“Everyone has the same rights,” one protestor told television station KDVR. “A gay wedding cake, a straight wedding cake – it’s the same thing.”

Hey, wow, I didn't know that we all have a right to a wedding cake.  They must have glossed over that one in law school.

The owner of a Colorado bakery said in spite of picket lines and online petitions he will not change a store policy against baking wedding cakes for homosexual couples – a policy that critics call hateful and bigoted.

More than 4,200 people have signed an online petition calling on the Masterpiece Cake Shop to ends its policy banning gay wedding cakes. Over the weekend, several dozen people picketed the privately-owned store in Lakewood, Colo.

Notwithstanding the fact that people can go to another bakery, this story has two points to it:

First, it is likely that the bakery owner is in violation of some law that says a Colorado business cannot discriminate in its services and refuse such to a person because of their sexual orientation.  However, if this were a member of the Westboro Baptist Church who was refused a cake, the bakery owner would likely be hailed as a hero and not be in violation of the law - because I bet that same law does not offer the same protection for religious orientation.  The 1st Amendment protects only the freedom to practice one's faith, and in that scenario a gay baker could tell a Christian to get their cake elsewhere since it does not infringe on the Christian's right to practice their faith, and so in that same vein it should be okay for a country club to disallow membership to Jews.

Right?

Second, what is up with all these online petitions?  If Thor Svensen in Malmo signs it, why would the baker give a rat's ass about that?  I think it's funny - see, I deeply care about this issue, and feel terribly committed to it, so I took 20 seconds and signed my name, perhaps even using a pseudonym, to an online petition, which makes me an activist!  Okay, maybe it took longer if the person first had to set up a user ID with the website hosting the petition.  How does some place like Change.org - where you can log in and sign online petitions all day long or start your own to convince the Mexican drug cartels to stop shooting - make its money?  I suspect they sell email lists to spammers of all the desktop radicals working out there to change the world by "signing" an online petition.

Ooh . . . fierce.

BTW - are there no bakeries in Colorado catering to the LGBT community?  Because it would seem to me that a gay couple wishing to host a wedding would seek businesses - caterers, bake shops, photographers, tux and dress shops, florists - who are either part of the community themselves or who advertise to the community to reward those individuals.  

Or are they just looking for a fight?