Jack Phillips is a baker and owns Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado. In 2012 a gay couple asked him to bake a cake for their wedding. He told them the same thing he had to those wanting him to bake a cake for a bachelor’s or Halloween party; “I’m sorry, but I can’t promote messages that violate my beliefs, though I’d be happy to sell you anything else.”
Jack took the words of Christ seriously. When Jesus was questioned about divorce He replied, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female,” and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?” Matthew 19:4-5. Since the beginning of time marriage has been one man and one woman. Jesus said it; Jack believed it.
The couple reported Jack to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and it effectively shut down his cake making that represented forty percent of his business. He has been battling for the right to run his business according to his deeply held convictions ever since. Colorado claims Jack violated the couple’s civil rights; Jack says Colorado violated his free exercise of religion.
Jack is going to get his day in court. The case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission is on the docket for the next session of the Supreme Court. Since the ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, that in effect legalized same-sex marriage, the First Amendment’s protection of the “free exercise” of religion has been questioned.
But in his majority opinion Justice Anthony Kennedy addresses the First Amendment protection. He wrote, “Finally, it must be recognized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered.”
The Court seems to be saying that granting same-sex couples the right to marry is not a right to force another to abandon their right to freely exercise their beliefs. The right to marry does not obligate another citizen to compromise their faith to help you celebrate or secure that right.
In the wake of Obergefell v. Hodges a number of states introduced legislation similar to Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act to protect those persons who wish to practice their Christian faith. Incidentally, that bill was signed into law by then Governor of Indiana Mike Pence.
One person who objected to Indiana’s law commented he was against it because he did not want to be forced to live by “Christian rules.” Here’s a news flash, Christians are not the ones trying to make someone bake them a cake.
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