Christian Owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop Is Targeted Again

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Jack Phillips refused to make a gay wedding cake and the gay couple filed a lawsuit against him claiming discrimination. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and found in favor of the Colorado Masterpiece Cakeshop but it was a very narrow ruling.

The cake shop did not refuse to sell cakes to gays, it simply didn’t want to prepare a custom cake with a specific message on it which it believed was contrary to the owner’s religious beliefs.

On June 26, 2017, on the day the Supreme Court took the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, Attorney Autumn Scardina called the cake shop to request a “gender transition” cake. Scardina wanted him to create a cake to celebrate a gender transition from male to female. The caller asked for the cake to be pink on the inside and blue on the outside.

COLORADO COMMISSION SAYS TRANSGENDERS ARE PROTECTED

The cake shop declined, so on June 20, 2017, Scardina filed a complaint, with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission and the state notified Phillips that it had found probable cause.

The commission declared that Scardina “is a member of protected classed (sic) based on her sex (female) and transgender status (gender identity).”

Mr. Phillips was targeted and the people going after him don’t care how much they hurt this man. Where do transgenders’ rights begin and a religious man’s end?

Alliance Defending Freedom, the law firm that represented Phillips before the Supreme Court, blasted the commission’s investigation, Todd Starnes reported.

“Jack is being targeted,” ADF attorney Kristen Waggoner said on the Todd Starnes Radio Show. “He’s being bullied by the state of Colorado.”

Waggoner said the attorney, who she called an LGBT activist, “essentially set him up.”

“It’s nothing more than hostility towards people of faith,” she said on the nationally syndicated radio program. “How could you say this kind of cake – blue on the outside, pink on the inside – how can you say that doesn’t have a message? It clearly has a message.”

The lawsuit accuses the government of anti-religious hostility.

 


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Greg
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Greg
5 years ago

Ray, you basically made my point. In further on it is more explicit in subsection (c);

“The inference here is thus that Phillips’ religious objection was not considered with the neutrality required by the Free Exercise Clause. The State’s interest could have been weighed against Phillips’ sincere religious objections in a way consistent with the requisite religious neutrality that must be strictly observed. But the official expressions of hostility to religion in some of the commissioners’ comments were inconsistent with that requirement, and the Commission’s disparate consideration of Phillips’case compared to the cases of the other bakers suggests the same.”

The “State’s interest COULD HAVE BEEN WEIGHED”. There are other legal observers who had come to the same conclusion.

Greg
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Greg
5 years ago

Those who actually read the Supreme Court decision knew this would likely be the result. The decision had the implication that if Colorado had not been overtly hostile their ruling would have been upheld.

Do doubt this will be brought up during the Kavanaugh hearings.

RayM
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RayM
5 years ago
Reply to  Greg

Not true! (b) That consideration was compromised, however, by the Commis- sion’s treatment of Phillips’ case, which showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs moti- vating his objection. As the record shows, some of the commissioners at the Commission’s formal, public hearings endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Hol- ocaust. No commissioners objected to the comments. Nor were they mentioned in the later state-court ruling or disavowed in the briefs filed here. The comments thus cast doubt on the fairness and impar- tiality of the Commission’s adjudication of Phillips’ case.
Another indication of hostility is the different treatment of Phillips’ case and the cases of other bakers with objections to anti-gay mes- sages who prevailed before the Commission. The Commission ruled against Phillips in part on the theory that any message on the re- quested wedding cake would be attributed to the customer, not to the baker. Yet the Division did not address this point in any of the cases involving requests for cakes depicting anti-gay marriage symbolism. The Division also considered that each bakery was willing to sell oth- er products to the prospective customers, but the Commission found Phillips’ willingness to do the same irrelevant. The State Court of Appeals’ brief discussion of this disparity of treatment does not an- swer Phillips’ concern that the State’s practice was to disfavor the re- ligious basis of his objection. Pp. 12–16.

That is just (b) of the ruling.