I’m-pretty-sure-they-dressed-in-the-dark gay couple David Mullins and Charlie Craig…
visited the Masterpiece Cakeshop in suburban Denver last summer. After a few minutes of browsing, the bakery’s owner, Jack Phillips, realized the cake was to celebrate the couple’s wedding. Phillips quickly informed them that he wouldn’t take their business because it violated his religious beliefs.
A normal, well-adjusted couple of any orientation would likely leave and probably write an unsavory Yelp review, then go to a different bakery.
But not the Mullins-Craigs!
“We were all very upset, but I was angry and I felt dehumanized and mortified,” Mullins told the Associated Press. Both he and Craig posted the story to Facebook, where it “caught fire” and spread to local news networks and blogs.
Honey, if a bakery not making a cake to your specifications leaves you “dehumanized” and “mortified” just wait til they cancel RuPaul’s Drag Race!
The ACLU eventually volunteered to pursue the case and, in the process of researching it, discovered two other gay couples who were refused a cake from Masterpiece Cakeshop. Both couples wrote affidavits supporting the complaint.
It would’ve been more of a discrimination case if one of the other two gay couples got a wedding cake and others didn’t. At least the shop owner was consistent in not making cakes for gay weddings because gay weddings were against his religious beliefs.
“Religious freedom is a fundamental right in America and it’s something that we champion at the ACLU,” said Mark Silverstein, the legal director of the group in Colorado, which filed the complaint on behalf of the couple. “We are all entitled to our religious beliefs and we fight for that. But someone’s personal religious beliefs don’t justify breaking the law by discriminating against others in the public sphere.”
Statement re-written: We champion religious freedom as a fundamental right, except when it comes to some religious beliefs we don’t like, then we’ll claim it’s “discrimination” and “illegal” and sue a small business into oblivion!
According to the only adult in the room, the attorney for the embattled cake shop owner:
“It would force him to choose between his conscience and a paycheck. I just think that’s an intolerable choice,” Martin said
It’s like “we refuse the right to refuse service to anyone” is completely extinct these days.
The Colorado Attorney General’s office filed a formal complaint on behalf of the couple last week.
If Phillips loses and refuses to comply with the court order, which is asking the bakery to “cease and desist” its practice of refusing gay couples’ business, he could face up to a year in jail and a $500 fine per case.
Attention small business owners: stand up for your values, and you could be jailed for a year and fined thousands. Wait…why are you closing up shop?!
