BAKER CAKEWALK
In right to refuse gay pair: Supreme, 7-2
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled 7-2 in favor of a Christian baker from Colorado who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple because it went against his religious beliefs.
The justices said Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, did not violate the state’s anti-discrimination law in 2012 when he turned down a request from Charlie Craig and David Mullins to create a custom cake because it would signify he supports same-sex marriage.
The Supreme Court decision faulted the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for violating the First Amendment by ruling against Phillips and not taking into account his strongly-held religious beliefs.
“The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views, in some instances protected forms of expression,” the majority opinion stated.
Justice Anthony Kennedy went on to blast comments made during the commission’s two formal hearings in 2014 that denigrated Phil- lips’ faith and included remarks that compared his belief in religious freedom to past instances where it was used to justify discrimination like slavery and the Holocaust.
“This sentiment is inappropriate for a commission charged with the solemn responsibility of fair and neutral enforcement of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law,” he wrote.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
“What matters is that Phillips would not provide a good or service to a same-sex couple that he would provide to a heterosexual couple,” Ginsburg wrote.
The civil-rights advocacy group Campaign for Southern Equality said the high court didn’t rule that there was a right to discriminate and the decision doesn’t apply to businesses in other states and doesn’t invalidate anti-discrimination laws that protect gays.
The narrowly defined ruling, in other words, did not pose a major threat to LGBTQ rights, the group said.
“We will continue to fight for full equality — and nothing less,” the Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.
The opinion written by Kennedy also defended states’ authority “to protect the rights and dignity of gay persons who are, or wish to be, married but who face discrimination when they seek goods or services.”
Kennedy also wrote that “gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth.”
And he said that religious objections “do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law.”
The baker, in an opinion piece on USA Today’s Web site, said the court confirmed the right to follow your beliefs.
“If the government can force me to celebrate events and express views that violate my conscience, they can do it to anyone,” he wrote. His lawyer lauded the decision. “Government hostility toward people of faith has no place in our society, yet the state of Colorado was openly antagonistic toward Jack’s religious beliefs about marriage,” Kristen Waggoner said. “The court was right to condemn that.”