Whoopi Goldberg suggested during Tuesday’s broadcast of “The View” that her “freedom from religious beliefs” carried more weight than others’ rights to practice their respective religions.
Goldberg and her co-hosts discussed the case that is currently before the Supreme Court — 303 Creative v. Elenis — and throughout the segment Goldberg appeared to argue both sides of the case. She claimed that it was discrimination for the woman named in the case — Lorie Smith — to refuse to create a website for a same-sex wedding, but then later argued that she would refuse to bake a cake with a swastika on it because that would be “anti-human being.”
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Despite the fact doctors would lose their licenses, Whoopi doubles down on her false assertion that Christian doctors are fine with gays dying from a lack of medical treatment.
And she says this is like people saying "I don't want to serve you because you're black." pic.twitter.com/awIy3MNgqv— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) December 6, 2022
“The Supreme Court conservatives seem poised to agree with her, but here’s what I want to know: Whose religious freedom are we protecting, because she’s pooping on my religious freedom,” Goldberg asserted. “The whole idea in the Constitution, about freedom from religious beliefs, is that you don’t have to subscribe to your neighbor’s belief. That’s the beauty of it.”
Goldberg went on to suggest, without any evidence and without noting that it would be illegal, that a reasonable comparison was a doctor who would allow certain patients to die based on political beliefs rather than treat them. She then argued that the obvious result, if Smith were to win the case, would be people refusing to serve others because of race or gender in addition to sexual orientation.
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Co-host Joy Behar took a different approach, asking whether a baker would be compelled to bake a cake that featured a swastika as part of the decoration — to which Sunny Hostin replied that it would depend on whether the person ordering the cake was in a “protected class.”
WATCH:
Sara Haines points out that both the web designer and baker serve gay clients, they just disagree with the weddings.
She argues the wedding part makes it different than Whoopi's claim that it's like barring full service based on race. pic.twitter.com/z6S89Lyxd2— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) December 6, 2022
Co-host Sara Haines added a caveat, noting that both the baker and the web designer in question had never refused to serve gay clients — their issue was simply with attaching their business name to a same-sex wedding. And while Haines said she didn’t agree with that position either, it was important to distinguish between outright discrimination based on sexual orientation and what was actually happening in those cases.
Republican co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin noted that there was another issue in play as well, saying that she had a problem with the idea that the business owners were effectively being compelled to make a statement with which they did not agree.
She made the comparison to a gay web designer who might be asked to create an anti-LGBTQ website, arguing that they should also have the right to “opt out of that.”
WATCH:
Whoopi scoffs at people who talk about "freedoms." Says she'll refuse to bake the Nazi cake.
Behar questions what would happen to her legally. Whoopi says she'd be fine because "we collectively don't want to see."
Sara points out this is a private business, not city hall. pic.twitter.com/9sLyM6kfoy— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) December 6, 2022
Goldberg jumped back in to round out the conversation, this time taking the opposite position and claiming that if she were asked to bake a cake with a swastika on it she would refuse.
“To me, that is just anti-human being,” she said, and when Behar pressed her on whether or not she might face consequences for refusing, she argued, “That’s one of those things that we collectively say, ‘No, that’s not something we want to see.'”