The Colorado Supreme Court will not hear the case of a Lakewood baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. That decision effectively upholds a ruling by the Colorado Court of Appeals that found Masterpiece Cake shop owner Jack Phillips cannot cite his religious beliefs or free-speech rights in refusing to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple…. In 2012, Charlie Craig and David Mullins were turned away by Phillips while trying to buy a custom wedding cake. Mullins and Craig planned to marry in Massachusetts and wanted a cake to celebrate in Colorado. Phillips told the couple he would not make them a wedding cake because of his religious beliefs.
If you’re thinking you’ve seen this movie before, it’s because you have. A couple years ago, the owners of a bakery in Gresham, OR, a suburb of Portland, declined to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. As in Colorado, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is illegal here in the Beaver State, and Aaron and Melissa Klein were fined $135,000 by the state’s Bureau of Labor and Industry (BOLI). The Kleins would go on to become darlings of the American Taliban and ended up profiting handsomely from their twisted and bigoted theology, but the judgment against them was upheld, though they’ve yet to pay because they continue to pursue every possible avenue of appeal.
Something similar happened in Colorado, with a not at all dissimilar outcome. In Colorado, as in Oregon, a business owner cannot discriminate against a customer on the basis of sexual orientation. Period. If a service would be provided without question to a heterosexual couple, it cannot be denied to a same-sex couple and justified by citing “sincerely held religious convictions.”
In Colorado, as in Oregon, that’s not religion; that’s camouflage for being a self-righteous asshole.
“We all have a right to our personal beliefs, but we do not have a right to impose those beliefs on others and discriminate against them,” Ria Tabacco Mar, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “We hope today’s win will serve as a lesson for others that equality and fairness should be our guiding principles and that discrimination has no place at the table, or the bakery as the case may be.”
Colorado law bans discrimination in a public place on grounds of sexual orientation.
It doesn’t get much clearer than that, eh? You cannot define a person as “less than” based on their sexual orientation and then decline to provide them the good or services. It’s not about the cake; it’s about the discrimination.
In December 2013, Administrative Law Judge Robert N. Spencer said offering the same services to gay couples as heterosexual couples did not violate Phillips’ rights to free speech nor does it prevent him from exercising his religious freedom.
Five months later, Colorado’s seven-member Civil Rights Commission went further and required Phillips to submit quarterly reports for two years showing he was working to change discriminatory practices.
The appeals court’s rulings in August affirmed Spencer’s ruling and the Civil Rights Commission’s order.
In their ruling, the appellate judges found that the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act does not compel the cake shop owner to endorse any religious views. Instead, it prohibits Phillips from discriminating against customers based on their sexual orientation.
This case, as well as the one here in Oregon, illustrates the reality that there’s no credible or acceptable basis for using religion as justification for discriminating against someone because of their sexual orientation. You don’t get to designate yourself a morally superior being based on your “sincerely held religious conviction” and determine another person to be “less than” because they happen to love in a manner you find objectionable.
If you believe your religion provides you the right to discriminate against someone because of their sexual orientation, you have no religion. You’re an asshole…and while being an asshole isn’t illegal in Colorado, using religion to justify discrimination is.
In the final analysis, this has nothing to do with a person’s religious beliefs, especially when it’s used as camouflage for homophobia and bigotry. It’s about equal treatment under the law…which should be something everyone- especially religious people- can get behind.
Unless you believe hatred and homophobia to be Christian values.
