@ProdigalHorn , suppose he had decided to make the cake. Would that have been sinful?
(Bear with me... long intro)
When Paul writes about the idea of eating meat offered to idols (be patient, I'm going somewhere with this...), that was a big deal at the time. You had a lot of Christians coming out of an idolatrous culture, and some still held onto the idea that there were lots of "little gods" that they weren't supposed to worship anymore. Then of course you had the Jewish Christians who were very careful about eating anything that was unclean.
Here's the upshot of what he taught them:
1 Corinthians 8:8-13 (ESV Strong's) Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. 9 But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? 11 And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. 12 Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.
Paul says that idols aren't real, and just because that steak was sitting on an alter earlier doesn't mean that it's now "evil steak." God will not judge you for eating it. BUT... sometimes hearing that doesn't make it feel any less wrong. Deep seeded ideas are hard to shake, and so many of them still had doubts about that, and just didn't feel right about doing it. And what Paul says here is, if you doubt, don't do it. And if you don't doubt, don't try to persuade the doubter to go along with you and violate his/her conscience.
So what all that means basically is that if your brother thinks it's sinful - EVEN THOUGH IT ISN'T - and you embolden him to do it anyway, he's sinned, and you've sinned against him by causing him to sin. That's because as I quoted the passage earlier, whatever is not of faith is sin. In other words, if I'm convicted that something is wrong, and someone convinces or persuades me to do it, and I agree not because I was convicted by faith in God and trust in the scripture, but because I trusted that person's opinion or wanted to conform my actions to whatever that other person is doing - or I just wanted to do it anyway, and used that person as an excuse - then I've sinned.
That sounds harsh? Think of it this way. If your kid believes that you absolutely forbid him to go into your bedroom, and he does it anyway, does it really matter that you don't care? Does that change the fact that he actively chose to rebel against what he thought you wanted? That's a pretty basic Bible principle: if we're disciples of Christ, that means we give our will to him. We seek God's will, not ours. And if our attitude is "I don't care what God says, I'm going to do it anyway," then we have a sinful attitude. Whether the action is inherently wrong or not is irrelevant. I thought it was probably sinful, and i went ahead and did it anyway.
It's not that different from what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount when he said "whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart." Just because you didn't have opportunity, or weren't her type, or chickened out, or were afraid you'd get caught, that doesn't excuse you. How are you better than the person who acted on those impulses? The idea is that you don't get excused from sin because you just lacked the opportunity. If you could have, you would have, and that makes it sinful. It's all about your heart, and whether you're truly trying to serve God or self.
So all of that applied in this case is simply to say this: if that person believed that baking a cake with words and phrases and artistry celebrating a gay wedding was sinful, and he chose to do it just to avoid an issue or so people would like him and not do bad things to him, then yes, that's putting selfish interest and worldly concerns ahead of pleasing God.
As to whether it's inherently sinful for anyone to bake a gay wedding cake, I don't feel the need to sit in judgment on that. I know how I would respond, and I know what religious liberty demands that we as a society allow.
The idea that a court order somehow changes any of that is ridiculous and an insult to Christians who died for their faith because they refused to violate their conscience and worship the Emperor, even though the law said they had to do it.
