The reverberations of the Supreme Court’s taking up of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Human Rights Commission continue to ripple throughout the culture.

Today, we see in The Denver Post, a fairly predictable but nonetheless disappointing act of public stupefaction in the form of a house editorial on the topic. The Post‘s editorial board urges the Court to rule against Jack Phillips on the grounds that Charlie Craig and David Mullins (the occupants of this crash-test vehicle of litigiousness) are the real victims in this debacle.

Breaking down the “logic” purported in this editorial is revealing of the intellectual vacuity underlying the entire enterprise. First however there is the matter of the facts which are in dispute:

Charlie Craig and David Mullins were planning for the happiest day of their lives when, unbeknownst to them, they walked into a bakery owned by a person harboring such prejudice against same-sex couples he refused to bake them a cake.

“Unbeknownst to them”? It beggars the imagination of any thinking person to contemplate that this, and its many parallel cases aren’t part of an overarching strategy by gay rights activists to press their advantage while they have the proverbial wind at their backs. Of course, that raises the dread specter of “conspiracy” but just as geese don’t plot collectively in smoke-filled Canadian taprooms to fly south for the Winter, the attitude which animates those who are most aggressive in seeking redress for past grievance against gays don’t need to be issued orders regarding where and how to march.

The notion that Craig and Mullins were simply minding their own business and were pounced upon by some hateful Christian bigot is approximately equivalent to saying that a bull is at fault for goring a matador who willingly entered the ring intent upon skewering a bovine. To deliver the punchline of an old (but hilarious) joke, “But sir, the bull does not always lose…”

The Post‘s mind-numbing argument continues:

Phillips must argue it is the cake itself — not the decorations or words written in icing — that is his expression. Phillips denied the couple service before a conversation was ever held about what they would want their wedding cake to look like. It’s the combining of flour, sugar and eggs that must be the expression, and Phillips said he cannot in good Christian conscience allow his cake to express itself at a gay wedding.

In a similar vein, one would expect Phillips then to be equally as unwilling to provide chocolate chip cookies to a gay couple’s anniversary party because it was an expression of celebration against his religious beliefs.

The problem of course is that it’s unlikely that anybody has actually asked if that’s the case. This is a beastly misunderstanding and or intentional mischaracterization of the obvious difference between personal services engaged in between professionals and their clients and the arm’s-length transactions engaged in by people billions of times per day in the same way you might purchase a pre-made deli sandwich at Wal-Mart.

The Post seems to think that there is only one category of exchange: goods or widgets produced by anonymous or interchangeable producers. If that were the case, why wouldn’t Craig and Mullins have been satisfied with any old cake – say, from a Duncan Hines box – which would no doubt fulfill the same function? The answer of course is: it’s a special occasion and they were seeking the special attention of a skilled artisan to assist in celebrating that occasion.

But, more on this distinction later. The editorial continues:

Say an artist who advertised his services to the public as a painter of commissioned works refused his services to an interracial couple because interracial marriages violated his religious beliefs. Say he denied the services before discussing what the painting would be of, but only that it would be a gift for the couple’s anniversary. In both cases it seems clear to us that the product for sale is far less expression than it is a tangible good — paint on canvas and icing on a cake. Neither product is for public display beyond the wedding venue or a private home, nor do the products necessarily contain an overt expression of opinion or belief that the maker would be forced to participate in.

This is the nut of the Post‘s intellectual incoherence and incontinence. To agree with the Post‘s logic one would have to concede that there is no difference between a custom portrait created by a trained artisan and the reproduction of a stock image being mass-produced on a large format printer. Just as one would think that the picture frames in the homes of the members of the Post‘s editorial board aren’t populated by the anodyne sample photographs that such items come with, so too are the services provided by professionals not an item to simply be pulled off a shelf and handed over to any and all comers. You become implicated in the circumstances of an event by agreeing to provide your talents to it in a way that factory workers making interchangeable products are not.

It pays to provide a real world example of this phenomenon. In my capacity as an engineer I have had occasion to provide consulting services for clients who have sought out my expertise. If, in that practice I had been approached by members of the Church of Scientology who wanted me to provide them with a set of engineering documents for the development of their new church/indoctrination center, I would have refused such an offer on the grounds that I find the Church of Scientology to be populated by sinister individuals who ruthlessly separate the gullible from their money and bully people who disagree with them or point out that fact.

Is that “religious discrimination”? You bet. But is it irrational discrimination that should be illegal? Absolutely not.

To agree to perform personal services for such a disreputable organization would necessarily indicate that I am not merely a disinterested bystander but that I tacitly approve of their enterprise – certainly enough that I am willing to take the filthy lucre of their ill-gotten gains. But according to the Post‘s logic, my ability to govern my own affairs in this fashion is trumped by Tom Cruise and David Miscavige’s pathological need for me run AutoCad for them.

The editorial closes apocalyptically:

Should the high court rule in Phillips’ favor, the justices will have opened an ungodly Pandora’s box of adverse consequences across the land.

It used to be that having “discriminating taste” was considered a compliment. Indeed, the ability to discriminate is the ability to judge Michelangelo’s David to be an infinitely superior piece of art to Andres Serrano’s highly questionable “Piss Christ.”

Merely because I discriminate against strawberry ice cream in favor of chocolate when selecting an after-dinner treat doesn’t mean that the makers of strawberry ice cream have a sound legal case against me for my bias. Neither should anybody have to justify their preferences in regard to whom they choose to extend their services. Yet the insistence – nay, the requirement – that I draw no discernment between the strawberry and chocolate is exactly the sort of culturally homogenizing effect that the Court failing to rule in Phillips’ favor would have.

Beware those who would tell you that all flavors are strictly equal, because lurking behind that facade is likely the unspoken presumption that some flavors are more equal than others.