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Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 9:29 am
by natasha
Arenera wrote: December 4th, 2017, 7:07 pm
EmmaLee wrote: December 4th, 2017, 5:28 pm https://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/ ... t-and-cake

The Supreme Court and Cake
Written by John F. McManus

Five years have passed since a Colorado baker of cakes refused to create one of his masterpieces for two men who wanted it to celebrate their “marriage.” It’s hard to believe that this incident is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. But it is, and the fact that it has reached such heights indicates how far our nation has descended toward destruction of common sense and the commonly held values that formerly undergirded our nation.

Cake maker Jack Phillips says he has a right to refuse the business of a particular customer whose fundamental intention is not to purchase a decorated cake but to use the transaction to force acceptance of homosexual “marriage.” On religious grounds, he doesn’t approve of “gay marriage,” and his refusal to build a wedding cake for a homosexual duo supposedly violates a portion of the U.S. Constitution banning discrimination. I searched but I couldn’t find the particular part of the Constitution on which this case is built. Legal beagles claim it’s discrimination, and that’s something terribly bad. Half a century ago, discrimination was so highly regarded that the Herbert-Tareyton cigarette company advertised its product as “the cigarette for discriminating people.” And a common assessment of the esteem accorded discrimination back then insisted that the only people who don’t discriminate “are prostitutes and fools.”

Sadly, commonly held attitudes of 50 years ago have been pushed aside in the rush to overturn cultural, religious, and even economic mores. Some would claim this development to be “progress.” But that’s another word whose meaning has been turned upside down.

Shouldn’t Jack Phillips have a right to refuse the business of someone who walks into his store and intends, not so much to buy a cake, but to have the planned transaction force acceptance of something abhorred by Phillips and many others? Why does Phillips have to provide an approved reason for saying “No” to a potential customer he knows has an agenda that far exceeds buying a cake? Isn’t his business his property, even his “castle,” a place where his right to refuse doing business with someone sacrosanct?

A deeper look into this matter shows that the homosexual couple seeking a cake from Phillips planned to have it at their ceremony in New York, not in Colorado. They obviously chose to challenge the Lakewood, Colorado, baker’s distaste for gay marriage. So, the issue isn’t really one of mere refusal to do business with someone. It’s about forcing acceptance of homosexual marriage. By definition, marriage has always been the union of one man and one woman. Homosexual marriage is no more a marriage than labeling something water when it isn’t a combination of hydrogen and oxygen.

It’s no surprise to find a spokesman for the ACLU’s Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender (LGBT) division taking the side of the supposedly aggrieved cake customers. James Essex of the ACLU claims: “You have freedom to believe and to preach your faith until your actions harm other people.” Does refusal to cooperate with the demands of homosexuals amount to harm? If so, what about possible harm done to a baker who refuses to participate, even in a slight way, in a practice he considers reprehensible, even sinful? Also, what about harming the moral character of this nation?

The Supreme Court will hear Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in the fall. The case progressed from rulings at lower levels favoring the claims of the two men who insist that they are victims of unjust discrimination. Phillips’s attorney David Cortman rightly states, “Every American should be free to choose which art they will create and which art they won’t create without fear of being unjustly punished by the government.”

That makes sense, of course. But good sense doesn’t always prevail, especially when so much more than discrimination is at stake. The high court’s willingness to rule in this case about cake signals that there are far more important matters at stake.
Would the same apply to rejecting a black couple, or Muslim couple?
The cake business owners already said they SELL cakes to anyone. They just refuse to decorate a cake advocating a same-sex marriage. If everyone would please read ALL the info about this case they would understand better what is at stake.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 10:09 am
by captainfearnot
natasha wrote: December 5th, 2017, 9:16 am As I understand all the info above, it was not about just selling a cake. The owners said they sell cakes to anyone. What they objected to because of their religious beliefs is DECORATING it as a gay wedding. They also stated that they would not bake a cake and decorate it with anything anti-gay on it. This is a very important case that will determine the future for many religious people and organizations.
Please enlighten us as to what gay themed decorations Mullins and Craig requested on the cake. Mr. Mullins will sell non-wedding cakes to anyone but he will not sell wedding cakes to gays, if he understands the cake is to be used to celebrate a gay wedding.

Conservative pundits everywhere are making it sound like this case is about whether Mr. Phillips can be compelled to decorate a cake with explicit verbiage or symbolism that goes against his religious beliefs. It's easy to see why, because that would be a clear-cut case of compelled speech, and he would easily prevail.

But the actual facts portray a much more tenuous legal quandary. Mr. Phillips was never asked to create an explicitly gay themed wedding cake. He refused to make a cake at all based on the fact that it would be used to celebrate a same-sex wedding. Mr. Phillips is arguing that making a wedding cake for a same sex wedding is speech in support of the event, even if the cake itself conveys no words or symbols supporting gay marriage.

Obviously, if some white supremacists came into Mr. Phillips' shop and asked him to make a big sheet cake emblazoned with the confederate battle flag he could refuse. Conservatives want to portray the case in question as exactly the same thing, but it's not. It would be more like if the same white supremacists ordered a cake with no distinct verbiage or symbolism, but Mr. Phillips refused to make it after learning that the cake would be used to celebrate a KKK event.

Without any explicit references, a cake is just a cake until it is used to celebrate something. The legal question is whether artistic speech extends to the event the art is being used to celebrate after it is sold to the buyer. It is well established that artists have little to no control over their creative output once ownership changes hands.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 10:32 am
by captainfearnot
natasha wrote: December 5th, 2017, 9:29 amIf everyone would please read ALL the info about this case they would understand better what is at stake.
I agree. Please read Mr. Phillips' petition to the Supreme Court. It says nothing about the decoration or design of the cake in question. His objection to providing the cake rests entirely on the purpose for which the case would be used, not on its design or decoration.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 11:03 am
by EmmaLee
Stop Misrepresenting Masterpiece Cakeshop
by David French
November 30, 2017

The First Amendment and nondiscrimination laws should point the Supreme Court to the just decision. Forgive me for starting a piece with the oldest cliché in the practice of law. As the saying goes, “If the law is on your side, pound on the law. If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. If neither are on your side, pound on the table.” In the run-up to the oral arguments in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission on December 5, we’re seeing a lot of table-pounding from the Left. In fact, I’ve never seen a case more mischaracterized in my entire legal career. The actual facts of the case are crystal clear.

Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, refused to custom-design a cake to help celebrate a gay wedding. As a Christian, he finds same-sex unions to be unbiblical and immoral, and he wasn’t willing to use his artistic talents to advance a message he holds to be wrong. In fact, he’d frequently declined to design cakes that advanced messages he found to be offensive. But he never, ever — not once — discriminated against any customers on the basis of their identity. He baked cakes for people of all races, creeds, colors, and sexual orientations. So why do so many on the left compare him to segregationists? Why do they use hypotheticals that have nothing to do with the facts of this case?

Today the New York Times published a perfect example of pound-on-the-table misrepresentations. It’s by Barnard College professor and Times contributor Jennifer Finney Boylan. How does she distort the case? Let us count the ways. She begins of course by comparing Phillips to the owner of a restaurant who claimed a religious justification for denying service to African Americans. Then she compares him to a doctor who wouldn’t care for a lesbian couple’s baby. She talks about landlords, clinics, and other businesses — all of which could deny services to people “because of who they are.”

She quotes a law professor (because of course law professors aren’t above misrepresenting cases) as saying, “We’ve never allowed a commercial business to justify discrimination against a protected class based on the First Amendment. We shouldn’t start now.” Here’s the thing — if the court rules for Phillips, it wouldn’t be starting now. Phillips isn’t discriminating against a protected class. I’ll repeat this until I’m blue in the face. He serves gay customers.

If a black baker refuses a white customer’s request to design a Confederate-flag cake, he’s not discriminating on the basis of race. He’s refusing to advance a message. If a police officer’s wife refuses a black customer’s request to design a cake celebrating Assata Shakur, a convicted cop-killer and one of the FBI’s most-wanted terrorists, she’s not discriminating on the basis of race. She’s refusing to advance a message. I could go on all day. If progressive designers refuse to design dresses for the Trump women, they’re not discriminating on the basis of sex. They’re refusing to elevate and help honor a political family they dislike.

To the extent that Boylan engages with Phillips’s actual argument, she waves it away with a paragraph so specious that one has to read it to believe it: Mr. Phillips certainly makes nice-looking cakes. But I’m not sure I’d call them artistic expressions, at least not in the same sense as, say, Joyce’s “Ulysses.” That argument demands that the court get into the business of defining art itself, a door the justices open at their peril. Is a well-manicured lawn a form of art by this definition? How about a lean corned beef sandwich? What would not be art if the court rules to protect icing and buttercream? In this case, the complaining gay couple ultimately decided on a rainbow cake. Can Boylan not see that the cake clearly and unmistakably sent a specific message?

There is a substantial difference between a rainbow symbol at an event celebrating a same-sex wedding and a corned-beef sandwich. Phillips isn’t comparing himself to Joyce, he’s making the painfully obvious point that there’s a viewpoint inherent in the expression his customers asked him to create — a viewpoint that a well-manicured lawn lacks. Here’s the problem. If a writer squarely addresses the argument that Phillips actually makes, then she will soon run head-on to a sobering constitutional reality.

Sexual revolutionaries are asking the Court to overturn generations of constitutional precedent to allow the state to compel American citizens to advance ideas they find reprehensible. Boylan claims that Phillips is seeking special religious exemptions. To the contrary, sexual revolutionaries are seeking exemptions from the Constitution. They believe that same-sex marriage is so precious that even artists can be conscripted into the ceremony — despite their deeply held beliefs. They believe that the cost of entering the marketplace is not just the loss of your distinct artistic voice but the commandeering of that voice by your ideological foes to advance their ideological interests.

It’s worth noting that Boylan is at odds with Justice Kennedy, the likely swing vote in the case. Two years ago, in the Obergefell opinion, he wrote this: Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned.

The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered. If Justice Kennedy holds to this view, then not only does the First Amendment win, nondiscrimination laws won’t lose. Phillips isn’t discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. If Kennedy changes his mind, then he’ll erode vital American constitutional traditions and doctrines. The sexual revolution, not the Constitution, will be the supreme law of the land.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... presenting

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 11:17 am
by EmmaLee
This is long, but well worth the read. It gets to the crux of this whole thing.

The Continuing Threat to Religious Liberty

by Ryan T. Anderson
August 3, 2017

What’s at stake and what to do about it. Two years to the day after the Supreme Court redefined marriage in Obergefell, the Court announced that it would hear a case about the extent to which private parties may be forced to embrace this new vision of marriage. The case involves Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker who declined to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex-wedding reception.

There was nothing remarkable about Phillips’s decision. With every cake he designs, Jack believes he is serving Christ. He had previously turned down requests to create Halloween-themed cakes, lewd bachelor-party cakes, and a cake celebrating a divorce. Yet Jack was never reprimanded over those decisions. He found himself in hot water only with the same-sex-wedding cake.

The immediate question before the Supreme Court is whether it’s constitutional for Colorado to penalize Jack under its “sexual orientation and gender identity” (SOGI) antidiscrimination statute. But the case has implications for millions of believers from every walk of life and, beyond that, for the health of our culture and our constitutional system of ordered liberty.

While there has always been disagreement about what religious liberty requires in particular cases, the idea of religious liberty as a fundamental human right has more or less been a consensus in America. It became controversial only in recent years as the government tried to force religious conservatives to violate their beliefs on sex and marriage, and as liberal advocacy groups decided that civil liberties aren’t for conscientious objectors to the sexual revolution.

That’s why we saw the American Civil Liberties Union oppose Catholic nuns’ attempt to get out of the Obamacare HHS preventive-care mandate, in which the Department of Health and Human Services required employers to provide insurance covering sterilization and birth control — including forms of birth control that prevent embryos from implanting in the uterus, thereby causing abortion.

The HHS mandate garnered the most headlines, but it’s far from the only flashpoint. In several jurisdictions, Catholic Charities and other faith-based adoption agencies have been forced to abandon their invaluable work simply because they want to place needy children only in homes with married moms and dads. The government calls that discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Agree or disagree with Catholic Charities, its belief that mothers and fathers are not interchangeable, that moms and dads are not replaceable, has nothing to do with sexual orientation. And respecting conscience here wouldn’t make a single concrete difference to same-sex couples, who would remain free and able to adopt from public agencies and other providers.

Yet lawmakers aren’t just coercing agencies such as Catholic Charities; they’re punishing states for declining to coerce those agencies. When Texas passed a law protecting the freedom of such agencies, California barred state employees from traveling to Texas on “non-essential” official business.

Religious schools adhering to the historic vision of marriage are also at risk. They stand to lose accreditation and nonprofit tax status as well as eligibility for student loans, vouchers, and education savings accounts. The Left regularly equates “homophobia” with racism, knowing full well that the latter can serve as grounds for ending tax-exempt status, as happened to Bob Jones University in the 1970s as a result of racist policies (lifted in 2000) regarding dating and marriage.

During Obergefell oral arguments, Justice Samuel Alito asked the solicitor general whether the state should yank tax exemptions for schools that uphold marriage as the union of man and woman. The solicitor general replied: “It’s certainly going to be an issue.” Right on cue, the Sunday after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell, the New York Times’ religion columnist wrote a piece for Time magazine titled “Now’s the Time to End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions.”

These vulnerabilities extend to Orthodox Jews, Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians, confessional Lutherans, Latter-day Saints, Muslims, and anyone else who believes that we are created male and female, and that male and female are created for each other. Charities, schools, and professionals will find themselves on the wrong side of regulations: bans on what government deems “discrimination” in public accommodations and employment; mandates in health care and education; revocation of nonprofit status, accreditation, licensing, and funding. Rolling Stone just profiled the LGBT activist Tim Gill, who has pledged his $500 million fortune to passing SOGI laws that will, in his words, “punish the wicked.”

And it won’t just be government that does the punishing. As the law insists that social conservatives are like racists, big businesses and other institutions will bring their own pressure to bear on anyone who dissents. Professional associations, through licensing and accreditation procedures, will enforce the new orthodoxy. The American Bar Association has promulgated new model rules of professional conduct that make it unethical for lawyers to “discriminate” on the “basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or socioeconomic status,” including in “social activities,” which, as former attorney general Ed Meese has explained, would include “church membership and worship activities.” Legally and culturally, believers should prepare for challenges.

Just how far is the Left willing to go? Consider the ACLU’s “Health Care Denied” project. Launched in May 2016, the project solicits complaints against Catholic hospitals to form the bases of lawsuits. These lawsuits claim that, in declining to perform abortions, Catholic hospitals “use their religious identity to discriminate against, and harm, women.” But this is absurd. The mother’s sex has nothing to do with a Catholic hospital’s refusal to kill the unborn and its commitment to saving lives instead.

The ACLU has also sued Catholic hospitals for declining to perform sex-reassignment surgeries. A headline for a California NBC affiliate read: “ACLU sues Carmichael faith-based hospital for denying transgender man hysterectomy.” The hospital was being accused of discrimination based on gender identity.

But Catholic hospitals refuse to remove a healthy and harmless uterus from anyone, whether the person identifies as cisgender or transgender. This doesn’t reflect discrimination based on gender identity, but rather an honest vision of the role of medicine and the proper treatment of gender dysphoria. But the Left is working hard to label all refusals to march with its sexual revolution as exercises of a “license to discriminate.”

It wasn’t always so. The American Civil Liberties Union used to defend civil liberties. Back in 1993, when Bill Clinton signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law, the ACLU was one of its biggest supporters. Nadine Strossen, president of the group’s national board of directors, testified before Congress in support of the law. It was needed, she argued, to “restore to religious liberty the same kind of protection that the Court has given and still does give to other fundamental freedoms.”

Strossen explained that “in order for government to infringe on a liberty, including religious liberty, it has to show some compelling interest, and it has to show that the measure is narrowly tailored so as to do as little damage as possible.” She embraced this legal standard, identifying it as “strict scrutiny” and saying it was “hardly a radical approach.” She even stated that RFRA was needed to protect “such familiar practices” as “permitting religiously sponsored hospitals to decline to provide abortion or contraception services” and ensuring “the inapplicability of highly intrusive educational rules to parochial schools.” She concluded that “these were decisions . . . that society had previously assumed that religious groups had the right to make for themselves and could not be compelled to change just because society thought otherwise.”

Let that sink in. In 1993, the ACLU endorsed RFRA, saying it would rightly restore for religious liberty the standard used to protect other freedoms — and specifically celebrated the very applications of RFRA that progressives now call abuses never imagined by its supporters. Today, the group sues Catholic hospitals over abortion and sex reassignment and supports a bill — the “Do No Harm Act” — that would amend RFRA so that it couldn’t be used to defend against progressive government mandates in employment and health care, amongst other areas, in response to the Hobby Lobby decision. Rejecting religious liberty as a fundamental natural right means that the freedoms of a variety of faith traditions on any number of issues may become casualties of progressives’ zeal to quash conservative dissent on sex.

RFRA-style laws have been used to protect a variety of claimants: Apache Indians told they can’t wear the feathers of endangered eagles in their headdresses, Sikhs told they can’t carry a kirpan (a small ceremonial knife) if they work for the government, inner-city black churches zoned out of existence, Muslim prisoners forbidden to grow short beards, and Jewish inmates denied kosher meals. RFRAs became controversial only when the federal RFRA protected the Evangelical owners of Hobby Lobby and when people thought state RFRAs might protect bakers, florists, and photographers who object to same-sex marriage. Rejecting religious liberty as a fundamental natural right means that the freedoms of a variety of faith traditions on any number of issues may become casualties of progressives’ zeal to quash conservative dissent on sex.

Three historical developments have created our current predicament: a change in government, a change in sexual values, and a change in how religion is practiced and how it is viewed by our leaders. An adequate response to current and looming threats to religious liberty will need to address each of these three shifts.

What has changed regarding government? A presumption of liberty has been replaced with a presumption of regulation. Citizens used to think that liberty was primary and government had to justify its coercive regulation. Now people assume that government regulations are the neutral starting point and citizens must justify their liberty.

The progressive movement gave us the administrative state. Limited government and the rule of law were replaced by the nearly unlimited reach of technocrats in governmental agencies. As government assumed authority to regulate more areas of life, the likelihood of its infringing religious liberty increased.

If Thomas Jefferson and James Madison came back to America today and heard about the plight of the Little Sisters of the Poor, their first response would not be to cite the First Amendment; it would be to ask what the Department of Health and Human Services is and what authorizes it to issue a preventive-care mandate. This should be a lesson to religious believers — including many who supported the passage of Obamacare — in how policies that violate economic freedom and massively expand the role of government also can end up violating religious freedom. We must assist those in need without unduly infringing on liberty and while respecting their — and everyone else’s — consciences.

The best defense of religious liberty is a defense of liberty more broadly, a return to limited government and the rule of law. Nowhere is this more applicable than in the never-ending expansion of anti-discrimination statutes. What started out as well-justified efforts to combat racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism have morphed into laws protecting against the “dignitary harm” (i.e., harm to dignity) allegedly inflicted by anyone who disagrees with progressives about human sexuality.

Laws that exist to prevent discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and religion are now being expanded to ban discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation and gender identity.” As a result, harmless actions and interactions, such as decisions not to perform sex-reassignment surgery or not to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, are being declared unlawful forms of discrimination. While no federal SOGI law exists, half of the U.S. population lives in a jurisdiction with a local or state SOGI. And these SOGIs frequently employ overly broad definitions of “public accommodation” so that almost every business is considered a place of “public accommodation.” It is essential to limit the damage these laws cause and to defeat them when they are proposed.

The comparison with racism is instructive, but not in the way SOGIs’ advocates think. In the 1960s, widespread and systemic racism radically limited African Americans’ freedom to flourish. Social and market forces were not sufficient to remedy the problem. Legal remedies were essential. Do Americans who identify as LGBT face similar challenges today?

Racist businesses refused to serve black people or to serve them in the same spaces and on the same terms as whites. If a business refused to participate in an interracial marriage, it was because that business thought whites were superior to blacks and therefore shouldn’t marry them — not that such a union wouldn’t be a marriage in the first place. By contrast, bakeries don’t refuse to serve people who identify as LGBT because they so identify. Rather, a small number of bakeries can’t in good conscience celebrate same-sex weddings because they think marriage can’t be same-sex.

What justifies the government in telling Jack Phillips that he must create cakes for same-sex weddings? Government has redefined marriage, but that didn’t create an entitlement for some citizens to demand that other citizens help celebrate their same-sex marriages. Activists are using SOGI laws to weaponize the redefinition of marriage. And so we see three important considerations for anti-discrimination policy: the underlying need and justification for government regulation, the scope and reach of that regulation, and the actions and interactions that count as discriminatory.

What about the change in sexual values? How America views the human body, sexuality, marriage, and the family has also changed profoundly since the 1960s. What started as a liberationist movement — asking for the freedom to live and love, be it with contraception or abortion, same-sex relations or transgender identities — now demands that other people support, facilitate, and endorse such choices: that Hobby Lobby’s insurance cover them, that Catholic hospitals perform them, and that various professionals celebrate them.

While the ACLU has largely failed in forcing pro-lifers to perform or pay for abortions, they’ve had more success in coercing traditionalists on LGBT issues. This highlights the reality that, for many people on the left, pro-life views are wrong but understandable, while traditional views on sex, marriage, and gender identity are not merely wrong but bigoted and deplorable. That’s why Catholic hospitals have prevailed against the ACLU in lower courts but Jack Phillips has to plead his case to the Supreme Court.

Any effective long-term response, therefore, cannot merely be about religious liberty or limited government. Ultimately, our goal should be to convince our neighbors that what we believe about sex is true. In the meantime we need to convince them that what we believe is at least reasonable and poses no harm to others, and thus that there’s no reason for the government to penalize it.

You can be in favor of gay marriage and be in favor of Jack’s not being forced to celebrate gay weddings. But if you think support for marriage as the union of husband and wife is akin to racism, you’re less likely to support Jack’s freedom to dissent. Conservatives need to explain why we believe what we believe in terms that our neighbors can understand. We may never convince the ideologues and activists, but most Americans aren’t driven by ideology or activism, and their opinions on these issues aren’t that deep or well informed. These people are persuadable if we make the effort.

In addition to changes in government and sex, religious practice and our understanding of religious liberty have also changed. The mainline Protestant churches became the old-line and now are on the sideline, in the memorable slogan of Father Richard John Neuhaus. This evolution sparked the growth of Evangelicalism, which is now challenged by the influence of mere cultural Christianity. On the Catholic side, the American implementation of the Second Vatican Council splintered the Catholic community into politically liberal, doctrinally heterodox “Spirit of Vatican II” Catholics and politically conservative, doctrinally orthodox “John Paul II” Catholics — with ex-Catholics composing one of the largest religious groups in America. These changes helped fuel the rise of the “nones” — those with no religious affiliation. As Americans become less religious, they care less about religious liberty, for people are most vigilant to protect the rights that they themselves want to exercise.

At the same time, a form of secularism has challenged the role of religion in public life, arguing that religion is appropriate inside the four walls of a house of worship but not on Main Street or Wall Street. The result has been an ever more naked public square, another memorable Neuhaus locution, where religion is viewed as a merely private affair with no public relevance.

These changes help explain why some liberals are trying to drastically narrow the natural right to the free exercise of religion by redefining it as the freedom of worship. If they succeed, the robust religious freedom that made American civil society a light to the world will be reduced to Sunday-morning piety confined to a chapel. The Little Sisters of the Poor will be free to worship how they want in their chapel, but will be forced to comply with the HHS mandate.

To adequately defend religious liberty, then, we must defend religion and work to spread it. In other words, we must evangelize. This takes many forms. Parents and pastors need to form their children and congregants in the truth. Spreading the faith to others — and helping them see the reasonableness of our beliefs — is likewise essential.

So is helping both believers and nonbelievers appreciate the importance of religious liberty. James Madison explained that religious liberty is a natural right “because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator.” Only if people can come to grasp the good of religion will they come to defend robust religious-liberty rights. Even people who aren’t personally religious can see that it is good for us to seek out and answer questions about ultimate origins, destiny, purpose, and meaning. They can see that it is good to live in accordance with religious truth as we each understand it. Religious liberty gives us the space to do precisely that.

And in doing so, it reminds the state that it is limited. As Sherif Girgis and I explain in our new point-counterpoint book with John Corvino, Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination, religious liberty plays a crucial role in preserving civil society as something separate from government. It makes conceptual room for — and promotes in practice — private associations and self-determination. Respect for religious liberty sears into political culture an image of government as limited by higher laws: transcendent moral norms and timeless truths about humanity’s pre-political needs and duties.

Government has no natural general mandate to coerce us, with our rights coming merely from its gracious self-restraint. It’s the other way around: Civil society has moral claims on government. A government that can tell nuns that their health-care plan must cover contraception is a government that can do anything.

To meet the attacks on religious liberty, conservatives must avoid two pitfalls: opting out of politics and defending only “our” people.

Religious liberty has been defended almost exclusively by lawyers, pastors, academics, and other people at 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. As Maggie Gallagher has noted numerous times, social conservatives have largely ignored actual politics. We talk about politics and we litigate to keep the courts from deciding issues against us, but we rarely engage in the actual electoral and political process.

Only one side has flexed political muscle. As Mike Pence will tell you, big business will make it painful for an elected official to do the right thing on these issues. We need 501(c)(4)s, PACs and super PACs, 527s, and other organizations to engage in direct political action, supporting bills and politicians that are good for religious liberty and opposing those that do it harm. What the Susan B. Anthony List has done for the pro-life cause we need done for religious liberty.

As for the second pitfall, conservatives must avoid following the Left’s lead in treating religious liberty as a partisan or tribal issue. In abandoning the religious liberty of conservative believers, the Left has betrayed a fundamental human right. Some on the right seem inclined to commit their own version of this mistake by denying the religious-liberty rights of Muslims, such as when towns refuse to let Muslims build mosques. But the same legal standard must apply to all faiths because the same human right is at stake.

Provided they don’t harm the common good, violate human rights, or otherwise offend justice, Muslims should be free to be authentically Muslim, just as Jews should be free to be authentically Jewish and Christians should be free to be authentically Christian. All of America is better off when these freedoms are protected, as they allow room for all of us to live according to our consciences — and to appeal to other people’s consciences in seeking to persuade them of what we regard as the truth in matters of faith. Religious liberty is not an embrace of relativism. As we disagree about religious truth, we need to agree to leave legal room for that disagreement to play out in worthy and healthy ways — among people who are free to persuade and convert. People are free to try to convince Jack that he should bake the cake, but the government shouldn’t be allowed to force him to do so.

Religious-liberty protections help preserve the conditions that make peaceful coexistence possible. They acknowledge both man’s dignity and the reality of pluralism and diversity even as we work to know and live the truth.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... der-attack

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 11:29 am
by captainfearnot
EmmaLee wrote: December 5th, 2017, 11:03 am Stop Misrepresenting Masterpiece Cakeshop
by David French
November 30, 2017
What facts of the case are being misrepresented, which this conservative pundit aims to clarify?
So why do so many on the left compare him to segregationists? Why do they use hypotheticals that have nothing to do with the facts of this case?
I agree, we should be focusing on the facts of the case, not hypotheticals.
There is a substantial difference between a rainbow symbol at an event celebrating a same-sex wedding and a corned-beef sandwich.
So, did Mullins and Craig request a rainbow colored cake, or a cake adorned with rainbow symbols? Or is French using a hypothetical which has nothing to do with the facts of the case? Once again, conservative pundits cannot resist suggesting that Phillips is being compelled to craft an explicitly gay-themed work of art because that would be a slam dunk case.

But the fact is that Phillips never discussed the potential design or decoration of the cake with Mullins and Craig, because he refused to design a cake at all immediately upon learning its intended purpose. Read the court documents, not op-eds. Phillips argues repeatedly that his artistic freedom of expression extends to how his art will be purposed. He never says that he should not be compelled to put rainbows or two grooms on his cake, because that is not at issue. Of course he is free to choose what he creates. His argument is that he should not be compelled to create a wedding cake that will be used to celebrate a gay wedding.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 11:30 am
by EmmaLee
Masterpiece Cakeshop: Can the State Force Us to Agree with Its Views?

by Jonathan Scruggs
August 28, 2017

“There’s nothing new beneath the sun,” King Solomon famously said — and very little new before the U.S. Supreme Court. Though every generation likes to believe it’s grappling with unprecedented legal challenges, the precedents are usually there, with history holding up its mirror to help us reflect on how those gone before came to grips with surprisingly similar threats to our national — and personal — convictions.

During the coming term, for instance, the High Court will hear the case of a Colorado cake artist, Jack Phillips, who has declined to use his artistic talents to design a wedding cake celebrating a same-sex wedding ceremony. It’s a faith-based position that puts him distinctly at odds with the full-court press of current social trends (at least those preferred by the media and Hollywood).

Phillips is by no means alone and by no means the first to find himself at cross-purposes with popular culture and the prevailing judicial winds. Indeed, those seeking a preview of this fall’s coming legal attractions need look no further back than 1943 and the enduring questions raised in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette.

As Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Barnett family discouraged their children from saluting the American flag at school. For them, the flag represented a “graven image” of the kind God pointedly disavowed in Exodus 20:4-5. They could not participate in what they viewed as a religious ceremony, nor promote a religious message with which they disagreed.

It was not — to say the least — a popular position to take on the homefront at the height of World War II. Jehovah’s Witnesses, even then, were not looked on with great esteem by those of more traditional faiths. Society at large viewed them as betrayers of the American way of life. Who would not want to salute the flag? Who would not concede America’s greatness during a fight between good and evil when so much was on the line?

Nor were the legal precedents running in the Barnetts’ direction. Just a few years earlier, in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, the Supreme Court had ruled that schools were perfectly within their rights to expel children who wouldn’t pledge to the flag. Youngsters who persisted in such disloyalty could be branded as juvenile delinquents and sent to reformatories. Their parents could actually be arrested for inciting such delinquency. The state could not afford to let such beliefs go unchecked. After Gobitis, violence against Jehovah’s Witnesses reportedly ensued in several places around the country.

In spite of the severe penalties imposed by the government, the Barnetts would not compromise their beliefs. They raised the question again with the Court, the Court reheard the case, and this time Justice Robert H. Jackson led a 6-3 majority to refute the Gobitis decision and restore to the Jehovah’s Witnesses the benefits of free speech. Jackson’s arguments have more than a passing bearing on the issues at the root of the cake artist’s case.

It would be great, Jackson suggested, if the government could ensure that a given symbol meant the same thing to everybody. Unfortunately, that’s not possible, and government efforts to make people agree on the proper meaning of a given symbol or idea (be it a flag, a wedding cake, or anything else) have always been unsuccessful. As Jackson wrote, “Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country” are not new to man but are foreign to our system of government.

Standardization of ideas about any subject — marriage included — “either by legislature, courts, or dominant political or community groups” is fundamentally undemocratic, as a later Supreme Court decision in Terminiello v. City of Chicago explained. The right to speak freely and differ on issues that matter, without fear of government punishment, is what “sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.”

While the Gobitis decision suggested that the right-or-wrong of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ case should be decided by the state legislature – and, ultimately, by vote — Jackson contended that some issues are simply too important to be decided by popular opinion:

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

What’s more, Jackson said, neither the strength nor the rightness of an idea (e.g., the greatness of America, same-sex marriage) is enhanced by the government’s ability to force someone to accept it. A social or political movement that can’t withstand some conscientious objections is built on weak ideas, indeed.

A society can’t have “rich cultural diversities,” Jackson said, without “exceptional minds,” and exceptional minds, by definition, will sometimes take exception to the popular view. “But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much,” Jackson said. “That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.”

His conclusion:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.

Just how fixed that star remains will be decided in the next Supreme Court term in the case of Jack Phillips . . . a cake artist who asks nothing more than that his government not compel him to celebrate an idea he does not believe in. In the end, that’s a right we all want to preserve.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-mem ... -amendment

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 11:32 am
by EmmaLee
captainfearnot wrote: December 5th, 2017, 11:29 am He argues repeatedly that he should not be compelled to create a wedding cake that will be used to celebrate a gay wedding.
And I agree with him 100% - you don't - not sure what point there is in arguing back and forth with you and others who don't get it.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 11:36 am
by EmmaLee
And I'm posting these articles because they explain the crux of the problem we're dealing with here - which is not cakes, in case some of you hadn't realized that. If you don't want to read them, don't. But for those here on this 'Freedom Forum' who actually care about freedom, you will find them beneficial and enlightening, I believe.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 11:42 am
by EmmaLee
This Is a Fight for the First Amendment, Not against Gay Marriage

by David Harsanyi
June 30, 2017

No, the Supreme Court is not revisiting gay rights. This week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips, the man who refused to create a specialty wedding cake for a same-sex couple in Colorado in 2012. The stories that are dominating the coverage distort the public’s understanding of the case and its serious implications.

For one thing, no matter how many times people repeat it, the case isn’t about discrimination or challenging gay marriage. But when the news first broke, USA Today tweeted, “The Supreme Court has agreed to reopen the national debate over same-sex marriage.” The headline (like the story) on the website was worse; it read, “Supreme Court will hear religious liberty challenge to gay weddings.” Others similarly framed the case. (And don’t worry, “religious liberty” is almost always solidly ensconced inside quotation marks to indicate that social conservatives are just using it as a façade.)

There is an impulse to frame every issue as a clash between the tolerant and the closed-minded. But the Masterpiece case doesn’t challenge, undermine, or relitigate same-sex marriage in America. Gay marriage wasn’t even legal in Colorado when this incident occurred.

Therefore, the Associated Press’s headline, “Supreme Court to Decide If Baker Can Refuse Gay Couple Wedding Cake,” and the accompanying story are also wrong. As is the New York Times headline “Justices to Hear Case on Baker’s Refusal to Serve Gay Couple,” which was later changed to the even worse headline “Justices to Hear Case on Religious Objections to Same-Sex Marriage.”

A person with only passing interest in this case might be led to believe that Phillips is fighting to hang a “No Gays Allowed” sign in his shop. In truth, he never refused to serve a gay couple. He didn’t even really refuse to sell David Mullins and Charlie Craig a wedding cake. They could have bought without incident. Everything in his shop was available to gays and straights and anyone else who walked in his door. What Phillips did was refuse to use his skills to design and bake a unique cake for a gay wedding. Phillips didn’t query about anyone’s sexual orientation. It was the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that took it upon itself to peer into Phillips’s soul, indict him, and destroy his business over a thought crime.

Like many other bakers, florists, photographers, and musicians — and millions of other Christians — Phillips holds genuine longstanding religious convictions. If Mullins and Craig had demanded that Phillips create an erotic-themed cake, the baker would have similarly refused for religious reasons, just as he had with other customers. If a couple had asked him to design a specialty cake that read “Congrats on the abortion, Jenny!” I’m certain he would have refused them as well, even though abortions are legal. It’s not the people; it’s the message.

In its tortured decision, the Colorado Court of Appeals admitted as much, contending that while Phillips didn’t overtly discriminate against the couple, “the act of same-sex marriage is closely correlated to Craig’s and Mullins’s sexual orientation,” so it could divine his real intentions. The state can substantially burden a Christian because he’s hurt the wrong person’s feelings.

In other words, the threshold for denying religious liberty and free expression is the presence of advocacy or a political opinion that conflates with faith. The court has effectively tasked itself with determining when religion is allowed to matter to you. Or, in other words, if SCOTUS upholds the lower-court ruling, it will empower unelected civil-rights commissions — which are typically stacked with hard-left authoritarians — to decide when your religious actions are appropriate.

How could any honest person believe this was the Constitution’s intent?
There was a time, I’m told, when the state wouldn’t substantially burden religious exercise and would use the least restrictive means to further compelling interests. Today, the state can substantially burden a Christian because he’s hurt the wrong person’s feelings.

Judging from the e-mails and social-media reactions I’ve gotten regarding this case, people are instinctively antagonistic not only because of the players involved but also because they don’t understand the facts. In this era of identity politics, some have been programmed to reflexively side with the person making accusations of status-based discrimination, all in an effort to empower the state to coerce a minority of people to see the world their way.

Well, not all people. In 2014, a Christian activist named William Jack went to a Colorado bakery and requested two cakes in the shape of a Bible, one to be decorated with the Bible verses “God hates sin. Psalm 45:7” and “Homosexuality is a detestable sin. Leviticus 18:22,” and the other cake to be decorated with another passage. The bakery refused. Even though Christians are a protected group, the Colorado Civil Rights Division threw out the case. The American Civil Liberties Union called the passages “obscenities.” I guess the Bible doesn’t “correlate” closely enough with a Christian’s identity.

Or perhaps we’ve finally established a state religion in this country: one run on the dogma of “social justice.”


Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... y-weddings

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 11:52 am
by EmmaLee
George Will Is Wrong about Masterpiece Cakeshop

by David French
December 4, 2017

The message that Jack Phillips refused to promote would have been explicit — baked right into the cake. It’s astounding how many defenses of the state’s position in Masterpiece Cakeshop depend on misrepresentation and misconceptions. Last week I wrote about the most common misrepresentation — that Jack Phillips discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation when he refused to design a custom cake for a same-sex-wedding celebration. After all, he served all customers — regardless of race, sex, or sexual orientation. He just consistently refused to design cakes that advanced messages he disagreed with. No person of any identity has the legal authority to compel an artist to use his talents to advance a cause the artist finds offensive.

This weekend, unfortunately, one of the all-time greats of the conservative movement, George Will, advanced a different misconception to conclude that, yes, the state should be able to conscript Phillips’s talents. After committing the common sin of declaring that a finding for Masterpiece Cakeshop would render key parts of the 1964 Civil Rights Act “quite porous,” Will declares that Phillips’s expression is simply not constitutionally protected:

It is difficult to formulate a limiting principle that draws a bright line distinguishing essentially expressive conduct from conduct with incidental or negligible expressive possibilities. Nevertheless, it can be easy to identify some things that clearly are on one side of the line or the other. So, regarding Phillips’ creations:

A cake can be a medium for creativity; hence, in some not-too-expansive sense, it can be food for thought. However, it certainly, and primarily, is food. And the creator’s involvement with it ends when he sends it away to those who consume it.


Will is quite correct that there exists a line between conduct and expressive conduct. Let’s take as one example the floodlights that illuminate the White House. On a normal evening they are “certainly” and “primarily” intended to do one thing and one thing only — light up the building. But there are other times when the primary purpose changes. Such as the night of June 26, 2015, when the White house was “set aglow with rainbow pride.” The Supreme Court had just held that there exists a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, and to celebrate the occasion, the White House lights looked like this:
FrenchImage_0.jpeg
FrenchImage_0.jpeg (186.23 KiB) Viewed 721 times
Is the lighting “primarily” intended for illumination here? Or is it intended to send a very specific political statement? Every reasonable observer knows the answer.

Now, let’s consider the facts of the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. The gay couple eventually selected a rainbow cake to celebrate their nuptials. This decision was every bit as expressive as the White House’s decision to light up its façade. Given the context and the occasion, the meaning was abundantly clear to even the most casual attendee. There is no ambiguity here.

There’s a line, moreover, in Will’s piece that demonstrates surprising ignorance about weddings despite the fact that Will has undoubtedly attended countless ceremonies in his long and illustrious career. Who has ever said that a wedding cake was primarily food? No one wants the cake to taste like trash, but is that the reason that brides, moms, and wedding planners agonize over their cake choice? (Grooms are more likely to be indifferent.) No, they want the cake to be beautiful. They want it to be — dare I say it — a work of art.

Rare is the person who attends the wedding reception eager to chow down on a piece of wedding cake. The common and nearly universal experience in weddings where the bride and groom have even the smallest budget to celebrate is the gathering of guests around the cake, to proclaim how “amazing” it looks, to admire the specific aspects that make it special, the “perfect” cake for the perfect couple.

In ordinary circumstances, the artistry of cake designers is so obvious that it’s presumed — the same with photographers, calligraphers, and florists. This obvious artistry is a reason why no one bats an eye when a baker refuses to design, say, a Confederate-flag cake. The message it is sending is staring you in the face. But a message may be implicit instead, present though not obvious, even if the artistry is. For example, does anyone believe that the prohibitions against sex discrimination would compel a fashion designer to create a dress for Melania or Ivanka Trump? There is no ambiguity as to whether the design of the cake in this case communicated a message.

There is no slippery slope between Masterpiece Cakeshop and segregated lunch counters. There is no ambiguity as to whether the design of the cake in this case communicated a message. The Supreme Court can, in fact, rule in favor of Jack Phillips without doing the slightest bit of harm to generations of civil-rights case law. In fact, it can explicitly reaffirm its rulings in those cases at the same time that it defends free speech. It’s that simple.

It cannot, however, rule against Phillips without committing an act of judicial violence against both the First Amendment and common sense. Phillips doesn’t discriminate on the basis of any person’s identity. He was asked to engage in an act of artistic expression that communicated a specific cultural, religious, and political message. The Constitution and generations of Supreme Court precedent hold that he has the right to refuse to speak that message — regardless of whether it’s delivered by punditry or by pastry.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... ll-obtains

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 11:59 am
by LightisTruth111
Was it not said that the Bow would be taken from the Heavens as a sign. Let those in wisdom understand the Bow of the covenant and promise given to Noah was in place since days of the Flood, and this is the Rainbow. And now it has become defiled and the earth is primed for it destruction.

Woe Woe Woe unto the promised land for thou is defiled and great shall be thou chastisement ye who was choice above all lands has turned against your God and embraced the Devil. Great shall be the destruction to swept clean your lands in preparation for my true brethren the tribes of Israel.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 12:02 pm
by captainfearnot
EmmaLee wrote: December 5th, 2017, 11:32 am
captainfearnot wrote: December 5th, 2017, 11:29 am He argues repeatedly that he should not be compelled to create a wedding cake that will be used to celebrate a gay wedding.
And I agree with him 100% - you don't - not sure what point there is in arguing back and forth with you and others who don't get it.
The point is that the conservative punditry keeps misrepresenting the facts of the case, and I feel like there is value in pointing out that misrepresentation every time it is repeated. I agree that it doesn't do any good to state our opinions on the legal question over and over, but it's clear to me that there is still widespread misunderstanding over what the facts are, and that misunderstanding is being intentionally promulgated by the punditry.

In the piece quoted in the OP, Ben Shapiro writes, "So he’ll make a cake for a same-sex wedding, but he won’t decorate it as such (no groom-groom wedding toppers, for example)." That is simply incorrect. Jack Phillips has consistently refused to make any wedding cakes for same-sex weddings, not just cakes that are explicitly gay wedding themed.

I think everyone would agree that this image depicts a wedding cake:

Image

I think it's also clear that this image does not depict a "gay" wedding cake or a "straight" wedding cake. It's just a wedding cake, and could be used to celebrate either a gay or straight wedding.

Jack Phillips has made it abundantly clear that he would design such a cake for a straight wedding but not a gay one. He is claiming the right to artistic expression based on the event his art is intended to celebrate, not the content of the art itself. The end result of his artistic license is that he would sell this cake to a straight couple but not a gay one, which looks a lot like discrimination, which is why this is an issue.

Let's disagree on whether he should be legally compelled to sell wedding cakes to gay couples to celebrate gay weddings. I actually do think it's an interesting legal question, whether artists can be compelled to create art that they believe will be used for a purpose they do not agree with, even if they would voluntarily create the exact same art for another purpose they do agree with.

But let's not pretend that the issue is whether a baker can be compelled to create explicitly gay-themed wedding cakes, as most conservative pundits seem intent to do. That's not an interesting legal question at all—the answer is obviously no.

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 12:12 pm
by EmmaLee
captainfearnot wrote: December 5th, 2017, 10:32 am
natasha wrote: December 5th, 2017, 9:29 amIf everyone would please read ALL the info about this case they would understand better what is at stake.
I agree. Please read Mr. Phillips' petition to the Supreme Court. It says nothing about the decoration or design of the cake in question. His objection to providing the cake rests entirely on the purpose for which the case would be used, not on its design or decoration.
A blatantly false statement. The very first paragraph in the petition states just the opposite of what you claim - "Jack Phillips is a cake artist. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled that he engaged in sexual orientation discrimination under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (“CADA”) when he declined to design and create a custom cake honoring a same-sex marriage because doing so conflicts with his sincerely held religious beliefs."

It does not list the specifics (two 'grooms' for a cake topper, rainbows, two male gender symbols entwined, or any of dozens of other symbols homosexuals may use to promote their agenda), but the specifics don't matter. What matters is this gay couple asked him to "design and create a CUSTOM cake HONORING A SAME-SEX MARRIAGE." Therefore, simple logic dictates that the gay couple wanted him to... design and create a custom cake honoring same-sex marriage - regardless of what those specific things might have been - that is right there, in plain English, in the legal petition. In other words, they asked him to promote same-sex marriage by creating a custom cake THAT WOULD HAVE PROMOTED SAME-SEX MARRIAGE for their wedding - and he refused to because his Christian faith forbears him from promoting sin.

The "LDS" in LDSFF stands for "Latter-day Saints", which is short for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The LDS Church also proclaims that same-sex marriage is a sin. The LDS Church also has a history of fighting for religious freedom and freedom of speech. It's interesting - and sad - to see any people on this forum fighting against this, let alone several. Sign of the times, to be sure.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 12:20 pm
by EmmaLee
captainfearnot wrote: December 5th, 2017, 12:02 pm
EmmaLee wrote: December 5th, 2017, 11:32 am
captainfearnot wrote: December 5th, 2017, 11:29 am He argues repeatedly that he should not be compelled to create a wedding cake that will be used to celebrate a gay wedding.
And I agree with him 100% - you don't - not sure what point there is in arguing back and forth with you and others who don't get it.
The point is that the conservative punditry keeps misrepresenting the facts of the case, and I feel like there is value in pointing out that misrepresentation every time it is repeated.
And what I'm saying - and I pointed it out very clearly in my previous comment, when I quoted the legal brief word-for-word - is that they are NOT misrepresenting the facts of the case at all. You are.

I agree that it doesn't do any good to state our opinions on the legal question over and over, but it's clear to me that there is still widespread misunderstanding over what the facts are, and that misunderstanding is being intentionally promulgated by the punditry.

In the piece quoted in the OP, Ben Shapiro writes, "So he’ll make a cake for a same-sex wedding, but he won’t decorate it as such (no groom-groom wedding toppers, for example)." That is simply incorrect. Jack Phillips has consistently refused to make any wedding cakes for same-sex weddings, not just cakes that are explicitly gay wedding themed.
That is simply not true. Why do you keep repeating this?? Did YOU even read the legal brief you linked to? Because in the very first paragraph it states that the gay couple wanted him to make a CUSTOM cake to celebrate their homosexual wedding - that means they were OBVIOUSLY wanting him to promote same-sex marriage, which is what Phillips has said all along he would not do. If a gay couple asked him to bake a cake for their wedding, and nothing on the cake would indicate that it was for a same-sex wedding, then yes, he would have made the cake. You are telling a blatant untruth here.

I think everyone would agree that this image depicts a wedding cake:

Image

I think it's also clear that this image does not depict a "gay" wedding cake or a "straight" wedding cake. It's just a wedding cake, and could be used to celebrate either a gay or straight wedding.

Jack Phillips has made it abundantly clear that he would design such a cake for a straight wedding but not a gay one.
Show me, with a link to Phillips own words, where he has ever said that.

He is claiming the right to artistic expression based on the event his art is intended to celebrate, not the content of the art itself. The end result of his artistic license is that he would sell this cake to a straight couple but not a gay one, which looks a lot like discrimination, which is why this is an issue.
Never minding that the socialists in our culture have bastardized the word "discrimination" to their own corrupt, anti-Christ agenda (Christ was VERY discriminating), this is again, BLATANTLY FALSE. This is your opinion and nothing more.

Let's disagree on whether he should be legally compelled to sell wedding cakes to gay couples to celebrate gay weddings. I actually do think it's an interesting legal question, whether artists can be compelled to create art that they believe will be used for a purpose they do not agree with, even if they would voluntarily create the exact same art for another purpose they do agree with.

But let's not pretend that the issue is whether a baker can be compelled to create explicitly gay-themed wedding cakes, as most conservative pundits seem intent to do. That's not an interesting legal question at all—the answer is obviously no.
That is EXACTLY the issue, and it's really a shame that you cannot see it. Or maybe you just didn't read/comprehend the legal document you, yourself, linked to?

Re:

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 12:33 pm
by captainfearnot
EmmaLee wrote: December 5th, 2017, 12:12 pm A blatantly false statement. The very first paragraph in the petition states just the opposite of what you claim - "Jack Phillips is a cake artist. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled that he engaged in sexual orientation discrimination under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (“CADA”) when he declined to design and create a custom cake honoring a same-sex marriage because doing so conflicts with his sincerely held religious beliefs."

It does not list the specifics (two 'grooms' for a cake topper, rainbows, two male gender symbols entwined, or any of dozens of other symbols homosexuals may use to promote their agenda), but the specifics don't matter. What matters is this gay couple asked him to "design and create a CUSTOM cake HONORING A SAME-SEX MARRIAGE." Therefore, simple logic dictates that the gay couple wanted him to... design and create a custom cake honoring same-sex marriage - regardless of what those specific things might have been - that is right there, in plain English, in the legal petition. In other words, they asked him to promote same-sex marriage by creating a custom cake THAT WOULD HAVE PROMOTED SAME-SEX MARRIAGE for their wedding - and he refused to because his Christian faith forbears him from promoting sin.
Honestly, I can see how you would read it that way. But the implication is that had the couple asked for a different design—presumably, one that did not celebrate and honor same-sex marriage—Mr. Phillips would have consented to creating the cake. But the fact of the matter is that Mr. Phillips has consistently refused to design any cake for same-sex weddings because he defines any cake identifiable as a wedding cake, used to celebrate a same-sex wedding, as honoring and celebrating that union, regardless of the actual content of the design. In order to argue otherwise you would need to demonstrate that he has in fact designed cakes for same-sex weddings that he did not consider to be honoring and celebrating the union. In fact he has never done so, and has repeatedly indicated that he never would.

Furthermore, accounts from the couple and Mr. Phillips agree that their conversation never advanced to the discussion of the cake design. Once Mr. Phillips understood that they were requesting a wedding cake for a gay wedding, he advised them that he would be unable to accommodate them. Mr. Phillips' position has always been that any wedding cake at all, used in a gay wedding, honors and celebrates that union and portrays him as a willing participant in celebrating the event.

Mr. Phillips penned an editorial for USA Today outlining his position. I think he makes it abundantly clear that his issue is with the purpose of the wedding cake in question, not whether the cake is gay themed in its design or decoration.
Here's why I can’t custom-design cakes for same-sex weddings
by Jack Phillips
December 4, 2017

What I didn’t say was that I wouldn’t sell them a cake.

I’m happy to sell a cake to anyone, whatever his or her sexual identity. People should be free to make their own moral choices. I don’t have to agree with them.

But I am responsible for my own choices. And it was that responsibility that led me to decline when two gentlemen came into my shop and invited me to create a wedding cake for their same-sex ceremony.

Designing a wedding cake is a very different thing from, say, baking a brownie. When people commission such a cake, they’re requesting something that’s designed to express something about the event and about the couple.

What I design is not just a tower of flour and sugar, but a message tailored to a specific couple and a specific event — a message telling all who see it that this event is a wedding and that it is an occasion for celebration.

In this case, I couldn’t. What a cake celebrating this event would communicate was a message that contradicts my deepest religious convictions, and as an artist, that’s just not something I’m able to do, so I politely declined.

But this wasn’t just a business decision. More than anything else, it was a reflection of my commitment to my faith. My religious convictions on this are grounded in the biblical teaching that God designed marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Obviously, not everyone shares those convictions. I don’t expect them to. Each of us makes our own choices; each of us decides how closely we will hold to, defend and live out those choices.

The two men who came into my shop that day were living out their beliefs. All I did was attempt to live out mine. I respect their right to choose and hoped they would respect mine.

They did not. And, considering all of the hate mail, obscene calls and death threats my family has received since I was sued, a lot of other people don’t see tolerance as a two-way street, either.

But the Constitution does. The First Amendment defends my right to create custom cake art that is consistent with my faith, while declining requests that ask me to celebrate events or messages that conflict with my faith. As a cake artist, I can live out my faith in my day-to-day life, and make that faith the basis for my creative decisions.

We live in a big, diverse nation. We don’t all have to agree on religion. We don’t have to agree on questions of sexual morality. We don’t even have to agree on the meaning of marriage.

What we should be able to agree on is our mutual freedom, as Americans, to live out the ideals that are most important to us.

Just as I shouldn’t be able to use the law to force others to design something that promotes my beliefs, others shouldn’t be able to force me to design a cake that celebrates theirs.

That, for me and those at Alliance Defending Freedom who are defending me, is what this case is about. I hope the U.S. Supreme Court affirms that basic freedom.

And if those who oppose me would grant me a certain measure of respect — not as someone they agree with, but as a fellow citizen free to stand by my own moral choices, well … that would be icing on the cake.

Jack Phillips is the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo. Oral arguments for Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission will be heard Tuesday.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/ ... 917631001/

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 12:39 pm
by EmmaLee
Thanks for posting Phillips' article - now I have even more respect for him and I pray to God the SC rules in his favor. Otherwise, it's yet another huge nail in the coffin of what used to be a free country.

Here's the legal petition for anyone who cares to read it - quite short -

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/up ... tition.pdf

NO._______ IN THE Supreme Court of the United States
MASTERPIECE CAKESHOP, LTD.;
AND JACK C. PHILLIPS, Petitioners, v.
COLORADO CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION;
CHARLIE CRAIG; AND DAVID MULLINS, Respondents.
On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the Colorado Court of Appeals
PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI
DAVID A. CORTMAN RORY T. GRAY ALLIANCE
DEFENDING FREEDOM
1000 Hurricane Shoals Rd.
NE, Suite D-1100
Lawrenceville, GA 30043
(770) 339-0774
NICOLLE H. MARTIN
7175 W. Jefferson Ave.
Suite 4000
Lakewood, CO 80235
(303) 332-4547
JEREMY D. TEDESCO
Counsel of Record
KRISTEN K. WAGGONER
JORDAN W. LORENCE
J.CALEB DALTON
ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM
15100 N. 90th Street
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
(480) 444-0020
jtedesco@ADFlegal.org
Counsel for Petitioners

QUESTION PRESENTED
Jack Phillips is a cake artist. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled that he engaged in sexual orientation discrimination under the Colorado Anti-
Discrimination Act (“CADA”) when he declined to design and create a custom cake honoring a same-sex marriage because doing so conflicts with his sincerely held religious beliefs.

The Colorado Court of Appeals found no violation of the Free Speech or Free Exercise Clauses because it deemed Phillips’ speech to be mere conduct compelled by a neutral and generally applicable law. It reached this conclusion
despite the artistry of Phillips’ cakes and the Commission’s exemption of other
cake artists who declined to create custom cakes based on their message.
This analysis (1) flouts this Court’s controlling precedent, (2) conflicts with Ninth and Eleventh Circuit decisions regarding the free speech protection of art, (3)
deepens an existing conflict between the Second, Third, Sixth, and Eleventh Circuits as to the proper test for identifying expressive conduct, and (4)
conflicts with free exercise rulings by the Third, Sixth, and Tenth Circuits.
The question presented is: Whether applying Colorado’s public accommodations law to compel Phillips to create expression that violates his sincerely held
religious beliefs about marriage violates the Free Speech or Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 12:43 pm
by Alaris
Vision wrote: December 4th, 2017, 7:16 pm
EmmaLee wrote: December 4th, 2017, 5:28 pm https://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/ ... t-and-cake

The Supreme Court and Cake
Written by John F. McManus


Shouldn’t Jack Phillips have a right to refuse the business of someone who walks into his store and intends, not so much to buy a cake, but to have the planned transaction force acceptance of something abhorred by Phillips and many others?

Please tell me how selling a cake to a gay couple is accepting their lifestyle?
Again you're missing the central issue. Whether they shouldn't or shouldn't have baked a cake for a gay wedding really isn't the issue here at all. The central issue is whether the government has any business forcing anyone to bake a cake. This is called fascism. The nationalist socialist party a.k.a Nazis modeled their government over a combination of socialism and nationalism. The state takes control, socialism, and uses its power to force a nationalistic dogma upon its people.

As for the gay cake baking, the state forces it's citizens into compliance by punishing those who don't comply with its dogma. Whatever the dogma is almost immaterial. Forcing someone to bake a cake is the issue. The left ignorantly calls the right fascists while demanding the state force people to accept their "ideology" - the irony.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 12:46 pm
by EmmaLee
Thank you, Alaris; very well put.

In the end, it's a sad, royal shame that some members of the LDS Church - supposed Christians themselves, of Christ's supposed own church - people who should know better - have less integrity, less moral fortitude, and less understanding and love of freedom and agency than Mr. Phillips, et al. Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 12:48 pm
by captainfearnot
EmmaLee wrote: December 5th, 2017, 12:20 pm Jack Phillips has made it abundantly clear that he would design such a cake for a straight wedding but not a gay one.
Show me, with a link to Phillips own words, where he has ever said that.
I posted his editorial before I saw this, but just to be clear:
"Jack Phillips" wrote:What I design is not just a tower of flour and sugar, but a message tailored to a specific couple and a specific event — a message telling all who see it that this event is a wedding and that it is an occasion for celebration.

In this case, I couldn’t. What a cake celebrating this event would communicate was a message that contradicts my deepest religious convictions, and as an artist, that’s just not something I’m able to do, so I politely declined.
He specifies that the message he objects to communicating is "this event is a wedding" and "an occasion for celebration"—a message which is conveyed by any wedding cake. And he says that he cannot convey that message when the wedding in question is a gay one.

Your turn. Please cite where Jack Phillips has ever designed a wedding cake for a gay wedding, upon deeming that the requested design was not a celebration of gay marriage. (Or where he has ever indicated that he would even be open to doing so, if there were such a thing as a wedding cake that did not celebrate the wedding at which it is present.)

Or, please cite the details of the design that Mullins and Craig requested that caused Phillips to decline. If they "obviously" requested specific details celebrating gay marriage in the design then why aren't we talking about them? Why don't we know what they are?

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 12:59 pm
by EmmaLee
captainfearnot wrote: December 5th, 2017, 12:48 pm
EmmaLee wrote: December 5th, 2017, 12:20 pm Jack Phillips has made it abundantly clear that he would design such a cake for a straight wedding but not a gay one.
Show me, with a link to Phillips own words, where he has ever said that.
I posted his editorial before I saw this, but just to be clear:
"Jack Phillips" wrote:What I design is not just a tower of flour and sugar, but a message tailored to a specific couple and a specific event — a message telling all who see it that this event is a wedding and that it is an occasion for celebration.

In this case, I couldn’t. What a cake celebrating this event would communicate was a message that contradicts my deepest religious convictions, and as an artist, that’s just not something I’m able to do, so I politely declined.
He specifies that the message he objects to communicating is "this event is a wedding" and "an occasion for celebration"—a message which is conveyed by any wedding cake. And he says that he cannot convey that message when the wedding in question is a gay one.

Your turn. Please cite where Jack Phillips has ever designed a wedding cake for a gay wedding, upon deeming that the requested design was not a celebration of gay marriage.

Or, please cite the details of the design that Mullins and Craig requested that caused Phillips to decline. If they "obviously" requested specific details celebrating gay marriage in the design then why aren't we talking about them? Why don't we know what they are?
I'm glad you found and posted that Phillips article - thank you again. But it doesn't change anything to do with this case in my opinion. Even if Phillips wouldn't bake a generic wedding cake for a same-sex wedding, good for him! I applaud him for having the gonads to actually LIVE his religion and hold to his faith, unlike many LDS people, it seems. He has EVERY right to decline baking a cake for anyone - I don't care who they are or what their event is. THAT is the central point here, and you are trying to overshadow that by harping on minutia - distraction is a favorite of leftists.

Summary - Phillips, et al, should not be FORCED (whose favorite tool is that? oh yeah, SATAN) by the anti-God, anti-Christ government, to do business with anyone they don't want to do business with. Plain, simple, end of story. If the public don't like that, then the public will put them out of business - that's how it should be. That is called freedom - that is allowing PEOPLE to use their AGENCY, unlike leftists and their socialist, fascist government cronies who want to FORCE everyone to do THEIR will. The nanny state needs to go away. People need to be left to make their own choices and let the chips fall. Not unlike Joseph Smith - "I teach them correct principles, and let them govern themselves." THAT is God-like. All this crap about gov't ruling and reigning over every single aspect of all of our lives, and trying to remove our AGENCY, is SATANIC.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 1:15 pm
by captainfearnot
EmmaLee wrote: December 5th, 2017, 12:59 pm I'm glad you found and posted that Phillips article - thank you again.
If you don't mind I'm going to interpret your gratitude as an implicit apology for calling me a liar, accusing me of not reading the legal petition I linked to, etc. No hard feelings.
Even if Phillips wouldn't bake a generic wedding cake for a same-sex wedding, good for him! I applaud him for having the gonads to actually LIVE his religion and hold to his faith, unlike many LDS people, it seems.
I agree, Mr. Phillips is the good guy here. He is standing up for what he believes in, against some gay bullies and their liberal backers. If this were a reality show I'd be in his corner. But that doesn't mean I think he should prevail in court. Legal questions of rights and freedoms are not a popularity contest.
He has EVERY right to decline baking a cake for anyone - I don't care who they are or what their event is. THAT is the central point here, and you are trying to overshadow that by harping on minutia - distraction is a favorite of leftists.
Umm, no. He does not have that right. In my opinion, that's why he starts his editorial with an adamant claim that he'll sell a cake to anyone. He'd be in some legal hot water if that were not the case.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 1:32 pm
by Silver
EmmaLee wrote: December 5th, 2017, 11:36 am And I'm posting these articles because they explain the crux of the problem we're dealing with here - which is not cakes, in case some of you hadn't realized that. If you don't want to read them, don't. But for those here on this 'Freedom Forum' who actually care about freedom, you will find them beneficial and enlightening, I believe.
I commend you for your ability to live by your signature line. I aspire to achieve that sort of confident tranquility.

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 1:53 pm
by EmmaLee
captainfearnot wrote: December 5th, 2017, 1:15 pm
EmmaLee wrote: December 5th, 2017, 12:59 pm I'm glad you found and posted that Phillips article - thank you again.
If you don't mind I'm going to interpret your gratitude as an implicit apology for calling me a liar, accusing me of not reading the legal petition I linked to, etc. No hard feelings.
I wasn't apologizing at all - I said/did nothing that would require an apology. My gratitude was just that - nothing more - as I hadn't read that article yet, I was glad to see it. But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and view it that way.
Even if Phillips wouldn't bake a generic wedding cake for a same-sex wedding, good for him! I applaud him for having the gonads to actually LIVE his religion and hold to his faith, unlike many LDS people, it seems.
I agree, Mr. Phillips is the good guy here. He is standing up for what he believes in, against some gay bullies and their liberal backers. If this were a reality show I'd be in his corner. But that doesn't mean I think he should prevail in court. Legal questions of rights and freedoms are not a popularity contest.
No, they should not - and it's a crying shame that Mr. Phillips rights and freedoms are being trashed by a depraved and anti-Christ minority.
He has EVERY right to decline baking a cake for anyone - I don't care who they are or what their event is. THAT is the central point here, and you are trying to overshadow that by harping on minutia - distraction is a favorite of leftists.
Umm, no. He does not have that right. In my opinion, that's why he starts his editorial with an adamant claim that he'll sell a cake to anyone. He'd be in some legal hot water if that were not the case.
Of course he does - and the fact that you state, "Umm, no" just proves the case that you have zero concept of actual rights and freedom - but you've stated before that you're a liberal, so it goes without saying that that is your understanding. If we're at the point in this country where the evil gov't can dictate who private businesses can and can't sell to, then fold up the tent - it's all over. And I realize we are pretty much at that point, and that it is all over - we're just waiting for the jackbooted foot to drop. It will drop on your neck just as much as mine - something else leftists don't seem to grasp.
And now I'm going to take Silver's and my own advice, and not engage with you anymore - no hard feelings. I'm off to finish my Christmas shopping. :)

Re: SC Decision Will Affect Us All

Posted: December 5th, 2017, 2:06 pm
by MMbelieve
Vision wrote: December 4th, 2017, 3:46 pm
alaris wrote: December 4th, 2017, 3:27 pm
Vision wrote: December 4th, 2017, 2:53 pm
Michelle wrote: December 4th, 2017, 11:17 am

They don't care if the customer is gay or straight: they care that they don't endorse something against their conscience.
Did the bakery owner only sale wedding cakes to virgins? Nice random application of conscience.
If someone asked for a cake endorsing premarital sex, they possibly would have been against that as well. The issue isn't about a random application of conscience but whether the state can force individuals to provide goods and services that conflict with religious views. This issue is a slippery slope that ends in the state forcing the LDS church to perform gay marriages in temples. The adversary is real and the LDS church is absolutely at the center of his cross-hairs.

EmmaLee was right to post this and the David O McKay quote she shared is spot on.
Alaris

The Church will get out of the marriage business before they ever marry any gays in the temple. Before you go reacting, many temples around the world only perform sealings because the governments in those countries don't allow ecclisastical marriage.

This is completely about random application of conscience. If the shop owner had just sold the cake and not judged the gay men trying to buy the cake this would not even be a court case. Leave judgements to God. If someone sue thee, give them thy cloak also.

I never said Emmalee wasn't right to post this, I just disagree with this being about religious freedom. The original act was about buying a cake, it evolved into a fight about religious freedom/gay rights
I agree, we can all focus on what it turned into and feel threaten by it and fight to stay free but if we take a step back and see that it was just a cake then perhaps we can recognize that the fight was unnecessary and brought on by inappropriate behavior of a shop owner.

I agree that he shouldn't have been so judgemental and instead expressed his true Christian heart by loving his "enemies". It was a cake, not a sustaining of their specific marriage no more than him sustaining the marriage of any of the other sinners he baked cakes for.

But it's a big issue now and people are all worried about it. So now we have to deal with.

I don't want to lose religious freedom either and I hope that all the right decisions are made by those in charge...but really it is about a cake and law makers will see it as a Christian shop owner trying to use a "right" of religion and refuse or discriminate in a public setting and place of business. If we lose religious freedoms because of this then shame on the man who started it and turned it into way more than it ever needed to be.

Starting our own sparks then complaining of the fire is kinda wacky.