Five years later and we’re still arguing whether a Lakewood wedding cake baker has the right to discriminate against gays because his god tells him to and the U.S. Constitution lets him do it.

It doesn’t. He can’t. There is no Sharia Law in the United States because the Constitution forbids it. Can we just move on?

After years of hearing this sad case, each and every court has agreed that Masterpiece Cakeshop owner and baker Jack Phillips can’t tell gays, blacks, Mexicans, short people or lefties that he will not do business with them because they are either gay, black, Mexican, short or left-handed.

No matter how much the dwindling homophobic part of America hates the reality, they can talk all kinds of crap about gays, blacks, Mexicans, short people and lefties, but they can’t discriminate against them in government, schools, the military — or in public businesses.

Rail against it all you want, it won’t change what a spate of court rulings has made iron clad. The reason such discrimination has been banned is made clear in Supreme Court standards such as Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, Atlanta Motel Inc. v. U.S., Katzenbach v. McClung, and Loving v. Virginia. The high court has been consistent: There are no reasons public entities and public businesses can discriminate. None.

I can remember hugely passionate speeches during the 1960s where Alabama Gov. George Wallace and others argued that it was God’s will the races be separated. He and others invoked previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings upholding segregation and bigotry. Among them was the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, a case trying to resolve whether blacks could be refused business and government services in order to protect bigoted whites and their deeply held religious beliefs.

“The object of the [Fourteenth] amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to endorse social, as distinguished from political, equality. . . If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.”

And that is where the mystery of this problem begins and ends. Ruling whites had learned and believed that black Americans were somehow inferior to whites, justifying segregation. They said the Bible told them so.

Sound familiar?

I’ve never been able to understand how Judeo-Christian types decide which parts of the Bible to take seriously, metaphorically, historically or with a pillar of salt. I’ll stipulate that the Good Book has advice on homosexuality, but as many enjoy pointing out, the Bible insists on killing, maiming or snubbing people for things like sassing the husband, talking crap to your mom and dad, adultery and accommodating those with flat noses.

So here we are again. Instead of hanging “No Negroes” signs, businesses like the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood want to be able to cite their religion as justification for putting “No Gays” placards on the door. Actually, Phillips has said he doesn’t want to do anything so offensive as to advertise his bigotry on the front door of his business. He prefers to keep his discrimination quiet and private, seeing how it’s just among him and his god and the two men he refused to make a wedding cake for in 2012.

Phillip and other critics of the entire lawsuit say religious rights should afford him a bye because these two gay men could easily have found someone else to make a cake to celebrate their same-sex nuptials. That would mean that we should allow businesses to go back to hanging up “Whites Only” signs on businesses, as long as blacks and other minorities have other options at hand.

Homophobes say this kind of bigotry isn’t like that kind of bigotry because they’re not discriminating agains the men because they’re black or Mexican, it’s just because they’re gay. And that sums up why Phillips keeps losing in court.

Of course Phillips and his supporters can believe anything they want. Those who think blasphemous lower courts have tromped all over the First Amendment refuse to understand that you have the freedom to practice any religion that suits your fancy, as long as you’re not fancying imposing your view on others, usurping their rights, or outright directly abusing someone. That’s the kind of thing that sets us apart from places where Sharia Law calls for stoning to death mouthy daughters and men who have a thing for other men.

And as to two homosexuals offending Phillip’s artistic license and sensibilities, nobody was asking Phillips to bake a cake any different than the ones he makes for heterosexual couples, just like nobody was asking Southern lunch counters to serve blacks any other kind of club sandwich, or motels to rent blacks any other kind of room. Phillips is subject to anti-discrimination laws only because he operates a public business, public being the operative word.

Equal means equal. Same means same. It doesn’t matter if selling wedding cakes to gay or mixed-race couples is wrong in the eyes of your church, your great-aunt, your bookkeeper or your wired-hair fox terrier.

Those of us who know just how seriously wrong this bigotry is must help those who don’t understand that homosexual Americans are not inferior to heterosexuals, the same way America helped The South move beyond their racism.

But until everyone in America gets it, we must have laws and court rulings to fill in the gap. Let’s have the sprinkling of alt-right activists on the Supreme Court weigh in with their pouts, and the rest of the bench uphold decades of common sense. Then move on.

Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@AuroraSentinel.com