Masterpiece Cakeshop Is Fighting For The First Amendment, Not Against Gay Marriage

[Guest shiloh357]

This week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips, the man who refused to create a specialty wedding cake for a same-sex couple in Colorado in 2012. (Last year, I visited Masterpiece and wrote a long piece detailing the incident that has upended Phillips’ life.) Yet the stories that dominate coverage not only distort the public’s understanding of the case, but also its serious implications.

For one thing, no matter how many times people repeat it, the case isn’t about discrimination or challenging gay marriage. When the news first broke, for instance, USA Today tweeted “The Supreme Court has agreed to reopen the national debate over same-sex marriage.” The headline (and story) at the website was worse: “Supreme Court will hear religious liberty challenge to gay weddings.” Others similarly framed the case. (And don’t worry, “religious liberty” is almost always solidly ensconced inside quotation marks to indicate that social conservatives are just using it as a facade.)

There is an impulse to frame every issue as a clash between the tolerant and closeminded. But the Masterpiece case doesn’t challenge, undermine, or re-litigate the issue of same-sex marriage in America. Gay marriage wasn’t even legal in Colorado when this incident occurred.

So the Associated Press’ headline and story — “Supreme Court Will Decide If Baker Can Refuse Gay Couple Wedding Cake” — is also wrong. As is The New York Times headline: “Justices to Hear Case on Baker’s Refusal to Serve Gay Couple,” which was later changed to the even worse “Justices to Hear Case on Religious Objections to Same-Sex Marriage.”

A person with only passing interest in this case might be led to believe that Phillips is fighting to hang a “No Gays Allowed” sign in his shop. In truth, he never “refused” to serve a gay couple. He didn’t even really refuse to sell them a wedding cake, which they could have bought without incident. Everything in his shop was available to gays and straights and anyone else who walked in his door. What Phillips did was refuse to use his skills to design and bake a unique cake and participate in a gay wedding. Phillips didn’t query anyone on his or her sexual orientation. It was the Colorado civil rights commission that took it upon itself to peer into Phillips’ soul, indict him, and destroy his business over a thought crime.

Like many other bakers, florists, photographers, and musicians — and millions of other Christians — Phillips holds genuine, long-standing religious convictions. If David Mullins and Charlie Craig had demanded that Phillips create an erotic-themed cake, the baker would have similarly refused for religious reasons, just as he had with other costumers. If a couple had asked him to design a specialty cake that read “Congrats on the abortion, Jenny!” I’m certain he would have refused them as well, even though abortions are legal. It’s not the people, it’s the message.

In its tortured decision, the Colorado Court of Appeals admitted as much, contending that while Phillips didn’t overtly discriminate against the couple, the “act of same-sex marriage is closely correlated to Craig’s and Mullins’ sexual orientation” so they could divine his real intentions.

In other words, the threshold for denying religious liberty and free expression is the presence of advocacy or a political opinion that conflates with faith. The court has effectively tasked itself with determining when religion is allowed to matter to you. Or in other words, if SCOTUS upholds the lower court ruling, it will empower unelected civil rights commissions — typically stacked with hard-left authoritarians — to decide when your religious actions are appropriate.

How could any honest person believe this was the Constitution’s intent? There was a time, I’m told, when the state wouldn’t substantially burden religious exercise and would use the least restrictive means to further compelling interests. Today, the state can substantially burden a Christian because he’s hurt the wrong person’s feelings.

Judging from the emails and social media reactions I’ve gotten to this case, people aren’t only instinctively antagonistic because of the players involved, but because they don’t understand the facts. In this era of identity politics, some have been programed to reflexively side with the person making accusations of status-based discrimination. All of it in an effort to empower the state to coerce a minority of people to see the world their way.

Well, not all people. In 2015, a Christian activist named Bill Jack went to three Colorado bakeries and asked for each to design a cake in the shape of a Bible, with one side reading “God hates sin – Psalm 45:7,” and the other, “Homosexuality is a detestable sin – Leviticus 18:22.” They refused. Even though Christians are a protected group, the civil rights commissioners — one member of this tolerance brigade compared Christianity to Nazism — threw out the case. The ACLU called the biblical passages “obscenities.” Because I guess the Bible doesn’t “correlate” closely enough with a Christian’s identity.

Or perhaps we’ve finally established a state religion in this country: it’s just run on the dogma of “social justice.”

 

http://thefederalist.com/2017/06/27/masterpiece-cakeshop-fighting-first-amendment-not-gay-marriage/

[Anonymous Aristotle]

I wonder if this cake shop group realize if this does pass into law it isn't an exclusive right for Christian bakers only?

 

[Guest shiloh357]

11 minutes ago, Anonymous Aristotle said:

I wonder if this cake shop group realize if this does pass into law it isn't an exclusive right for Christian bakers only?

 

It won't be an exclusive right  and it shouldn't be.   Why is that a problem?

[Anonymous Aristotle]

My thoughts are, if this law allows Christian bakers to discriminate in business based on Christian values, that it will allow others of faith, and no faith, as in atheists, agnostics, humanists, who are in business to do the same.

[Guest shiloh357]

26 minutes ago, Anonymous Aristotle said:

My thoughts are, if this law allows Christian bakers to discriminate in business based on Christian values, that it will allow others of faith, and no faith, as in atheists, agnostics, humanists, who are in business to do the same.

But they are not discriminating.

Masterpiece bakery served/serves homosexuals all of the time.  They make cakes for them and sell other baked goods to them and no one is every turned away.

They simply refuse to make a specially designed cake for a gay wedding.  It is no different than a Kosher Jewish deli refusing to make a deli meat and cheese tray for a Christian wedding or making anything Christian themed since it goes against their religious views.   They may serve Christians who buy their food otherwise, but asking someone to lend their their services to something that violates their religious views is wrong and unAmerican and it doesn't matter what religion you are talking about.

Religious freedom is protected with the exception of practices that cross the line into criminal activity.  

If the Christian bakers were saying "gays may not shop here"  then it would be a discrimination issue.  As it stands there is no basis for calling it discrimination.

 

 

[Anonymous Aristotle]

8 minutes ago, shiloh357 said:

But they are not discriminating.

Masterpiece bakery served/serves homosexuals all of the time.  They make cakes for them and sell other baked goods to them and no one is every turned away.

They simply refuse to make a specially designed cake for a gay wedding.  It is no different than a Kosher Jewish deli refusing to make a deli meat and cheese tray for a Christian wedding or making anything Christian themed since it goes against their religious views.   They may serve Christians who buy their food otherwise, but asking someone to lend their their services to something that violates their religious views is wrong and unAmerican and it doesn't matter what religion you are talking about.

Religious freedom is protected with the exception of practices that cross the line into criminal activity.  

If the Christian bakers were saying "gays may not shop here"  then it would be a discrimination issue.  As it stands there is no basis for calling it discrimination.

 

 

It is discrimination by definition. "recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another." 

I've never heard a Kosher deli refusing to make something for a Christian wedding. 

 

[Guest shiloh357]

35 minutes ago, Anonymous Aristotle said:

It is discrimination by definition. "recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another."

That is not discrimination in the form of prejudice.   It is a violation of a person's religious rights to force them to participate in something that violates their religious views.   Forcing a Christian baker to lend his services to an event that violates his religious faith is where the violation exists, not in his refusal.    He would also not likely lend his services to a satanic wedding event, or any event goes against his faith and he should be not forced to.

Quote

I've never heard a Kosher deli refusing to make something for a Christian wedding. 

Because no one expects them to.   No one has the gall to walk into a Jewish Kosher deli and expect them to lend their services to a Christian event or create a deli tray that has pork products on it.  

The issue with the Christian baker is not one of discrimination.   He was a target of the LGBT community that wanted to force him to violate his faith or face prosecution.  It was an attack and a needless one at that, since he served the gay community in his store on a daily basis.

[Anonymous Aristotle]

I would say the SCOTUS will rule against the baker. 

If this baker was serving homosexuals before and regularly as you claim, then he has no religious discrimination argument, religious conviction argument, to refuse the wedding cake. Because he served homosexuals who are an abomination according to scriptures. Regularly, every day, as you claimed. 

Then he refused a wedding cake for them. Did you ever think the homosexuals who were being served regularly by this baker naturally thought he would have no issue with the cake order? If he served them regularly on other items for sale.  But when a homosexual customer asked for a wedding cake the baker refused on religious grounds. 

The Bible says marriage is between one man and one woman. The new testament says Homosexuals will not see the kingdom of Heaven unless they repent. Sexual immorality is a sin. 

This baker served the sexually immoral that God condemned as an abomination on a regular daily basis. He had no religious moral objection to that being they were homosexual and buying something other than a wedding cake. But when they asked for a wedding cake, that is when he invoked his religious convictions and refused. 

His convictions were not consistent with scripture. He's going to lose this case. He has to. It isn't a first amendment case of free speech. It isn't a first amendment case of freedom of religion. 

2007 St. Paul-Minneapolis Muslim Taxi Cab Drivers Refuse Service to People with Service Dogs and Alcohol

[ayin jade]

2 hours ago, Anonymous Aristotle said:

My thoughts are, if this law allows Christian bakers to discriminate in business based on Christian values, that it will allow others of faith, and no faith, as in atheists, agnostics, humanists, who are in business to do the same.

So far, other faiths and those of more faith have more rights than Christians. So Im ok with (since it it permitted in our constitution) for any person of faith being able to deny business based on their beliefs. At least Christians wont be singled out any more. 

[Anonymous Aristotle]

1 minute ago, ayin jade said:

So far, other faiths and those of more faith have more rights than Christians. So Im ok with (since it it permitted in our constitution) for any person of faith being able to deny business based on their beliefs. At least Christians wont be singled out any more. 

Where is discrimination permitted in the U.S Constitution? Would you link that article please?