Research Seminar: 'Let Them Eat Cake: Wedding Discrimination, Sexual-Orientation Discrimination, and a Slippery Slope'

Professor John Corvino will be giving a research seminar, supported by the Centre for Public Law and Fitzwilliam College. All members of staff and postgraduate students are welcome to attend. The seminar will focus on a draft paper, which should be pre-read, entitled 'Let Them Eat Cake: Wedding Discrimination, Sexual-Orientation Discrimination, and a Slippery Slope'. 

The abstract of the paper is: 'In 2012 Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, citing his religious beliefs. In 2016 LaGresha Fizer-Brown canceled a birthday-cake order for a lesbian customer, after realizing that the cake was a gift for the customer's same-sex partner. Many who are sympathetic to Phillips's wedding-cake refusal—including both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage—would object to Fizer-Brown's birthday-cake refusal. In this paper I argue that the distinction between the cases largely fails. As a matter of law and public policy, the cases should stand or fall together'.

John Corvino is Professor of Philosophy and the incoming Dean of the Irvin D. Reid Honors College at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He is the author of numerous articles, as well as three books from Oxford University Press: Debating Same-Sex Marriage (with Maggie Gallagher, 2012), What's Wrong with Homosexuality? (2013), and Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination (with Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis, 2017). He has lectured at over 250 campuses on topics of sexuality, marriage, and ethics. Read more at www.johncorvino.com.