Masterpiece Cakeshop Might Follow the Kosher Example
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
2150 Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
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.
Their religion dictated what they sold, not who they sold it to.
PHOTO: ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
In response to your editorial “Let Them Not Bake Cake” (Dec. 4), Charles D. Eden writes, “Colorado officials are trying to force Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips to act against his faith, his conscience, his sacred honor” (Letters, Dec. 11). I disagree.
My father, and his father before him, were kosher caterers—they only served kosher food. This was an expression of their religion and their desire to provide service to people who maintained certain religious customs. You could no more ask them to serve pork at a wedding than you could go into a shoe store and ask them to sell you a hat. However, they would gladly hold a wedding reception for people who didn’t themselves keep kosher, or for that matter people who weren’t Jewish. Their religion dictated what they sold, not who they sold it to.
If we allow the sellers’ religious beliefs to dictate who they serve, rather than what they serve, then some Catholic cake bakers might not bake wedding cakes for those who were divorced; where would we draw the line on who could buy these wedding cakes?
Everyone has the right to select a business that allows them to act according to his own faith, conscience and sacred honor, but once he opens his doors to the public, he must serve the people who come through those doors.
Bob Denmark
East Hanover, N.J.
