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Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips has scored a victory of sorts in his ongoing lawsuit for refusing to bake a gender transition cake, with the Colorado Supreme Court agreeing to hear his appeal.Baker Jack Phillips decorates a cake in his Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., on Sep. 21, 2017. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)Last week, in a win for Mr. Phillips' years-long legal fight, the Colorado Supreme Court finally agreed to hear his case after a lower court held that Colorado authorities can force the baker to put messages on cakes that violate his personal beliefs, according to a case announcements posting.Mr. Phillips,...

I’ve been writing about Denver-area baker Jack Phillips for over a decade now. It’s clear to me he’s going to be badgered into the grave by authoritarians intent on punishing him for thought crimes. From the first time his name appeared in the news until this day, the media have misled the public about him, about the case, and about the law. The latest chapter in Phillips’ Kafkaesque saga involves a transgendered lawyer named Autumn Scardina, who demanded Phillips create a pink cake with blue frosting to help celebrate a “gender transition.” As expected, Phillips, who’d already spent years fighting...

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey joined 21 other Republican attorneys general in filing a legal brief urging the Colorado Supreme Court to hear an appeal by a Christian cake artist who lost a First Amendment case in a lower court. Last month, Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips and the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a petition with Colorado’s highest court to overturn a state Court of Appeals decision. It found Phillips violated Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act when in 2012 he refused to make a blue and pink cake for attorney Autumn Scardina who stated in a phone conversation it was to celebrate...

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — A Kern County judge ruled Friday that Tastries Bakery owner Cathy Miller can not be forced to bake wedding cakes for same-sex couples. Judge Eric Bradshaw found Miller’s “pure and expressive speech is entitled to protection under the First Amendment.” The baking of a Tastries wedding cake is “labor-intensive” and “artistic,” Bradshaw said in his ruling Friday. “We applaud the court for this decision,” said Thomas More Society Special Counsel Charles LiMandri, partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP, one of Miller’s attorneys. “The freedom to practice one’s religion is enshrined in the First Amendment, and the...

...007 is strolling through the swanky secret headquarters of the eponymous villain, Dr No, when he pauses to admire a painting on a gilded easel. The moment passes so quickly that today's viewers barely notice it, but to cinema-goers in 1962, this would have been one of the film's sharpest jokes. The painting, a portrait of the Duke of Wellington completed by Francisco Goya in 1814, had been stolen from the National Gallery in London in 1961. Nobody knew who had taken it or where it was, so the idea that it might have fallen into the robotic hands of...

A Christian baker in Colorado who has been at the center of a yearslong debate after he declined to make a cake for a same-sex wedding has revealed the intense harassment and “horrific” response he and his business faced amid the fallout. “The emails [and] the phone calls were sometimes horrific,” Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips recently told the “Edifi With Billy Hallowell” podcast of the events that followed his July 2012 cake refusal. “You’d just hear profanity.” Phillips, who shares his story in the new book, The Cost of My Faith, said he had to protect his staff and...

A Colorado baker who fought and won a years-long legal battle after refusing to make a wedding cake for a gay couple has been slapped with a similar lawsuit, this time for refusing to bake a transgender cake. The story: In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared Jack Phillips, a devout Christian who owns Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, of any wrongdoing after a same-sex couple sued him for denying them a wedding cake as it went against his religious precepts. Now, Phillis is facing a similar lawsuit for refusing to bake a trans-themed cake in 2017. Autumn Scardina, the...

Christian baker Jack Phillips of Colorado is facing a third lawsuit over his refusal on religious grounds to make certain cakes, the latest legal battle for the Masterpiece Cakeshop owner. Transgender woman Autumn Scardina filed a second lawsuit against Phillips last Wednesday in District Court for the city and county of Denver, Colorado. In the new lawsuit, Scardina claimed that Phillips violated Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act and Consumer Protection Act by refusing to bake what the plaintiff labeled a “birthday cake.” The “birthday cake” as described in the lawsuit, which was to be blue on the outside and pink on the...

Masterpiece Cakeshop is again under fire, now the subject of a third discrimination lawsuit alleging that owner Jack Phillips "discriminated" against a customer by refusing to make a cake for an unspecified event. Phillips, of course, won at the United States Supreme Court after suing a Colorado "human rights" commission that punished him for refusing to provide a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding in Denver, a task Phillips said violated his religious conviction that true marriage is between one man and one woman. Phillips offered to sell the couple a pre-made cake or refer them to another baker —...

Lakewood baker Jack Phillips is again facing legal action for declining to bake a cake for an LGBTQ customer. There’s just one big difference this time: the state of Colorado isn’t involved. Attorneys for Autumn Scardina, a transgender woman, filed a complaint against Phillips in state court Wednesday. In 2017, Scardina ordered a cake from Phillips to celebrate her birthday and gender transition. Phillips declined, citing his Christian beliefs and Scardina filed a complaint with Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission. In March, Attorney General Phil Weiser dropped the case filed on Scardina’s behalf. In exchange, Phillip’s attorneys agreed to end their...

- Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop fame is suing the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. - The Commission commenced new proceedings against Phillips on behalf of a transgender complainant just weeks after he prevailed at the U.S. Supreme Court. - Phillips' attorneys say the Commission is engaged in a concerted campaign to destroy him, which is unlawful.Jack Phillips, the Christian baker who prevailed at the U.S. Supreme Court after declining to create a custom wedding cake for a gay couple, filed a lawsuit in federal court late Tuesday suing the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Phillips and his attorneys at the Alliance...

In my last piece for Crisis, I emphasized the importance of casting doubts on Islamic beliefs just as we cast doubts on Soviet Communist ideology during the Cold War. With that in mind, let’s talk about the Koran. It’s the fountain from which the ideology flows. It is quoted incessantly by terrorist leaders and imams alike, and it provides the motivation for both armed jihadists in combat fatigues, and cultural jihadists in business suits.So it would seem logical for those threatened by Islam to cast doubts on the Koran. If the Koran came to be seem as a man-made fabrication...

It doesn't seem that long ago when I sat down with CBS's "Face the Nation" and told a very surprised Bob Schieffer about the battle for religious freedom that was raging. Like many people, he seemed astonished to hear that any American - let alone the wedding industry - would be punished for their mainstream views on marriage. "I must say this is under my radar. I haven't…I haven't heard this." Today, almost three full years into Obergefell, nearly everyone has heard their stories. And this morning [June 4th], in the same court that created the mess of same-sex marriage,...

<p>"Pack it in, we're done here," snapped University of California Professor Emeritus James Clyden, who helped announce the scientists' findings at a grim press conference. "It's all on Canada's shoulders now," added Clyden, shuddering.</p> <p>"What is happening on these blogs is cyber-bullying and I believe that this is a crime. The people running these blogs are criminals,” Sisk said. “Frankly, I’m done with it.”</p>

Much like us, PBS is pretty obsessed with all things British right now. At the Television Critics Association summer press tour yesterday, the public broadcaster held a well-received panel, during which the network excitedly praised all the UK-created programming that is giving them its best numbers in years. Masterpiece is up 107 percent from three years ago! Downton Abbey — the ITV-produced smash that will return for a third season early next year — is of course leading the charge on that, but it is not the only popular import. ......................................................... This isn't BBC America, this is our public television!...

My PBS station has not broadcast their Sunday night Masterpiece Theater for the last couple of weeks due to a fundraising drive, But their national website has streamed episodes of Poirot for Online viewing as normal, the following day, To my happy surprise they aired 'The Third Girl' which is a "new" one for me: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/watch/index.html

For those of you obssesed with all things British this week, you may enjoy the new Upstairs Downstairs. I just finished episode 3 & thought the series was very good. All three episodes will be available till May 25th.

Just watched the new 'Sherlock' series, Episode 1, lady in Pink. Thought I was tuning into the traditional rendition by Jeremy Hines(?) But founf myself watching an updated series, with Holmes & Watson, in contemporary times. Watson just back from Afghanistan with war wounds. Wasn't campy or or overacted IMO. The upating weas a nice twist, while still remaining mostly true to the core of the stories. Don't want to give any spoilers, but Holmes "cocaine addiction" has been given a "PC update", and the explanation of his personal life, has as well. BNut it was fun seeing Holmes using...

Hollywood—In what could only be referred to as a historic event, Hollywood is shutting down its doors to save “Mother Earth.” The move comes after years of trying to reach an unsympathetic Bush administration, and decades of attempts at inculcating the American populous. The historic decision—based largely on the overwhelming evidence of the plight of polar bears, spotted owls and tropical insects—has forced the inevitable activist outcome, an outcome designed to promote a greener planet. Over the last year, article after article has emerged, detailing the destruction to the planet via one species or another. The evidence has only fallen...