> That is extremely inconsistent and evidence of bias and prejudice in the local enforcement of law.

That is not inconsistent, as one is denying someone based on what they are, and the other is denying someone based on harassment. The gay couple didn't ask the baker to write on the cake that heterosexuality was immoral. There's an obvious difference between affirming the culture of the customer, and antagonistically denying the culture of the producer.

And I do think think that the baker's refusal was about what they are, since the conditions to bake the cake required that it didn't acknowledge what they are. It's like saying, "I will bake a cake for a black person, but only if it doesn't reference black culture in any way."

The religious baker was being asked to engage in an action that's deeply disparaging of his beliefs and values.

The gay baker was being asked to engage in an action that's deeply disparaging of his beliefs and values.

This is the problem with social laws. It's easy to see things from our own perspectives, without considering that what 'we' consider perfectly reasonable can be perfectly offensive to another individual. One of the most crucial issues in forcing people to engage in behavior that they find offensive is that it goes both ways.

I believe the standard retort to this is that religion is a choice, whereas sexual orientation is not.

Which is understandable as far as it goes, except it is the sole exception to the accepted blank slate belief of sociologists everywhere. We carve out a very visible exception in this domain.

Zeitgeist: Our behaviors are all socialized into us, with the sole exception of sexual orientation. Contrast with the perspective that one's religion is merely a choice, such that after being socialized into a belief system for one's most formative eighteen years, one can simply toss it away thereafter.

Absolutely, but the issue here is that religion is a protected class under the law. The key point here is that a 'creator' generally cannot be forced to use their talents to create something that they do not want to. However can people 'override' this and force people to create things they normally would not, if the thing being requested falls under the domain of a protected class? For instance 'satanists' are now requesting the same baker create cakes celebrating the birth of Lucifer with upside down crosses and associated imagery, arguing that it's an expression of their religion, implicitly with threats to sue if the baker doesn't abide.

This is going to rapidly become an image problem for the Bay Area and the tech industry as workers in other places and industries become obsolete. So it may well be in our own best interest to take the initiative.

Is it possible for the tech world to seize the issue of worker retraining and a general safety net like it did with net neutrality? Brand and promote the hell out of it? I don't think the existing strategy of trying to fly under the radar will work for long.