Nicolle Martin, an attorney for Masterpiece Cakeshop, said the judge’s order puts Phillips in an impossible position of going against his Christian faith.
“He can’t violate his conscience in order to collect a paycheck,” she said. “If Jack can’t make wedding cakes, he can’t continue to support his family. And in order to make wedding cakes, Jack must violate his belief system. That is a reprehensible choice. It is antithetical to everything America stands for.”
The Civil Rights Commission is expected to certify the judge’s order next week. Phillips can appeal the judge’s order, and Martin said they’re considering their next steps.
The ACLU has developed an interesting rubric to use to decide for Americans which rights are good rights and which are bad. Surely it can’t be because they have a political agenda linked to their patrons.
If the 1st Amandment can be set aside by state discriminination legislation that protects a non-suspect class of people, it’s not much protection is it. Constitution void where prohibited by law.
Yeah. What about the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment that counterbalances the No Establishment clause? At least in this COL case, it’s only one judge’s ruling. Things were worse in NM, where the whole state supreme court reached a similar decision, also involving a Christian cake-maker.
These cases may seem like isolated, freakish exceptions. But they are like the canary in the coal mine; they indicate that the air is getting very, very bad. Our whole culture is becoming morally toxic. Abortion on demand as a supposed fundamental right for women. Divorce on demand too. The highest incarceration rate in the whole industrialized world. The list of social ills that reveal the pervasive moral rot and decay in our culture goes on and on.
Paradoxically, we may still be a church-going society to a degree that Europe ceased to be long ago, but that’s in part due to the curious fact, and disturbing reality, that professing faith in Christ and being involved in church life seems to make very little difference in the lives of most Americans. We live like the neo-pagans all around us. The salt has lost its savor. How shall its saltiness be restored??
David Handy+
[blockquote]These cases may seem like isolated, freakish exceptions. But they are like the canary in the coal mine; they indicate that the air is getting very, very bad.[/blockquote] David+, you are so very right. A rather prescient work of fiction that shows where this society could be in about 75 years is “The Last Christian” by David Gregory. At that time, there is no more marriage; only ten-year “life partner” contracts. If you proclaim that “Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life” and that other religions are false, you will be imprisoned for a hate crime. Today’s culture is starting to look very much like the one in David Gregory’s book.
Folks have been redefining what it means to be Christian and what “Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life†means for so long now that it basically means that a Christian is someone who keeps quiet, accepts the behavior of others uncritically, and does not dare
suggest that God calls us to repentance. Given this groundwork, is it any wonder that people do not understand the point of view of the Christian baker? In a world that usually considers that everything should be seen through the eyes of social relativism, that is the only reason I can think of that the Christian position is almost always ignored. It is because the Christian position has been misconstrued to the point that people think the new picture is the socially relevant one.
I think that we are seeing a not-so-subtle redefinition of First Amendment religious liberties from “Freedom of Religion” to “Freedom of Worship”–in other words, the religious among us are free to hold their beliefs, and to express them within cloistered community, but not to act on their beliefs is a way that has any influence or effect on society.
The President of the United States sometimes talks about “freedom of worship”, but not about “freedom of religion”.
Well, he can make a gay wedding cake without violating his conscience: Just say “Gay Wedding” across the top in bold letters.