Eastern Orthodox believers want their cake too.
Andrew Cuomo can take his religious convictions to Colorado?
You can buy a NY Lottery ticket every day of the year except at Nassau OTB.
You can play the NY slot machines every day of the year
You can get married every day of the year.
You should be able to eat cake and bet horses at Nassau OTB every day of the year.
HI-
Thanks for
the help. The item’s below. I’d be happy to mail you a copy,
if you give me a mailing address.
Claude
Solnik
(631)
913-4244
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Home > LI
Confidential > Stop
scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
Can’t Have Your Cake, Gays Are Told, and a Rights Battle Rises
A Clash of Cake and Faith
Video by Mike Shum and Ashley Maas on
Publish Date December 15, 2014.
Photo by Matthew Staver for The New York Times.
LAKEWOOD,
Colo. — Jack Phillips is a baker whose evangelical Protestant faith
informs his business. There are no Halloween treats in his bakery — he
does not see devils and witches as a laughing matter. He will not make
erotic-themed pastries — they offend his sense of morality. And he
declines cake orders for same-sex weddings because he believes
Christianity teaches that homosexuality is wrong.
Mr.
Phillips, whose refusal two years ago to make a cake for a gay male
couple has led to a court battle now getting underway, is one of a small
number of wedding vendors across the country who are emerging as the
unlikely face of faith-based resistance to same-sex marriage.
The
refusals by the religious merchants — bakers, florists and
photographers, for example — have been taking place for several years.
But now local governments are taking an increasingly hard line on the
issue, as legislative debates over whether to protect religious shop
owners are overtaken by administrative efforts to punish them.
In
Colorado, where Mr. Phillips, 58, owns and operates a small bakery
called Masterpiece Cakeshop, the State Civil Rights Commission
determined that Mr. Phillips had violated a state law banning
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in places of public
accommodation. The commission ordered Mr. Phillips to retrain all of his
employees, who include his 87-year-old mother, and to produce a
quarterly report detailing any refusals to bake; in response, he has
stopped accepting orders for any wedding cakes while he appeals the
ruling to the state courts.
“I
do like doing the wedding cakes,” he said. “But I don’t like having the
government tell me which ones I can make and which ones I can’t make,
and trying to control that part of my life.”
In New York, an administrative law judge fined Cynthia and Robert Gifford $13,000
for declining to rent their upstate farmhouse, which they often rent
out for heterosexual weddings, for the wedding of two women. The couple
paid the fine but, in an action similar to that taken by Mr. Phillips,
has stopped accepting reservations for any weddings while appealing.
There
have been more than a half-dozen other instances of business owners,
most citing their understanding of Christian faith, declining to provide
services for same-sex weddings. They include a photographer in New Mexico, a florist in Washington State, a bakery in Oregon, an inn in Vermont and wedding chapels in Idaho and in Nevada. And new cases continue to arise — over the last few weeks, a wedding planner in Arizona declined to work with a lesbian couple, and a business in California refused to photograph the wedding of a gay male couple (and then closed its doors after an outcry).
The
cases are largely being fought, and some say fueled, by two legal
advocacy organizations: the American Civil Liberties Union, which
supports same-sex marriage,
and the Alliance Defending Freedom, which opposes it. Each side cites
bedrock American principles: First Amendment rights of religion and
speech versus prohibitions in 21 states against discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation.
“It’s
a clear, well-settled proposition that businesses who open the door to
the public must serve the public,” said Evan Wolfson, the president of
Freedom to Marry, an organization advocating same-sex marriage. “We
don’t want Americans walking into businesses and being turned away
because of who they are — that’s what nondiscrimination principles
mean.”
But
the defenders of the shop owners argue that creating an artistically
involved or personalized service for a same-sex wedding is a form of
expression that should not be compelled by the government. They reject
the discrimination charge, noting that many of the businesses have gay
and lesbian customers, and, in some cases, employees.
“Anyone
who would suggest this is not about freedom of religion doesn’t know or
understand what religious liberty is about, which is the freedom to do
what your conscience directs,” said Alan Sears, the president of the
Alliance Defending Freedom.
Mr.
Sears says he has experienced his own form of bias: He says that a
photographer in Southern California declined to shoot a portrait of his
family for a Christmas card after discovering that Mr. Sears heads an
organization that opposes same-sex marriage. Mr. Sears said he supported
the photographer’s right to refuse service, just as he would support a
gay baker’s right to refuse to make a cake with an anti-gay message.
Vendors thus far have accumulated a losing streak in wedding and similar cases. In Kentucky, for example, a hearing officer recently ruled against a print shop owner who refused to make T-shirts for a gay pride group.
Advocates
for the vendors hope the court system will prove more sympathetic to
their constitutional claims than civil rights agencies have been, even
though the Supreme Court this year refused to hear an appeal from the New Mexico photographer. They are also pursuing legislation; in Michigan, the State House this month approved a measure that would protect business owners, while in South Carolina and in North Carolina, lawmakers are proposing measures allowing local officials to opt out of issuing same-sex marriage licenses.
Like
many of the religious business owners, Mr. Phillips, who attends a
Southern Baptist church, says his faith guides not only his personal
behavior, but also the way he runs his business. So while he says he
welcomes all customers — and happily sells cookies and brownies to gays
and lesbians — he says he is not comfortable pouring creative energy
into confectionary centerpieces for celebrations he believes to be at
odds with God’s will.
But
for Charlie Craig and David Mullins, the couple he turned away, the
incident was a form of bias. They married in Massachusetts — same-sex
marriage was not legal in Colorado at the time — but were holding their
party in Denver, where they live.
“We
were really shocked, because neither of us had ever been denied service
before, and it was mortifying and embarrassing,” Mr. Mullins said. “I
believe everyone has the right to believe whatever they want in their
own heart and practice what they want in their own church, but in the
’60s, people used religious arguments to argue against interracial
marriage, and I don’t think there’s any difference.”
On
a recent day, as Mr. Phillips decorated what he expected would be his
final wedding cake until the issue was resolved — an elegant assemblage
of gray and white tiers decorated with hydrangea, calla lilies and
gerbera daisies — he reflected on his unexpected role in the debate. He
has been baking for a living since he got a job in a doughnut shop after
high school.
Mr.
Phillips said he had politely declined to bake five or six same-sex
wedding cakes before the dispute with Mr. Mullin and Mr. Craig. Since
then, he has received thousands of emails, some threatening and some
supportive. Protesters showed up, but so did a busload of tourists who
purchased pastries as a sign of support and two young women from Kansas
who asked if they could pray for him.
Of
course, many religious business owners are serving same-sex weddings
without incident. But there are also refusals that go unreported because
the couples turned away by vendors simply move on.
“It
really ticked me off,” said Natalie Watson, a New Jersey lawyer who
chose not to file a complaint in that state after the florist she first
selected for her same-sex civil union voiced opposition to the event.
“But at the end of the day, I wanted the focus to be on us, and not to
go down some side street, so I didn’t do anything.”
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