Three years after securing a landmark victory for religious liberty at the U.S. Supreme Court, on June 15 baker Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop was ordered to pay a fine by a Denver County Court for declining to bake a cake celebrating a customer’s sex change. It did not matter that the plaintiff, Autumn Scardina, was targeting Phillips for his religious beliefs, or that Phillips has spent nearly a decade fighting the LGBT activists trying to destroy his life. Once again, Phillips found that his faith was a flashpoint in the fight between conscience rights and so-called sexual freedom.
Scardina, who identifies as transgender, called Phillips to ask for the cake the very same day in June 2018 that the Supreme Court ruled that Phillips had been discriminated against because of his faith in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. “The plaintiff said that the goal of the lawsuit was to ‘correct the errors of Jack’s thinking,” Phillips’s lawyer, Ryan Bangert of Alliance Defending Freedom, told me. “That if the case were dismissed, he would simply request another cake the following day and start the process all over again.” Scardina had previously requested a cake that featured Satan smoking a joint.
Jack Phillips released his memoir The Cost of My Faith: How a Decision in My Cake Shop Took Me to the Supreme Court in May this year, only a month before this latest Denver County Court order. The Cost of My Faith is a story of our times and for our times, a summation of the price Christians will increasingly pay for their beliefs in the decades ahead—and a road map for resistance. The book is the story of how a Colorado cakeshop became a culture war battleground; of how a private citizen found himself forced into the public spotlight; of how Christian faith has put not only bakers, but florists, wedding photographers, videographers, publishers, and t-shirt designers on a collision course with the forces of the sexual revolution.
2 thoughts on “You still have to bake the cake, bigot: The ongoing persecution of Jack Phillips”
Navi says:
I find LGBT activists’ constant harassment of this man to be bizarre and mind-boggling. Any social movement can win when they’re seen as the good guys, and a crucial part of that is punching up instead of down. That’s a big part of why the pro-life movement, for example, eventually figured out (for the most part) that yelling at a woman and calling her a murderer on one of the worst days of her life isn’t a good idea and that outreach toward these women is best done by gently encouraging them to do the right thing (as well as providing support through pregnancy resource centres where necessary). Likewise, they oppose criminally prosecuting women when abortion is made illegal (at least at first). Repeatedly suing a small business owner (who, if I understand right, these activists went out of their way to go after – they didn’t run into him by accident) because he doesn’t publicly affirm same-sex marriage or gender transitions is punching down. Perhaps the goal is complete domination (“it’s not about the cake”, as the ACLU says). But even then, there are better ways to do that. Having politicians and government agencies at every level (except for the police, apparently) attend Pride parades, all major corporations support LGBT initiatives (albeit not in countries where gay people are actually persecuted of course), gay-straight alliance clubs in all schools, and all civic buildings (including public Catholic schools) fly the Pride flag seems more in the spirit of punching up.
I find LGBT activists’ constant harassment of this man to be bizarre and mind-boggling. Any social movement can win when they’re seen as the good guys, and a crucial part of that is punching up instead of down. That’s a big part of why the pro-life movement, for example, eventually figured out (for the most part) that yelling at a woman and calling her a murderer on one of the worst days of her life isn’t a good idea and that outreach toward these women is best done by gently encouraging them to do the right thing (as well as providing support through pregnancy resource centres where necessary). Likewise, they oppose criminally prosecuting women when abortion is made illegal (at least at first). Repeatedly suing a small business owner (who, if I understand right, these activists went out of their way to go after – they didn’t run into him by accident) because he doesn’t publicly affirm same-sex marriage or gender transitions is punching down. Perhaps the goal is complete domination (“it’s not about the cake”, as the ACLU says). But even then, there are better ways to do that. Having politicians and government agencies at every level (except for the police, apparently) attend Pride parades, all major corporations support LGBT initiatives (albeit not in countries where gay people are actually persecuted of course), gay-straight alliance clubs in all schools, and all civic buildings (including public Catholic schools) fly the Pride flag seems more in the spirit of punching up.
Infuriating