But seriously, he is in the wrong line of business, this is one instance in which the market will surely have the desired effect on a bad business owner.  The people who support this man surely aren't buying cakes, and the people buying cakes, for the most part, are sympathetic to gay marriage.

I know the law and agree with the spirit of it...but otoh it is kinda tyrannical to force a person to do work for a person they despise, for no reason or good reason.

That's businesses, mind, not government.

I suspect there would be a number of surprises all around in both directions, and at least we'd all know where we stood.

I wonder what happens if multiple gay couples now request wedding cakes from Masterpiece, are denied, and each files a complaint.

assuming they retained competent counsel, they would claim their religious rights, under the first amendment, were being violated by the state. the question then becomes, who's rights supersede who's? technically, they're not causing financial or physical harm to the plaintiffs, unless it can be proven that it would somehow cost more for them to get their cake elsewhere.

of course, i seem to recall a case involving a small motel, who's owner refused to rent a room to an unmarried (male/female) couple, citing his religious beliefs as the basis for his refusal. i seem to recall he lost the case. but, that was many years ago, in a much different political and judicial environment.

it seems to me, if your "deeply held personal beliefs" conflict with the law, you have two stark choices:

1. don't enter that particular business.
   
2. separate your "deeply held personal beliefs" from your business practices.

Creed vs. Sexual Orientation. Both seem to be protected in this statute, but they might actually conflict sometims in everyday practice.

It's in our not so nice nature. I have several suggestions: do we really need a wedding cake? Can you bake one yourself? Rename the bakery to Materpiss Bakery. Bake hundreds of cakes and deliver them to the jerk at the bakery.

If I understand this correctly:

Since 2006, the Constitution of Colorado was amended to limit recognition of same-sex unions by banning same-sex marriage and common law marriages between same-sex partners. Civil unions are not explicitly banned by the state constitution under Amendment 43, although they are not currently offered in state law.

Link

Then the couple involved cannot legally marry.

we have the freedoms we have today, partly because, 2000 years ago, there were a lot of Christians who held to their convictions and did not burn incense or sacrifice to Caesar, and for that, they were burned, crucified, fed to lions and beasts.  They were run through with swords and boiled in oil and tortured in ways such as being forced to sit in scalding, heated metal chairs.

Kidding.

Seems to me that a bake shop should not be forced to write stuff on a cake that they don't want to write. iow, if they don't want to write two guy's or two girl's names on a wedding/commitment/whatever cake, they shouldn't have to do it.

I believe a private business should be able to refuse service to anyone they choose regardless of race, color or creed.  The Constitution does not say you can't be a racist.  Now the '64 Civil Rights act does outlaw any business involved in interstate commerce from discriminating, and Colorado law establishes some level of law regarding discrimination for businesses.  The CO law seems clear to me.  You cannot deny someone access to your business because of your sexual orientation, but thats not to say the business cannot chose to offer a service they find objectionable.  The business owner cannot deny selling cupcakes to gays, racists or anyone else.  They can decide not to provide a service request based on moral objections.  

This issue is as stupid as the Chick-Fil-A kerfuffle.  Whatever happened to the way we used to settle dissatisfaction with merchants?  Remember how  we simply quit buying from them?

I would also note that our State Insurance Commissioner's office, in its 2001 report to the state legislature on the implementation and impact of our law mandating contraceptive coverage, pointed out that it actually saved employers $97 per year per employee to offer a comprehensive contraceptive benefit.

Yaman nonetheless took the $97 figure and ran with it(bolding added):

...if the insurer SAVES $97 per insured by including contraceptive coverage (as compared to no contraceptive coverage), there's no additional cost to pass along.
[snip]
Your argument is that the cost of contraceptive coverage increases the insurers cost, who then passes the increased cost along to the insured.  My point is that, since providing contraceptive coverage actually costs less than not providing contraceptive coverage, there is no increased cost to pass along.

I also had understood Donald's claim this way, as Obama's demand that insurers provide contraceptives at no charge to recipient or contracting employer surely depended for what little plausibility it possesses on such provision being at least costless to the insurance company. I thought the asserted proof of the assertion (dubious politically motivated "studies") obviously too speculative and unreliable to be the basis of redefining the ordinary understanding of "purchase" in legal or Constitutional analysis, but I assumed, as Yman did, that the $97 savings was substantially in reduced medical costs.

Anne, however supplied the actual source of the $97 figure, quoting HHS as (bolding added) follows:

Evidence from well-documented prior expansions of contraceptive coverage indicates that the cost to issuers of including coverage for all FDA-approved contraceptive methods in insurance offered to an employed population is zero.
[snip]
... When medical costs associated with unintended pregnancies are taken into account, including costs of prenatal care, pregnancy complications, and deliveries, the net effect on premiums is close to zero.[10],[11]...

When indirect costs such as time away from work and productivity loss are considered, they further reduce the total cost to an employer.  Global Health Outcomes developed a model that incorporates costs of contraception, costs of unintended pregnancy, and indirect costs.  They find that it saves employers $97 per year per employee to offer a comprehensive contraceptive benefit.[13]  Similarly, the PwC actuaries state that after all effects are taken into account, providing contraceptive services is "cost-saving."[14]

So in the insurance transaction the direct cost of adding contraception is asserted by HHS to be "zero" (highly unlikely - complex addition problems total to actual zero with essentially zero probability) or "close to zero" (which even if true wouldn't close enough to "free" for the intended justification argument, never mind that the biases of the source indicate that a substantial cost is more likely than not). All or virtually all the claimed savings are "indirect" and not a consideration for the insurance company.

So the argument is actually that you can force an employer to buy an inurance plan with contraception because savings in its operations will render its net costs zero or better, called "free" by the State.

What's next? If the government has a study claiming that buying new computers each year will have a net positive effect on a business' bottom line, it can therefor order a business to buy new computers each year on the grounds that all those new computers are "free", and the requirement is therefor not an imposition?