I guess if I get bad service, I tell people about it and then move on. We all know that the Masterpiece Cake Shop in Denver, Colorado is a place where LGBTQ people are welcome as human beings, but we are not desired as customers. As long as people stay in their heteronormative lane and order good and services like only straight people do with their straight families, there are no issues.
But alas no, we keep going back to the milk that has spoiled and we take another swig.
Jack Phillips was asked again to make something that went against his believe of a powerful single dominating all knowing all being entity in the sky. He won a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court about his belief in God and his inability to make anything in his cake shop that would go against his readings in the heavily edited and outdated book of fiction known as the bible. His refusal to make a wedding cake for Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins in 2012 turned into a case that finally ended in 2018. But now, we are dealing with yet another case, this time over a birthday cake.
Phillips had already ended making wedding cakes, which made up 40% of his business. Since he wanted to avoid making wedding cakes for same-sex unions or marriages, he decided to end making them for any unions altogether (from the Daily Signal video below).
So what is going on with Phillips and Colorado cake making? Well, it is nothing new that wasn’t being done, it’s just that an incident back in 2017 is now moving to court and is gaining attention.
Autumn Scardina attempted to order a birthday cake from Phillips on the same day in 2017 that the high court announced it would hear Phillips’ appeal in the wedding cake case. Scardina, an attorney, requested a cake that was blue on the outside and pink on the inside in honor of her gender transition.
Remember Phillips voluntarily ending the wedding cake part of his business? In his statement with the first case and the appeal, Phillips proclaimed that he opposed making the gay couple’s wedding cake because it involved a religious ceremony, but would agree to sell any other type of product. Well that opened up a hole so wide, you could drive a delivery truck through. I mean, really Phillips, if you know god is everywhere, you should know the gays are everywhere.
And what did happen in the 2018 Supreme Court case?
- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed anti-religious bias when it sanctioned Phillips for refusing to make the same-sex wedding cake for Craig and Mullins.
- The justices did not rule on the larger issue of whether businesses can invoke religious objections to refuse service to gays or lesbians.
During a virtual court meeting this past Monday, Scardina said that she was testing to see if Phillips would follow what he said, no wedding cakes, but everything and anything else. So, after hearing those words announced from the court proceedings, Scardina decided to call Phillips’ bluff.
In opening arguments, a lawyer representing Phillips, Sean Gates, Phillips’ lawyer laid down the case as this was Phillips refusing to make the cake for Scardina because of the message it was conveying. It wasn’t discriminating against Scardina, Phillips just could not create a cake with a message he disagreed with.
And what message would it be this time? No, not that gays should not marry, but his lawyer said, “the message would be that he agrees that a gender transition is something to be celebrated.” And we all know that we cannot have happy non-cis people running around in Phillips’ god’s world.
Where will this court case end? Well it began with:
- Scardina filing a complaint with the state of Colorado against Phillips in 2017.
- The Colorado Civil Rights Commission found probable cause that Phillips had discriminated against Scardina.
- Phillips then filed a federal lawsuit against Colorado, accusing it of waging a “crusade to crush” him by pursuing the complaint.
- Lawyers for the state and Phillips agreed to drop both cases under a settlement in March 2019.
- The settlement allowed Scardina to pursue a lawsuit on her own.
Where are you on the side of this whole cake debacle?
- Should cake shops and bakeries be run out of business that discriminate?
- Did Phillips mess up when he said I’ll make anything but a same-sex wedding cake?
- Should we just go to another baker?
- Should we just buy a Kitchen Aid mixer and bake at home?
- Why do we eat so much cake? Isn’t it carbs?
It’s always interesting to see and hear from the other side. No, we do not have to agree with any of it at all, but if we expect them to listen to us, we should listen to them. Here is a posting from December 1, 2017
”How did we end up at the Supreme Court? It’s a long story,” Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, told The Daily Signal. The story began in 2012, when two men walked into his family-run bakery, and asked Jack to create a custom cake for their same-sex wedding ceremony. Because of his Christian faith, Jack declined, and instead offered to sell them something different.
The couple “stormed out,” Jack said, then sued him under Colorado’s anti-discrimination law. After losing his case before the Colorado commission and the Colorado Court of Appeals, which both ruled that that Jack has no First Amendment rights, Jack has one more chance before the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear his case Tuesday.
In The Daily Signal’s feature video above, Jack and his daughter Lisa Eldfrick tell the story from their side, and share how this journey has affected their faith.
This post clearly has opinions from this contributing writer and may not reflect those opinions of other contributing writers or the magazine as a whole.
Source: wreg.com