Posted on 12/11/2013 3:10:11 PM PST by NYer
DENVER, December 11, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Denver cake baker who was ordered by a judge last week to service same-sex “weddings” or face punishing fines has told Fox News that he would rather shut down his business and serve jail time than violate his beliefs and play a role in facilitating gay nuptials.
In an interview with Fox’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck, cake maker Jack Phillips said, “You know, [I’ll serve jail time if] that’s what it takes. It’s not like I have chosen this team or that team. This is who I am, it’s what I believe.”
“Does becoming a business owner mean you have to check your convictions at the door?” Hasselbeck asked. “Why is it important for you to have a business and not have to abandon personal religious beliefs just to make a buck?”
“I don't plan on giving up my religious beliefs ... I don't feel that I should participate in their wedding, and when I do a cake, I feel like I'm participating in the ceremony or the event or the celebration that the cake is for,” Phillips said. “My priorities would be towards my faith rather than towards my safety or security.”
Phillips, who owns Masterpiece Cakeshop in the Denver suburb of Lakewood, has been under fire since July 2012, when David Mullins and Charlie Craig filed a discrimination complaint after Phillips refused to sell them a wedding cake.
While Colorado’s constitution states, “Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as marriage in this state,” Mullins and Craig had nonetheless planned to “marry” in Massachusetts, where a court order made same-sex “marriage” legal in 2004. Afterward, they planned to hold a reception in Colorado. When they visited Phillips’ cake shop to ask him to provide a wedding cake for the event, he declined, explaining that his religious beliefs prevented him from participating in same-sex “weddings.” Phillips said he would be happy to sell them brownies or other treats to serve at the reception, just not a wedding cake.
The two men reacted with angry disbelief. “It was the most awkward, surreal, very brief encounter," Mullins told Denver Westword at the time. “We got up to leave, and to be totally honest, I said, ‘F--- you and your homophobic cake shop.’ And I may or may not have flipped him off.”
After the two men departed Phillips’s business, they filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission with the help of the ACLU, arguing that Phillips violated the state’s anti-discrimination laws, which were expanded in 2008 to include sexual preference and gender identity.
Phillips and his lawyers have argued that the religious nature of his objection to gay “marriage” warrants an exception to the anti-discrimination law, which also names religion among its protected classes.
But on December 7, Judge Robert Spencer ruled in the gay couple’s favor, equating Phillips’s deeply held religious beliefs against gay “marriage” with racial bias. To allow Phillips to refuse to serve gay “weddings,” the judge argued, “would allow a business that served all races to nonetheless refuse to serve an interracial couple because of the business owner's bias against interracial marriage.”
Wrote Spencer, “it may seem reasonable that a private business should be able to refuse service to anyone it chooses. This view, however, fails to take into account the cost to society and the hurt caused to persons who are denied service simply because of who they are.”
The judge also rejected Phillips’s argument that he was simply obeying the state constitution by refusing to recognize a same-sex relationship as “marriage.”
“Although [Phillips and his lawyers] are correct that Colorado does not recognize same-sex marriage,” wrote Spencer, “that fact does not excuse discrimination based upon sexual orientation.”
Phillips’s attorney, Nicolle Martin, told the Associated Press that Spencer’s decision was “reprehensible” and “antithetical to everything America stands for.”
“[Jack Phillips] can't violate his conscience in order to collect a paycheck,” Martin said. “If Jack can't make wedding cakes, he can't continue to support his family. And in order to make wedding cakes, Jack must violate his belief system.”
Martin says her client has not ruled out an appeal.
What about the signs saying ‘we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone’ that hang in almost every business everywhere? Some idiot judge is going to force him to serve someone he disagrees with?
He should get a good attorney. I think this will get thrown out on appeal eventually.
I wouldn’t count on it.
Integrity.
I can’t imagine why someone would really want a cake someone was forced to bake for them. Haven’t they heard you should never piss off the people who make your food?
I checked the internet yellow pages for Denver-area bakeries - more than 200!!! Yup- this is a set-up and pure persecution. That being said, who would actually want to eat the cake at a gay wedding made by someone who is morally against gay weddings??? Not that I am suggesting this, but didn’t these fools see “The Help” ?
> How are there “gay weddings” in Colorado if same sex marriage is not legal there?
Where there’s a gay there’s a way...: )
This is more about property rights than religious freedom.
If a man does not want to trade his property, for any reason, it is his right as owner of the property.
’ If you like your bakery,,,you can keep it ‘
I bet they target people.
The “wedding” was to be in Massachusetts with a reception in Colorado. This is why Russia and India are putting the kibosh on homosexual “rights.”
” I said, ‘F-— you and your homophobic cake shop.’ And I may or may not have flipped him off.”
Such a classy person.
Would a court order a Muslim baker to bake a cake for a Christian celebration?
Would a court order a Jehovah Witness baker to bake a birthday cake?
They’re lucky they didn’t ask me to bake them that wedding cake. There ARE ways to stop such foolishness but the penalties are quite severe.
Bake the damn cakes...but....put a little extra ingredient or two in to insure that the alimentary canal is not blocked in any way. IOW Montezuma’s revenge to the max!
Seriously, why can't gays find someone else? (I know the answer BTW).
So they could’ve picked any of a hundred bakers but decided to lean on this guy and teach him a lesson?
Elect this man to congress. At least he knows right from wrong.
You are correct. This guy is the Rosa Parks of hetero/christian rights. And it wasn’t even staged agitprop by the NAACP this time around.
Do civil unions traditionally have cakes?
How about common law marriages?
Anyone get a cake for getting a driver’s license or fishing license?
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Looks like another sign of the times.
The government should not be able to force me to participate in ObamaCare.
Including forcing me to pay mandatory government insurance that includes birth control and abortion. And if I don't sign up for government mandate, I get fined. When will the imprisonments start showing up.
What will government mandate next. Personal freedoms again squashed. I feel like a "VerySadAmerican", too...
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