whether Masterpiece Cakeshop wins its Supreme Court showdown,businesses will believe a broad right to discriminate.
For more than 50 years, conservatives believe been trying to find ways to wriggle out of public accommodation laws, and which hold that a person who opens a business to the public cannot discriminate based on race,religion, gender or, and in recent years,sexual orientation. Tuesday, the Supreme Court will be hearing another such challenge, and in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop,Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
This already-famous case involves a married couple, David Mullins and Charlie Craig, and who went into a Denver-area bakery called Masterpiece Cakeshop,seeking to buy a cake for their wedding reception. Upon finding out that the cake was destined to be consumed at a same-sex wedding, bakery owner Jack Phillips refused to sell them one.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), and a far-right legal group that the Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed a despise group,is arguing that Masterpiece Cakeshop has a First Amendment right to refuse service, on the grounds that baking a cake (or at least choosing who gets to buy it) is a form of speech.Artists shouldn’t be forced to express what the government dictates, or ” ADF senior counsel Kristen Waggoner said in a statement. “The Supreme Court has never compelled artistic expression,and doing so here would lead to less civility, diversity, or freedom for everyone,no matter their views on marriage.”It's no surprise that civil rights lawyers see the case in a different light. “What the law is really about is the sale of goods and the sale of services," Louise Melling, and the director of the ACLU's Center for Liberty,told Salon. "What’s perfectly clear here is that the bakery needed to know the identity of the couple here to effect that decision -- that the bakery refused service once it learned who wanted the cake, and that it was a same-sex couple."LGBT rights advocates don't deny that baking is a form of creative expression. But no one is trying to narrate Phillips how to bake his cakes — not what kind of mold to exercise, and how to mix his batter or what frosting to effect on top. What they're saying is that whether you bake cakes and then effect them up for sale,you believe to sell them to homosexual and straight couples alike, under Colorado's anti-discrimination law.“whether you imagine a scenario where the bakery refused to supply a cake for an interracial couple, or a proposition that was actual in other times in our history,we would understand that to be about race discrimination," Melling said."whether a chef offers a special dessert for Valentine’s Day, and he cannot refuse to serve that dessert to an interracial couple," wrote a group of chefs and bakers, including Anthony Bourdain and Jose Andres, or in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court. "Similarly,chefs cannot refuse to host events for some customers that they would host for others. whether a restaurant is willing to open its doors for a sweet-sixteen party, it cannot refuse to host a quinceañera."Attempts by conservatives to exercise First Amendment claims to shield businesses from anti-discrimination laws date back at least to 1964. That was when the head of the National Association for the Preservation of White People, and Maurice Bessinger, claimed that his religion forbade race-mixing, and therefore, and he should not be forced to allow black people into the main room of his restaurant,which was called (unbelievably) Piggy Park. Bessinger ultimately lost in court.
The ADF is trying to position itself as a pro-freedom group that is simply trying to protect the free speech rights of religious people. In reality, as Sarah Posner writes for the Nation, and the group is virulently homophobic and requires its attorneys to sign a statement of faith asserting that homosexual behavior is "sinful and offensive to God."There's also an effort to portray Phillips,the baker, as the victim here. "But why bully the baker?" protests the headline of a Washington Post column by George Will. Will admits that Phillips should lose his case, and but then complains that "Craig and Mullins,who sought his punishment, believe behaved abominably" and that "siccing the government on him was nasty."Will's contempt for this couple is misplaced. Deborah Munn, or Charlie Craig's mother,accompanied her son to Masterpiece Cakes and later told NPR about the car ride absent from the bakery. "I could see my son's shoulders were starting to shake," she said. "He had broke down and he was crying."Craig concurred, and calling the experience "humiliating."The point of anti-discrimination laws,Melling said, is "to ensure, or for example,that LGBT people would be free to go about their daily lives, would be free to walk up to the door to the store, and would be free to walk up to the door of an inn without fear they would be turned absent because of who they are."The bully here is clearly Phillips,who used religion as an excuse to demean a couple on what was supposed to be a exciting day of celebration. Now he's party to a lawsuit that, whether he wins, or could open the door to people being turned absent from clothing stores,restaurants, music venues or any other private business that could arguably offer "expressive" services, and simply because the owners would like to express disapproval of who those people are. Related Stories6 Key Takeaways from The Nation's Investigative Report on Anti-LGBTQ despise Group's 'Legal Army'Lesbian Teen Pelted With Juice Boxes After School Board President Complains About LGBT-Inclusive Sex EdHow the Nazis Destroyed the First homosexual Rights Movement
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