A Piece Of Cake!

Who knew that "Death Of Free Enterprise" would be over a cake! Well that is the cry of the conservative press about an administrative law judge’s ruling out in Colorado against the Masterpiece Cakeshop.

According to Media Matters Fox News said,

Fox's Elisabeth Hasselbeck interviewed the owner of a Colorado bakery who was recently found to have violated the state's non-discrimination law by refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, asking if he believed his rights had been violated by efforts to prohibit anti-LGBT discrimination.

During the December 10 edition of Fox & Friends, Hasselbeck invited Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Denver, to discuss a recent ruling by a Colorado judge that found that Phillips had violated that state's law against discrimination when he refused to serve a same-sex couple. Phillips was joined by his attorney Nicolle Martin, who does volunteer work at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a group notorious for pushing for the criminalization of homosexuality internationally.

During the segment - which featured a graphic declaring "The Death Of Free Enterprise" - Hasselbeck asked Phillips why he believed he shouldn't have to abandon his "personal religious beliefs just to make a buck"

The Washington Times in an editorial said,

A Colorado court is making it a crime to refuse to cater to militant homosexual activists. Judge Robert N. Spencer held on Friday that a bakery owner who, citing his Christian religious beliefs, wouldn’t bake a wedding cake for a homosexual couple must “cease and desist from discriminating” or pay fines so large that he’d go out of business.

In this clash of values, the religiously observant are relegated to the back of the legal bus. In Judge Spencer’s view, the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of religion must give way to a state anti-discrimination law, even though the Colorado Constitution clearly states, “Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as marriage in this state.” The plaintiffs, Charlie Craig and David Mullins, were “married” in Massachusetts, where another court declared such unions to be legal. The couple had demanded that Jack Phillips, owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, produce a cake for a July 2012 reception in Colorado.

Over and over we hear the cry of “religious freedom” to discriminate, how anti-discrimination laws are forcing people to violate their religious beliefs. According to Think Progress, the judge in the case said this about the claim of religious freedom…

Though Phillips objected to providing the cake on religious grounds, the ALJ pointed out that baking a cake is not actually conduct that is part of his religion. Thus, it does not qualify for exemption from regulation:

    Respondents’ refusal to provide a cake for Complainants’ same-sex wedding is distinctly the type of conduct that the Supreme Court has repeatedly found subject to legitimate regulation. Such discrimination is against the law; it adversely affects the rights of Complainants to be free from discrimination in the marketplace; and the impact upon Respondents is incidental to the state’s legitimate regulation of commercial activity. Respondents therefore have no valid claim that barring them from discriminating against same-sex customers violates their right to free exercise of religion. Conceptually, Respondents’ refusal to serve a same-sex couple due to religious objection to same-sex weddings is no different from refusing to serve a biracial couple because of religious objection to biracial marriage. However, that argument was struck down long ago in Bob Jones Univ. v. United States.

As I said before in other blog posts, substitute any other protective class for sexual orientation and ask your self would it be okay to discriminate? Would it be alright not to serve a black person, after all the Bible was used to justified segregation in the South? What if he refused to sell a cake to a Muslim or a Jew?