@thegab:
So what if the same circumstances happen as this, but with a racist owner and a black couple? It's one thing to just be an artist, but when you start selling to people and doing business, but deny a certain group of people based on your own beliefs? Then be ready to get sued, and I agree with that.
It's personal freedom to decide to not sell to a particular person based on you not liking said person, but discrimination isn't the same as personal freedom. And religious nuts shouldn't get special treatment just for being pieces of shit and hating a whole community of people.
So… lets see here. It's quite a heated topic so I'm going to be treading on eggshells, but I'm going to try to engage with your example as best I can.
So at its core, the crucial fact is that it's an artistic, personalised contract, and not just somebody refusing sale of a serialised product on discriminatory grounds (which I believe to be unacceptable). This dynamic changes things, because we have an artist taking commissions, but due to personal biases he doesn't want to depict black people in his art. We could switch this with jewish people, germanic people, disabled people, it doesn't really matter.
The legal question is... can a person's desire for a contract over something ovverride an artist's discretion to depict only what he wishes (even if the reason is arbitrary discrimination?)
In my view.. no. It's art, a creative process where the artist has discretion over whether or not to take on projects or not, I don't think it's right to force them to draw or paint something, no matter what the reasoning on their side may be. It's not even the same as going to a normal bakery to buy a preprepared cake, that would be a serialised good. In my view, I think it's good law that wherever a the selling party to a contract is being asked to produce a personalised product, full discretion to refuse such a request for personal reasons should remain with the seller.
It certainly doesn't create massive injustices in society, as it only applies to a very limited subset of personalised contracts that are artistic in nature, and there's always the freedom to go elsewhere to have your contract carried out, it's not like the bakery is the only bakery in the area. Hell, if the baker had refused to sell a standard cake with no defining personalised features promoting LGBT marriages, I wouldn't be on his side. But in this case... elaborate wedding decorations and writing messages on a cake are art and expression, and clearly personalised to the specific wedding... and no, I don't think it's right to force someone to go through with making that if they don't wish to.
EDIT: Just to drive home why I think this with an analogy, if I were an artist on tumblr, and I had 'I accept commissions' in my bio, and someone were to ask me to draw an artwork where Dio and Jotaro kiss, is it then discriminatory and illegal for me to refuse on the grounds that I'm uncomfortable drawing Yaoi doujin? Does that go against LGBT anti-discrimination law, and my choice as an artist is ignored on that basis? Even further, can I then be sued into drawing the Yaoi by the person who requested it? This seems absurt me, especially since if there were no LGBT element in the art, I'd be free to deny a request for any reason I wish. Similarly, a bakery might deny to sell someone a personalised cake for any number of artistic reasons, it seems odd and frankly legally dubious that the moment an LGBT element is part of the equation their other rights to deny the request are thrown out the window due to the discrimination law. That's the lense I'm seeing it through. (Feel free to refute this example though, I just came up with it so I'm sure there's a flaw or two in the logic somewhere)