the cookie stand that it would prefer a tenant that serves the entire community and avoids unnecessary controversy.

But even that makes me more than a bit uncomfortable. It's kind of a "first they came for the Jews and I said nothing because I was not a Jew" situation, and it's very hard to see any resolution that wouldn't set a bad precedent in one way or another.

[RZM]

15. Interesting analysis

I agree this shouldn't be taken too far -- they refused to decorate cookies a certain way, which is an issue that probably comes up from time to time in the baked goods industry (people requesting sexual imagery, hateful messages, whatever). Had they refused to sell to gay customers, that's one thing and (I'm presuming) a violation of the law, but to refuse a certain decoration . . . as much as I dislike where they are coming from, seems to me they might have that right. Obviously these people are prejudiced and should be called out on it, but you don't want to make martyrs out of them either, which could actually be counter-productive in terms of promoting tolerance. Not sure what the best option is here, nor what the legal issues are regarding city-owned property -- all I know for sure is that I would never give them my business.