This one takes the cake
Monday was my birthday. As the years pass, my celebrations have changed, but one thing remains a constant: the cake. For as long as I can remember, I’ve feasted on Italian Rum cake, a confection that involves lots of cream, lots of sugar, a lavish coating of nuts and enough alcohol to fire up a Bunsen burner. Even at the age of 10, I was getting a buzz before the family finished singing “Happy Birthday.” It’s a wonder I could blow out the candles.
This is to say that cakes are a very special part of any festivity, and they deserve respect (even if they give us a hangover.) Wedding cakes, in particular, are much greater than the sum of eggs and flour and extracts and, through the alchemy of our expectations, acquire an outsized significance. When the bride and groom link hands to slice through the layers, it’s symbolic of their union.
The reason I’m so obsessed with sweets this week is because of what happened at the Supreme Court on Tuesday. You could call it the day that Mrs. Smith Went To Washington.
It all started back in 2012, when a same-sex couple entered Jack Phillips’ Colorado bakery and asked him to make them a cake for their upcoming nuptials. David Mullins and Charlie Craig planned to be married in Massachusetts, but wanted to hold a reception in Colorado. When he found out that the marriage involved two best men and no bride, Phillips politely declined to bake the cake. His reasoning was simple: gay marriage violated his religious beliefs, and he didn’t want to create something that sent a message of endorsement.
The couple were outraged, humiliated and did what any aggrieved American does these days: they sued. More specifically, they filed a complaint with the state civil rights commission, which found in their favor. The case wended its way up the administrative and then judicial ladder, with the angry same-sex couple winning at every level until the Supreme Court decided to hear the case, known as Masterpiece Cakeshop LTD vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
On the one hand you have a private business owner who seeks to exercise both his freedom of expression and his religion by not being forced to engage in an activity that violates his conscience. On the other hand you have a couple who feel they are being discriminated against because of their fundamental identity.
Back in 2015, when same sex marriage was legalized in Obergefell v. Hodges, a lot of people – myself included – were worried. Liberals liked to call us bigots and troglodytes who thought that gays and lesbians were lesser beings and didn’t deserve all the rights normally enjoyed by citizens under the Constitution. I can only speak for myself, but it wasn’t bigotry that made me wince. Chief Justice Roberts said it best in his dissent in Obergefell:
“Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new right to samesex marriage – Perhaps the most discouraging aspect of today’s decision is the extent to which the majority feels compelled to sully those on the other side of the debate ... It is one thing for the majority to conclude that the Constitution protects a right to same-sex marriage; it is something else to portray everyone who does not share the majority’s ‘better informed understanding’ as bigoted.” I’m thinking there’s already one vote for Jack Phillips.
Roberts had a crystal ball. Phillips was more than willing to bake a birthday cake for the gay couple. He did not deny them any service. He simply refused to use his artistic and expressive skills to celebrate something that went against his religious beliefs. He believes he has that right.
Judging from the high court questioning, it seems a majority of the justices are inclined to agree. Anthony Kennedy, the crucial swing vote, was fixated on the difference between discriminating against gays as humans, which is illegal, and opposing an activity in which they engage, which should not be. People who oppose samesex marriage cannot prevent two men or two women from marrying each other, but they shouldn’t be forced to celebrate the act with their skills and services. That is a sort of social Stalinism, breaking the backs of dissenters for “the greater good.”
Same-sex marriage is the law of the land. But so is religious and expressive freedom. This one should be a cakewalk.