June 8, 2018

USA: Supreme Court's Same-Sex Wedding Cake Decision -- A Significant Victory For Freedom.

Fox News
written by Kristen Waggoner
Monday June 4, 2018

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of cake artist Jack Phillips, saying the Colorado Civil Rights Commission unjustly punished him when it ordered Jack to create a custom wedding cake celebrating a same-sex wedding. As the court said, “[t]he neutral and respectful consideration to which Phillips was entitled was compromised here …. The Civil Rights Commission’s treatment of his case has some elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated his objection.”

By now, many Americans have heard of Colorado’s Jack Phillips; of his family business, Masterpiece Cakeshop; and of his decision not to design that custom wedding cake.

But some do not know the whole story. Jack has never refused to serve any person based on who they are or what they look like. Everyone is welcome in his shop—even the two men who sued him. In fact, he told those men that, even though he couldn’t create a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex marriage, he would be happy to sell them anything else in his shop or design a cake for them for a different occasion.

Over the years, Jack has declined to create many custom cakes because of the messages they express. If you’re looking for a ghoulish Halloween cake, a boozy bachelorette-themed dessert, or a cake celebrating a divorce—Masterpiece Cakeshop isn’t your place.

That’s because Jack has heart, convictions, and faith—in addition to talents. He isn’t a well-programmed robot but a human who believes things about God, about marriage, and about the world. Jack isn’t confrontational about his beliefs, but he wants to use his talents to convey messages or celebrate events that he thinks are good, beautiful, and true.

And that leads to an important point: While skill and heart are essential for all real art, it’s not true that all works involving creativity qualify as constitutionally protected expression. For that, the item must communicate a message. That’s surely true of Jack’s wedding cakes, each of which is carefully sketched, designed, and hand-crafted to announce the couple’s union as a marriage and tell part of their story.

Yet if the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had its way, Jack’s voice would have been silenced; his hands would have been tied. After the commission’s decision, Jack was forced to give up designing the wedding cakes that he loves to create and lost 40 percent of his business and over half his employees.

You can disagree with Jack’s decision or his convictions but still see the problem here: Artistic expression comes from the mind, the heart, and the soul. It is fueled by conviction and passion. The very concept of government-mandated art is itself a contradiction. As Leonardo da Vinci said, “Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”

One ACLU lawyer has argued that “the issue here isn’t access to wedding cakes. It’s the freedom to be a full participant in civic and economic life.” That’s exactly right. The men who sued Jack got their cake and their wedding. They participated in civic life and didn’t need Jack to be part of their celebration.

But if the commission’s order stood, Jack’s freedom to create based on his convictions would have been stripped away, his business decimated, and his beliefs banished from public life. The Supreme Court saw no justice in that. Those who believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman shouldn’t be ostracized, banished from society simply because of what they believe.

When Jack puts on his apron, he shouldn’t lose his voice. When he opens his business, he shouldn’t lose his freedom. Batter, frosting, and fondant, in the hands of a skilled artist, do tell stories—they do express messages.

On Monday, the Supreme Court drew a line in the sand and protected the religious freedom of people like Jack. It said that religious hostility has no place in a diverse society like ours, whether the government is regulating art or anything else. It’s a significant victory. For freedom.

This is just one example in Seattle, WA that was recorded. A coffee shop owner in Seattle kicked a group of Christians out of his store because, as a gay man, he felt offended by their presence. Does the gay community want everyone they hate to start targeting them the same way the gay community is targeting Christians? I mean, seriously, do you want people and groups to literally start suing the crap out of Gay business who outright discriminate against them?!?!? Think about the consequences here. We have so many Gay-friendly businesses across America. We need to learn to coexist in a FREE nation. FREE. We are FREE to go wherever the heck we want to do business. We have CHOICES! Even pro-LGBT choices. The Gay community doesn't want Christians or Pro-Lifers to impose themselves on the Gay community. Well, hello, it works both ways. Don't you want to be able to tell a woman wearing a full on black burqa at a Gay nightclub, "Sorry, but your wardrobe is inappropriate for our establishment. We're going to have to ask you to please leave. Thank you." If you keep this shit up. The woman wearing a full on head to toe black burka can sue you for discriminating against her. So, you'll even be forced to give her a job in your Gay establishment. (emphasis mine)
Mediate News
written by Caleb Howe
Monday June 4, 2018

The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Masterpiece Cake Shop case provoked a very lively discussion between panelists on Outnumbered on Monday, with some vivid references punctuating a very detailed conversation. The court ruled 7-2 in favor of the shop owner, in what is being described as a narrow ruling (if not margin).

Host Harris Faulker, calling this an “explosive” issue, at one point read aloud tweets lamenting the decision from Lambda Legal, an organization “litigating and advocating for #LGBTQ people”, and asked co-host and Fox Business host Kennedy about it.

Kennedy indicated that everyone was hoping for a more broad decision that was not so narrowly defined in implication. Kennedy mentioned that libertarians were paying close attention to the case as well.
Libertarians have very much been curious about this case and supportive of the rights of individuals and businesses to make their own decisions without the government imposing its will and forcing certain people to serve others. And you know, it doesn’t come down, necessarily, as a violation of the civil rights act. But really, you know, when you take it from an area of expression. And the counterargument was, what if you had a Jewish baker and a Nazi couple that wanted the Jewish baker to bake a cake for them? And the Jewish baker didn’t want to do that? Would this law also protect the Jewish baker?
That question remains, because as Faulkner pointed out, the decision applied specifically to a particular kind of cake (wedding) and not broadly to refusing service to an individual based on who they are or what they represent. Earlier in the segment Townhall’s Katie Pavlich also made the distinction.

Guest David Webb, a Fox contributor and radio host, responded that part of what was being left out of public discussion about the decision was the seemingly activist litigation-seeking on the part of groups like Lamda Legal, and used an explosive term to describe it:
By the way, the ones who filed the lawsuits? You don’t see Christians filing a lawsuit saying ‘you came and asked me to pick a wedding cake for your gay wedding.’ You see the civil rights commission, the different groups getting involved in filing lawsuits. It’s a form of, frankly, legal terrorism in some ways, to continue to push an agenda rather than a solution.
He described the idea of basically shopping for rejection in order to have grounds for court. “Go to another baker,” said Webb, “unless you have an agenda to set up a case.

Early in the segment, Pavlich referenced the discriminatory behavior on the part of that commission, which included comparing the cake shop’s actions to slavery and the Holocaust, and said that this was a big part of the decision in this particular case.

On Twitter, Constitutional attorney and senior editor at the Daily Wire Emily Zanotti on that point suggested that, rather than seeing new legal challenges, as Lamda and others suggested, or government intervention to require participation, as others suggested, there might be a bit less all around going forward.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 2:52 AM

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