Posted on 08/13/2015 12:41:23 PM PDT by conservativejoy
The Colorado Court of Appeals rejected the argument that religious beliefs were sufficient grounds to deny service to samesex couples.
A state appeals court in Colorado ruled Thursday that a baker could not cite religious beliefs in refusing to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples.
The decision is the latest in a series of similar rulings across the country that have been cheered by civil rights groups but attacked by conservative Christians as assaults on religious liberty.
Whether photographers, florists, bakers and other vendors who are Christians should have a right to refuse services for same-sex marriages has emerged as a major cultural and legal battle, one that has intensified since the Supreme Court decision in June establishing same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.
Jack Phillips at his business, Masterpiece Cakeshop. His refusal to make a wedding cake for a gay couple is heading to court.
Can’t Have Your Cake, Gays Are Told, and a Rights Battle RisesDEC. 15, 2014
Jack Phillips, who refused a gay couple’s cake order, at his bakery in Lakewood, Colo.
States Weigh Gay Marriage, Rights and CakeJULY 7, 2015
In the Colorado case, “the court squarely said that this is discrimination based on sexual orientation and it’s not to be tolerated, even if it’s motivated by faith,” said Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the gay couple. “Religious liberty gives you the right to your beliefs but not the right to harm others.”
But lawyers for the cake shop said the appeals panel “got it wrong” and that they would probably appeal to Colorado’s Supreme Court.
“Our client did not engage in sexual-orientation discrimination,” said Jeremy Tedesco, a senior lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian legal group based in Arizona. He argued that an objection to same-sex marriage was not the same as discriminating against a gay person and noted that the baker, Jack Phillips, of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., also refused to make cakes celebrating Halloween because he associates the holiday with Satan.
“Cake decorating is his medium for creating art and they are compelling him to engage in artistic expression that violates his beliefs,” Mr. Tedesco said, resulting in a trampling of his First Amendment rights to freedom of expression and religion.
But a unanimous three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals, in upholding the decision of the state Commission on Human Rights, rejected the argument that selling a cake to a gay couple was so great an infringement on Mr. Phillip’s beliefs that it trumped the anti-discrimination law.
No reasonable observer, the decision said, “would interpret Masterpiece’s providing a wedding cake for a same-sex couple as an endorsement of same-sex marriage, rather than a reflection of its desire to conduct business in accordance with Colorado’s public accommodations law.”
In July of 2012, a gay couple asked Masterpiece to create a wedding cake for a celebration of their marriage. Mr. Phillips told them that he could not design and bake a cake for them because it would violate his Christian convictions.
The couple, Charlie Craig and David Mullins, filed a complaint under Colorado law, which bars discrimination in public accommodations based on sexual orientation. An administrative law judge and then the Colorado Civil Rights Commission both ruled that the cake shop had engaged in illegal discrimination.
Neither the law nor Thursday’s ruling prevents Mr. Phillips’ shop “from expressing its views on same-sex marriage — including its religious opposition to it — and the bakery remains free to dissociate itself from its customers’ viewpoints,” the appeals court stated.
In a case involving similar arguments over artistic expression, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that a photographer who refused to photograph a same-sex wedding had violated an anti-discrimination law'
The “Terrible Awful” from the book and film, “The Help” comes to mind. Now why did I think of that?
The Hobby Lobby case was primarily about Obamacare and Hobby Lobby’s right to not be forced to provide healthcare that covered abortions and birth control due to their religious beliefs.
Minnie Jackson’s recipe seems in order, but these sickos might like that. Disgusting.
What if they repeated the word “Abomination” over and over in scrolling icing around the edges.
Disgusting. The left is currently wiping out Christianity.
Or the future National flag of the Sodomite Union of Amerika.
Excellent! I like it.
We’re already coming up with good, artistic, ways to decorate a “gay wedding” cake.
Let’s keep ‘em coming.
I would flip these buttmunchers the bird just like the County Clerk in KY.
What are they going to do, send Fed Marshalls in, hold as gun to his head and make him bake?
Can the baker only sell a bride Groom top? Bake a cake but make the homos switch out the top if they want it to be something other than bride groom. They could buy two and cover both brides or both grooms.
Only because Christians have no fight in them. And they ask, "Why did the Jews go so peaceably to the gas chambers?". Now you know: They would react once they knew more or verified what was happening.
I think icing heavy on the alum would do the trick.
Instead of sugar the baker could add a double dose of flour. If the eaters think sugar it should all be the same. After all, things are what you think they are. Reality is just a social construct.
I think his lawyer made a good argument, which is going to win them the appeal.
Maybe he can tell him he smokes marijuana while baking.
Their new flag!!
I would make them such a cake as they never saw or tasted.
I can’t help it if I stuff up which is the salt and which is the sugar.
So go right to your nearest HALAL food store and demand they serve you some BACON
Your sentiment is correct, and rightly so...but the analogy fails.
the food store you referenced specifically does not deal in the product you requested...while a bake shop deals primarily in the products asked for by the twinkies...the former can reasonably be expected not to comply, but the latter has no such leeway...
They don’t deal in homo cakes
A whole lot of the real men who tamed the Colorado west must be spinning in their graves.
It is an interesting phenomena as to why Colorado is so different in its political dynamic than three of its border companions, Utah, Wyoming, and Kansas...?
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