50 years from now, most Americans will scoff at Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s argument that imposed one man’s religion on two men’s wedding cake.
Kennedy wrote for the high court’s prevailing decision on how the Colorado Civil Rights Commission wrongly admonished wedding cake baker Jack Phillips for refusing service to a same-sex couple in 2012.
Many Americans are scoffing at the high court’s logic right now.
Kennedy, writing Monday for the 7-2 decision for Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, said that Colorado’s law prohibiting businesses from discriminating against someone’s race is sound. And this court and others have ruled that homosexuals and same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage, just like anyone else. In ruling after ruling, it’s become clear that laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination in the workplace, the military, in commerce and on the altar pass constitutional muster.
That’s because these laws make sense,and they’re needed.
Anti-discrimination laws and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission were needed when Charlie Craig and David Mullins went into Masterpiece Bakeshop in Lakewood six years ago to order a wedding cake from owner Jack Phillips. Phillips would have gladly taken their order and money if the cake were for a heterosexual couple. But when He found out the cake was for them, to celebrate their same-sex wedding, he told them that cake, that sale, even if the cake looked exactly like any other, would be offensive to his religious sensibilities.
No sale to their kind.
The state civil rights commission ruled that Phillips had violated the state’s anti-discrimination law in turning the gay couple away, because he had done just that.
One of the commission members, outraged at the humiliation and blatant discrimination Phillips inflicted said during comments as a commissioner, that using religion as a foundation for discrimination is “one of the most despicable piece of rhetoric that people can use to — to use their religion to hurt others.” Another commissioner said Phillips can believe whatever he wants, but if he does business in Colorado, he can’t discriminate against women, blacks, foreigners, gays or others who too often still become “your kind.”
Those comments were the basis of Supreme Court majority ruling. Kennedy and other justices, however, came right out in their prevailing opinion and wrote that, despite what Phillips’ lawyers and the Trump Administration had argued, there is no First Amendment protection for discrimination.
In fact, court justices took turns saying that the constitution doesn’t set religious rights of gay civil rights. Kennedy said in his opinion, however, was that the civil rights commission comments made about Phillips using religion as a basis for not making a cake for their kind were harsh and disrespectful to Phillip’s religious claims.
Harsh.
What Kennedy really said is that, as a country, we can only take this gay rights thing so far. If you take it seriously and put it up against First Amendment religious claims, gays lose.
Can you imagine if Phillips had told Craig and Mullins “no cake” if they were a heterosexual couple, but they were black, or Catholic, or old, or in wheelchairs? If Phillips had said his biblical teachings compelled him to turn away their kind because participating in the nuptials of black couples results in black children and the decline of the Aryan race, the civil rights commissioners’ comments about despicable rhetoric would be right on the mark. There is no way Kennedy would say a member of Aryan Nations or the KKK warrants respect for their religious views on supremacy and bigotry.
Kennedy’s opinion is based not on case-law and legal principles but on the fact that gay Americans have come a long way toward being treated as the equal humans they are, but they have a long way to go.
While gays and most Americans hope earnestly that the emancipation of homosexuals at the Supreme Court won’t take as long as it did for black Americans, it’s easy to see where this will be in 50 years or so.
The country will look back at Kennedy’s argument and be aghast in the same way Americans now look at past Supreme Court arguments ruling against the civil and even human rights of blacks.
“What were they thinking?” in the future will point out the reality we’re living under Kennedy and agreeing justices right now. They weren’t.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com