Reading in the oral argument for that cake shop in Colorado brought to my mind the gender discrimination argument for same sex marriage. At the time I was shocked by how I could not find an answer to that argument and changed my position because of that. However the feeling that I missed something persisted and I think I have probably just found the answer.
The argument goes like this:
John was refused a marriage licence because he applied for it with Jim as his partner. Had John come with Jane instead of Jim he would have been granted that licence. That is a gender discrimination and therefore does not fit the legal precedence of the court.
The answer is:
No it is not gender discrimination unless you can find an example where both the reason for the discrimination and who suffers that discrimination do not exist in the same person. Here, the gender of Jim is the reason for discriminating against John and vice versa. It is like if a person entered a shop and the owner, who generally serves everybody else, told that person that he (the owner) would serve him (the person) if, for example, he (the owner) sees a man through the window or in the TV and will not serve that person if he (the owner) sees a woman. Would you call that gender discrimination against that person who entered that shop?
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