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Who Says There’s No Good News? “No Gay Cake for You! Seven to Two”

U.S. Supreme Court backs Christian baker who spurned gay couple

The justices, in a 7-2 decision, said the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed an impermissible hostility toward religion when it found that baker Jack Phillips violated the state’s anti-discrimination law by rebuffing gay couple David Mullins and Charlie Craig in 2012. The state law bars businesses from refusing service based on race, sex, marital status or sexual orientation.

The ruling concluded that the commission violated Phillips’ religious rights under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

“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.

The ruling went on to blast comments made during the commission’s hearing that denigrated Phillips’ faith and included remarks that compared his belief in religious freedom to past instances when 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 — a law that protects discrimination on the basis of religion as well as sexual orientation,” Kennedy said.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her dissent which was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, argued that “when a couple contacts a bakery for a wedding cake, the product they are seeking is a cake celebrating their wedding — not a cake celebrating heterosexual weddings or same-sex weddings — and that is the service (the couple) were denied.”

Well… aren’t they special!

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • ghostsniper June 4, 2018, 11:14 AM

    “Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.”
    =====================
    They should be disbarred, arrested for attempting to violate someone’s “constitutional rights”, severely beaten about the head and shoulders with a blunt metal like object and then dragged behind an M88 Tank Retriever until there is nothing left but a frayed rope, then the rope should be burned in a 12′ deep pit atop Mt Vesuvius and the ashes covered over with nuclear waste material and then the entire 20 mile perimeter carpet bombed for 48 hours straight by a full fleet of B1b bombers.

    Then Trump should tweet the stern warning that ANYONE that even attempts to violate anyone else’s “constitutional rights” will be dealt with accordingly.

  • Callmelennie June 4, 2018, 11:27 AM

    “Well aren’t they special!” In fact, they are “special”

    It takes a very “special” kind of thinking to “know” that a 3-year old “right”, set out in a ruling that’s more convoluted than James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake”, outweighs the concern for religious freedom that is the very reason this country was settled and formed in the first place.

    That is a very “special” kind of wisdom. No wonder one of the dissenters is known as “Thw Wise Latina”

  • scory June 4, 2018, 11:56 AM

    The G — D —— govt. has no business at any level in any of its branches defining what marriage is or when any human at any stage of development is/is not a person deserving of protection under law or who any of us MUST associate with in any aspect of our daily lives or that we MUST purchase a product or face fines and/or imprisonment for failing to do so. This becomes especially galling when unelected lawyers appointed to a lifetime position are granted the power to make such rulings free of consequences. This matter of rule by judicial fiat ought to be the number one concern of anyone who values liberty and the rule of law. Unelected lawyers sitting on the federal bench for life have created more chaos and contention than any other branch of government.

  • Rob De Witt June 4, 2018, 12:10 PM

    If you’re interested in the definition of the word “tolerance,” read the following comments:

    https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/articleComments/Justices-side-with-Colorado-baker-on-same-sex-12965547.php

  • Rob De Witt June 4, 2018, 12:10 PM

    If you’re interested in the definition of the word “tolerance,” read the following comments:

    https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/articleComments/Justices-side-with-Colorado-baker-on-same-sex-12965547.php

  • Meh June 4, 2018, 2:15 PM

    I clicked expecting to despair at the inevitable rightist subjectivism surrounding the root problem behind this case and then I read Callmelennie:

    It takes a very “special” kind of thinking to “know” that a 3-year old “right”, set out in a ruling that’s more convoluted than James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake”, outweighs the concern for religious freedom that is the very reason this country was settled and formed in the first place.

    That’s it. That’s the nub of it. Authority matters.

    In its feckless pursuit of codependent losing the slothful boomer right subsists mostly on reacting badly to the left’s nonsense du jour. However, the issue here is specific law overrunning prior constitutional authority and nobody doing anything about it, up to and including noticing. Again I’m looking at the right. Law is written by paid special interest and when’s the last time you hear a rightist regard that evident fact?

    Obviously these various positive feedback loops are still ultimately terminal to the Constitution; look how even this case wasn’t a thorough slam dunk via the exact principle Callmelennie highlights, if it came up at all. Nope, we’ll lose it later or we’ll lose it sooner but we will lose it and as someone important and famous once observed, when we do it’ll be the courts that did it. Well, and the voter apathy that routinely allows bad law to overrun true rights.

  • Terry June 4, 2018, 5:48 PM

    A bit off topic here, but *authority* is a myth. The concept is brainwashed into kiddies by the State.

    The only *authority* is parenting. And that ends when the kiddie leaves home.

  • Geoff C. The Saltine June 4, 2018, 7:48 PM

    No Cake For You. Boys.
    Maybe they can go home and have Chocolate Cake on a stick. And cry.

  • ghostsniper June 4, 2018, 7:59 PM

    Thanks for that mental image Geoff.
    Look how far this country has come, the supreme court is discussing chocolate cake on a stick issues.
    I wonder how Oliver Wendell would have handled this?

  • james wilson June 5, 2018, 9:25 AM

    Yeah, they just happened to contact a Christian baker. We’re all awaiting the first Muslim baker.

    A dissenting minority can feel free only when imposing its will on the majority–Hoffer