"Masterpiece Cakeshop" Is Not About Religious Freedom

Trump's America

I am addressing the issues raised by the Masterpiece Cakeshop case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court again because the potential damage done to the nation's civil rights and non-discrimination laws will be incalculable should Christofascists secure an exemption for themselves from complying with such laws.  Gays may be the initial targets in the case, but the ultimate targets of the Pharisee like "godly folk" is much more extensive and many more will face discrimination under the guise of "religious freedom" if the Court wrongly decides in favor of the bigoted plaintiff in this case. Four justices, particularly Neil Gorsuch who seemingly believes that religious belief whether feigned or real overrides all else.  Thus, Justice Kennedy may once again be the swing vote on the Court.  A well laid out piece in the New York Times illustrates the dangers a pro-plaintiff ruling in this case presents to many in society, not just the LGBT community.  Here are highlights:

[T]here’s a long history of people using religious liberty as reason to justify their refusal to provide a public service offered by their business. In 1968, the owner of a barbecue restaurant — Piggie Park, in South Carolina — held that his religious beliefs gave him the right to withhold service from African-Americans. The owner, Maurice Bessinger, argued that the Civil Rights Act violated his freedom of religion, because “his religious beliefs compel him to oppose any integration of the races whatever.”

More recently, a pediatrician rejected Krista and Jamie Contreras’s child as a patient in Roseville, Mich., in 2014. The doctor, saying she had given the matter “much prayer,” decided that she couldn’t provide health care to their baby because they are lesbians.

On Tuesday, [December 5, 2017] in a case supported by the Trump administration and a group called Alliance Defending Freedom, a broad right to discriminate on the basis of faith will be argued before the Supreme Court. If you’ve never heard of the Alliance Defending Freedom, the name alone is probably a tip off that freedom is the last thing it’s concerned with defending. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated it a hate group.

Yes, we have reached a point in our history where no one is surprised for one moment that in a case being argued before the Supreme Court, the White House is on the same side as a designated hate group.

Jack Phillips refused to make a wedding cake for Charlie Craig and David Mullins, because their loving legal union "violated his Christian beliefs." A series of lower courts has sided with Mr. Craig and Mr. Mullins, but the appeals process has led to the Supreme Court, where it is expected that the swing vote will ultimately rest with Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized marriage equality.

There are two important things to know about the religious freedom/wedding cake case. One is that it’s not about religious freedom — it’s about religious exemption. The other is that it’s about a whole lot more than wedding cakes.

Masterpiece has nothing to do with religious freedom. It’s about enshrining a freedom to discriminate. Historically, religious exemptions from the law have occasionally been granted to protect the person who holds the belief. But this case is different, in that it gives an individual the right to harm someone else. And that’s what the Masterpiece case is about: It would give individuals the right to discriminate. It’s about landlords who could legally refuse to rent to someone because of who they are.

It’s about adoption agencies that could legally deny individuals and couples the right to have a family.

It’s about doctors who could legally refuse services to gay men and lesbians, or their children.

It’s about medical clinics that could refuse service to people who are H.I.V. positive.

It’s about pharmacies that could legally deny birth control to single mothers or to anyone whose relationship the pharmacist might disapprove of.

Some of this havoc has already begun. In Mississippi, a funeral home refused to cremate a man’s husband once it learned the dead man had been gay. In Kentucky, a religious exemption law allows schools to bar L.G.B.T. youth from joining student groups.

Ironically, one group that might wind up discriminated against by the religious exemptions case is — wait for it — religious groups themselves.  . . . . “petitioners’ arguments for a religious exemption permitting denials of service to same-sex couples could also be advanced to support denials of service to people of marginalized faiths.” The long bloody history of the world suggests that giving one faith permission to discriminate against another rarely ends well.

Finally, the court has already considered and rejected faith as justification for discrimination in a previous case. In the Piggie Park decision, the court rejected arguments almost identical to those being made now. That’s why the lawyers for Masterpiece will argue that Mr. Phillips’s cakes are artistic expressions and therefore protected speech.

That argument demands that the court get into the business of defining art itself, a door the justices open at their peril. Is a well-manicured lawn a form of art by this definition? How about a lean corned beef sandwich? What would not be art if the court rules to protect icing and buttercream?

[I]t’s hard to see how the principles they defend could be confined to sexual-orientation discrimination and not carry over to create a defense of racial or gender discrimination. As Paul Smith, a First Amendment expert and professor at Georgetown University’s Law Center, describes it: “We’ve never allowed a commercial business to justify discrimination against a protected class based on the First Amendment. We shouldn’t start now.”

Sadly, in Trump's America, only certain people are "real Americans" and entitled to all of the rights of citizenship and non-discrimination protections.  That the United States Justice Department is filing briefs in support of those of a certified hate group ought to disturb every American.  It may be gays today who are the targets, but tomorrows the Christofascists will add others to the list of who offends their real or feigned religious belief.  Hope and pray a majority of the Court rules against the Pharisee like Jack Phillips.