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Christian Cake Artist Again Defeats Colorado Bureaucrats
Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission announced Tuesday that it will dismiss its latest charges against cake artist Jack Phillips. You might remember Phillips from his victory at the US Supreme Court last summer. With SCOTUS’s backing, why on earth would the state of Colorado attack Phillips again?
The cake artist first came to prominence when he declined a custom design to celebrate a same-sex wedding in 2012. Same-sex marriages were illegal in Colorado at the time but the state’s Civil Rights Commission punished Phillips anyway. After that case had proceeded for five years, the high court agreed to hear his case. That same day, an attorney demanded Phillips design another custom cake, this time to celebrate a gender transition. This same attorney also asked for a cake with satanic themes and images. In accordance with his religious beliefs, Phillips politely declined both.
After the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Phillips, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission decided to attack him on this new charge. Instead of watching another case slowly creep through the courts, attorneys at the Alliance Defending Freedom went on the offense, suing the bureaucrats for their anti-religious bias.
When you stand up to a bully, they fold. And that’s just what the Colorado bureaucrats did Tuesday.
“The state of Colorado is dismissing its case against Jack, stopping its six and a half years of hostility toward him for his beliefs,” said ADF’s Kristen Waggoner, who argued on behalf of Phillips at the Supreme Court.
“Jack’s victory is great news for everyone,” she added. “Tolerance and respect for good-faith differences of opinion are essential in a diverse society like ours. They enable us to peacefully coexist with each other. But the state’s demonstrated and ongoing hostility toward Jack because of his beliefs is undeniable.”
Congratulations to Jack and to ADF.
Published in Law
That is good news.
However these modern day Torquemadas face no retribution legally, civilly or otherwise. At the very least they should be publicly identified and shunned by decent people.
Are the identities of the members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission not public information?
That’s a great analogy — the Progressive Inquisition to purge the United States of all
heresywrongthinkhate.Even jerks have rights.
Congrats to Religious Liberty
Not good enough. They need to pay legal fees.
Are they as nationally well known as Nick Sandmann ? Are their names mentioned in the news stories?
They don’t like decent people.How would shunning them hurt them?
Outstanding.
Now where can a Satanist get a good cake?
I’ll bet there is more to come.
The left never gives up.
My take on this is that there’s enough jerkitude to go around… but most of it came from the side of the aggressors in this case.
I’ll give you there’s enough to go around. This is a case of everybody behaving badly. One on the right side of the law and one on the wrong side, but both, to coin a phrase “deplorable.”
So, if this weren’t an issue of kulturkampf on the part of militant gays then this exchange would have gone like this:
That it didn’t go down in just this fashion is an indication of ill intent on at least one half of the transactors. The mens rea in this situation is clearly on the part of the guys who blew the whistle on Philips to the Ministry of Love.
This goes beyond simple “tolerance” and goes to “invading other people’s mind spaces” regarding how they ought to think.
I don’t find that to be acceptable behavior for the government to engage in for a variety of reasons… a couple of them explicitly in the Constitution.
I don’t disagree with you about “the guys who blew the whistle on Phillips to the Ministry of Love” but I can’t see Phillips as anything other than a bigot who has a point about his rights. He’s closer to the Nazis marching through Skokie than Rosa Parks riding the bus. Both on the right side of the law. One more admirable than the other. I think it’s important that he won his case, but I don’t like to see him feted as a hero.
@catorand
Jack Phillips is not a bigot. He holds the same position on marriage that the majority of Americans (and President Obama) held just a decade ago. From all accounts he was kind and polite to the men who asked for a same-sex wedding cake, but told them he couldn’t fulfill that specific request.
There are many Christians and Jews on this site who hold to the Biblical teaching that marriage was established for a man and a woman. Are we all bigots analogous to Nazis?
I’m not going down this rabbit hole again. It’s no longer 2015. But I retain my firmly held view that the belief that gay people are unworthy of the same marriage rights as straight people is bigotry. I am aware that many people disagree. It is a free country and I have to live with that. But I do not have to pretend I think it’s ok.
Not a hero, but a person who at least deserves the forbearance due any other human being.
Just as you shouldn’t be required represent those Nazis he shouldn’t be required to bake a phallic cake either.
I don’t agree that Phillips is a bigot and I think the gay men (and the CO CRC) were the equivalent of the Nazis marching in Skokie; shoving their fingers in people’s faces and shouting “Tolerance!” without a sense of irony.