Colorado cake artist Jack Phillips is going on 11 years of being harassed by LGBT activists and government authorities for being a practicing Christian.
It was 2012 when Phillips was first hauled before his state’s speech tribunal for telling a gay couple he’d happily sell them anything in his shop but he couldn’t create a custom wedding cake celebrating sexual activities that his religion says are wrong. Last Thursday, Colorado’s Court of Appeals ruled he must bake a transgender celebration cake or face legal consequences beyond the 11 years of legal and social harassment he’s already endured — and counting.
The U.S. Constitution unmistakably protects not only the freedom of speech but also the freedom of Christian worship. The First Amendment, which the Supreme Court holds is now extended beyond Congress to state governments, is extremely clear: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.”
U.S. governments may not prohibit the free exercise of religion, nor the freedom of speech. On both these counts, Phillips’ rights are clear and ought to be secured by courts.
Instead, however, his natural human rights have been ceaselessly mutilated by not only the entire machinery of Colorado courts but also the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Phillips’ favor, yet in such a narrow ruling as to allow a venomous transgender activist to immediately haul him back into court after speciously demanding that Phillips bake a transgender celebration cake.
In 2018, the Supreme Court rebuked the Colorado judicial apparatus for expressing clear animus against Phillips’ Christian beliefs. It did not, however, back the clear First Amendment protections that ought to allow Phillips to worship God peaceably and bake whatever he wants for any reason whatsoever. So Phillips has been made an example by the rapacious LGBT lobby whose end goals are erasing Americans’ free speech and religious exercise rights as well as inserting government meddling into every personal relationship, all marks of totalitarianism.
The Supreme Court allowed this unconstitutional and anti-freedom regime to proliferate while pretending to check it with weak and ineffectual action. The court’s bench, however, has been significantly altered since 2018. And another case is pending before the court that allows it the opportunity to right its 2018 refusal to clearly back free speech and freedom of religious exercise in the United States, in line with the clear wording of the nation’s supreme law, the U.S. Constitution.
That case is 303 Creative v. Elenis, in which another Coloradan has been put on trial for her faith. That case involves a Christian wedding website designer. In oral arguments, Lorie Smith’s legal harassers asserted that ancient Christian beliefs about sex and marriage — which are shared by the world’s other largest and oldest faiths, including Islam and Judaism — are tantamount to racism.
In its rebuke of Colorado’s treatment of Phillips, the 2018 Supreme Court treated the same line of argumentation as “a clear and impermissible hostility toward [Phillips’] sincere religious beliefs.” It’s time for the Supreme Court to rectify its own errors and Colorado’s.
The Supreme Court is designed for more than negotiating grown adults’ nursing of their hurt feelings and telling government entities to stop being mean in public. It is designed to secure the legal protection of Americans’ inalienable natural rights, many of which are enumerated in our supreme law, the Constitution.
Two of those are the freedom of speech and the freedom to peaceably and publicly worship, all without government reprisals. These have been clearly violated for more than a decade by the state of Colorado.
In 2018, the Supreme Court failed to secure these core rights, not only for Jack, but for every one of the millions of Americans who know two men can’t make a baby. Protecting our inalienable rights is the Supreme Court’s one job, yet it again failed in that sacred obligation. Because of that failure, Americans are suffering as the pink police state continues to expand.
Not only should we hope and pray the Supreme Court finally ends the state-sponsored persecution of religious Americans in its decision on 303 Creative v. Elenis, but we should also insist that our representatives refuse to ever vote for any judge at any level who so fundamentally misunderstands the Constitution and the eternal human rights that supreme law protects. Further, no government official should enforce clearly unconstitutional edicts that abridge America’s rights to free speech and freedom of worship and unleash odious harassment on honest, law-abiding Americans who just want to live as their consciences dictate.
It’s not just the Supreme Court’s job to enforce the Constitution. It’s every American’s.