Supreme Court Wrongly Hands Victory to Christian Extremist

Jack Phillips - the face of bigotry and hate hiding behind the smoke screen of "religious freedom".

While the majority ruled in Masterpiece Cakeshop on a narrow basis for Christian extremists Jack Phillips - and, in my view, court manufactured finding that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s ruling against Phillips had been "infected by religious animus" - virulently anti-gay Christofascists are nonetheless celebrating the ruling as a wide ranging victory.  Individuals like Family Research Council ("FRC") president Tony Perkins, a man with a well documented ties to white supremacists groups, who parades around as a "godly Christian" while fleecing the bigoted and gullible, a crowing about the "victory" and no doubt looking for the next hand picked plaintiff to continue the assault on LGBT rights.  The irony, of course, is that the Court found the Civil Rights Commission's supposed "religious animus" to be improper, yet Phillips' religious based anti-gay animus was given a pass.   The even large issue is who else will now be subject to targeting by white Christofascists?  Non-Christians? Interracial couples?  Muslims?   A piece in the New York Times looks at this wrong-headed ruling The full opinion is here).  Here are article excerpts:

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who had refused to create a wedding cake for a gay couple. The court’s decision was narrow, and it left open the larger question of whether a business can discriminate against gay men and lesbians based on rights protected by the First Amendment.

The court passed on an opportunity to either bolster the right to same-sex marriage or explain how far the government can go in regulating businesses run on religious principles. Instead, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion turned on the argument that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which originally ruled against the baker, had been shown to be hostile to religion because of the remarks of one of its members.

At the same time, Justice Kennedy strongly reaffirmed protections for gay rights. “The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts,” he wrote, “all in the context of recognizing that these disputes must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market.”

On the one hand, Justice Kennedy has written every major Supreme Court decision protecting gay men and lesbians. On the other, he is the court’s most ardent defender of free speech.  On Monday, Justice Kennedy chose a third path, one that seemed to apply only to the case before the court.

Writing for the majority in the 7-to-2 decision, he said the Civil Rights Commission’s ruling against the baker, Jack Phillips, had been infected by religious animus. He cited what he said were “inappropriate and dismissive comments” from one commissioner in saying that the panel had acted inappropriately and that its decision should be overturned.

“The neutral and respectful consideration to which Phillips was entitled was compromised here,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “The Civil Rights Commission’s treatment of his case has some elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated his objection.”

That passage echoed his plea for tolerance in his majority opinion in 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. In that decision, he called for “an open and searching debate” between those who opposed same-sex marriage on religious grounds and those who considered such unions “proper or indeed essential.”

The breadth of the court’s majority was a testament to the narrowness of the decision’s reasoning. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Elena Kagan and Neil M. Gorsuch joined Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion. Justice Clarence Thomas voted with the majority but would have adopted broader reasons.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented.

Some gay rights groups took a darker view of the decision. “The court today has offered dangerous encouragement to those who would deny civil rights to L.G.B.T. people,” said Rachel B. Tiven, the chief executive of Lambda Legal. “We will fiercely resist the coming effort that will seek to turn this ruling into a broad license to discriminate.”

Rest assured, a broader attack on LGBT rights will be coming. The ultimate irony is that when one looks at non-discrimination and public accommodation laws, all of the protected categories - age, race, sexual orientation, national origin, age,  - are things that one cannot control.  Only one category - religion - is something that is changeable and relies on a conscious decision - an option, if you will - to embrace a particular dogma and form of ignorance and/or bigotry.  If anything should be forced to yield to immutable characteristics, it should be religious belief which all to often is based on myths and legends.   

Longing for the Freedom Not to Hide Oneself

Over the weekend at the Equality Virginia Commonwealth Dinner at one point in the evening one of the speakers reminded the audience that for some in attendance from rural, backwater areas merely being able to walk into a large ball room full of LGBT individuals was an usual experience  given that in their home areas many such individuals must remain in hiding or be very circumspect in who they allow to know their "secret."  Living in the closet is exhausting not to mention soul killing.  Yet even for those of us who are "out" many occasions occur regularly where in a split second one must decide whether it is safe to be authentic or better to allow others to assume that you are part of the straight world.  A world where no one has to worry about hiding the gender of their spouse and who they really are in a most basic way.  A column in the Washington Post picks up on this theme as the LGBT community waits to learn if the United States Supreme Court will find a right to religious based bigotry and discrimination towards others or uphold long standing public accommodation laws.  Here are column excerpts:

Charlie Craig, one of the men that Masterpiece Cakeshop, a Colorado bakery, turned away because they are gay, said something about shopping for a wedding cake that stuck with me: “That day,” he said, “I really let my guard down.”

I knew exactly what Craig meant. Not just because he’s my client but because I keep my guard up most days, too — just like nearly every LGBT person I know.

Craig grew up in Wyoming and went to college in Laramie, the town where Matthew Shepard, a gay man, lived when he was killed. I grew up in a progressive New York City neighborhood. Those two places were worlds apart, yet Craig and I had something in common. I was 8 when I realized I was attracted to women. I didn’t have the vocabulary yet to name those feelings. What I did have was a sharp, painful sense that my feelings were wrong and had to be hidden.

I couldn’t have imagined that by 2015, the Supreme Court would rule that same-sex couples have the same freedom to marry as everyone else or that I’d be an LGBT rights lawyer. Those advances were simply unthinkable. But some things haven’t changed: While I’m out as a professional, in my day-to-day life it often remains possible — and feels safer — to stay hidden.

My spouse and I sometimes commute together. Do we kiss goodbye on a crowded subway car, risking a negative comment — or worse? Or do we wave goodbye as if we are just friends who happened to run into each other on the way?

Is it really necessary to correct all of these people, I wonder? If I don’t, what will my children think of my casually erasing our family? And each time I let faulty assumptions slide, am I making them more likely the next time?

These calculations — weighing the risk of censure or even violence against the personal and political costs of invisibility — happen in a split second. But they exact a toll — a mental burden that can’t be quantified.

The ability to stay out of sight can mean the ability to stay safe, and many in our community don’t have a choice about whether to be out. That’s partly why LGBT people, particularly transgender women of color, experience disproportionate rates of violence and murder. Juxtaposed against this gruesome reality, life in my Brooklyn enclave feels fortunate indeed.

We stay hidden because when we don’t — or can’t — we know there may be consequences, ranging from a disapproving look to being denied service, fired from a job, followed, harassed or even arrested.

Planning a wedding is one of those times we can’t hide who we are. Craig said that, before being turned away, it didn’t even occur to him to disclose that he and David Mullins were a same-sex couple.  This is part of what I think about as we wait for the Supreme Court to decide whether Masterpiece Cakeshop has a constitutional right to hang a sign in its storefront essentially saying, “Your kind not served here.”

Laws against discrimination can’t protect us from violence, but they can protect us from going about our daily lives in fear of being turned away from stores, banks and hotels simply because of who we are. I hope Craig will know that freedom.

I sincerely hope that the Court will uphold common sense public accommodation laws and not grant a special right to those who would use claimed religious belief to discriminate against and mistreat others. 

The Media Must Stop Legitimizing Anti-Gay Hate Groups

With LGBT Americans under open assault by the Trump/Pence regime, once again it is critical that the mainstream media cease legitimizing anti-LGBT hate groups and allowing them to pretend to be "conservative" or "religious" organizations. Too often these groups are given a platform by networks and others and receive to challenge about their nefarious activities or, for example in the case of FRC's Tony Perkins, white supremacist ties. Here in Virginia, Victoria Cobb of The Family Foundation (Virginia's leading hate group in all but formal designation) will get interviewed and never is asked about the deliberate lies and falsehoods constantly disseminated by her organization against LGBT Virginians. Likewise, when organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom decry their much deserved hate group designations, the media has a responsibility to make it clear why the designation was made.  It takes far, far more than being a religious based organization to win the hate group label.  A piece in Media Matters looks at the media's failure to exposes these groups for what they are in fact: hate merchants seeking exempts from the laws binding on the rest of the citizenry.  Here are article excerpts:

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) began 2017 by being designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and finished the year arguing before the Supreme Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commision. Throughout that time, ADF fervently opposed LGBTQ equality at every step while also moving its hardline extremism more and more into the mainstream. The media, in turn, aided the group’s efforts by largely failing to contextualize its unrelenting campaign against queer and trans people. . . . Masterpiece Cakeshop is just the tip of the iceberg of ADF’s anti-LGBTQ work this year, all of which has one thing in common: seeking to make LGBTQ people second-class citizens. ADF’s representation of the plaintiff in Masterpiece Cakeshop case did not occur in a vacuum. The group and its allied lawyers have worked on at least eight other legal cases involving religious exemptions this year. Religious exemptions are often used by anti-LGBTQ groups and people to justify discrimination under the guise of “religious freedom.” ADF helped write, promote, and justify Mississippi’s sweeping anti-LGBTQ religious exemption law and fought for it in court, and it worked with Attorney General Jeff Sessions before he issued religious exemptions guidance in October. In addition, ADF has been leading the fight against transgender student equality in schools across the United States, including by influencing anti-trans “bathroom bills” in at least eight states.

SPLC labeled ADF as an anti-LGBTQ hate group in February due to a history of the group’s leaders and affiliated lawyers “regularly demoniz[ing] LGBT people, falsely linking them to pedophilia, calling them ‘evil’ and a threat to children and society, and blaming them for the ‘persecution of devout Christians.’” The hate group designation was also conferred in part for ADF’s history of supporting anti-sodomy laws, which effectively criminalize homosexuality. In 2003, the group filed an amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas that defended state sodomy laws and called “same-sex sodomy … a distinct public health problem.” ADF also supports attempts to turn LGBTQ people straight through dangerous conversion therapy, which every mainstream medical group has discredited for decades and which has severe mental and medical health consequences for its victims.

Media Matters has found that major newspapers like The Washington Post and The New York Times tend to avoid using SPLC’s “hate group” label when it comes to anti-LGBTQ groups but frequently identify other hate groups designated by SPLC, particularly white nationalist groups. ADF and its allies have taken advantage of media’s hesitancy to use the label and actively worked to discredit SPLC’s designation, especially when media outlets do use it.
 When ABC News and NBC News used the “hate group” designation to describe ADF in June reports, ADF demanded a retraction from ABC and began an aggressive media strategy to attack SPLC and attempt to discredit ABC’s and NBC’s reports. Right-wing media figures joined the chorus and echoed ADF's and others’ attacks on the designation, and ADF representatives soon made the rounds on Fox News, appearing on Fox & Friends, The Story with Martha MacCallum, and Tucker Carlson Tonight. The network has proven to be a safe space for the group to push this narrative. But it’s not just right-wing media that has been sympathetic to this campaign to discredit the “hate group” label. CNN changed a headline from “Here are all the active hate groups where you live” to “The Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups” after pressure from right-wing figures and media. News outlets are more than just hesitant to use the “hate group” label, though, and often fail to give any context to ADF’s work at all. Media outlets owe it to their audiences to, at the very least, contextualize ADF and groups like it. Yet a lot of coverage has been lacking in that context. Much of the reporting around the Masterpiece Cakeshop case fell into this trap. Time and time again, media outlets failed to contextualize ADF, instead simply noting that it was arguing the case or sometimes calling it “conservative.” In their reports on the case, The Washington Post, NPR, Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times all mentioned ADF’s role in the case but failed to mention its years-long campaign against LGBTQ equality, and those compose just a small sampling of a larger problem. A report by Time explicitly said that ADF “is making the argument that [the case] is fundamentally not about LGBTQ discrimination but about free speech” but also failed to note any of ADF’s other work combating LGBTQ equality. Leaving out important context about ADF can give readers an impression that the case, or even ADF’s work as a whole, may truly be about “free speech” rather than discrimination against LGBTQ people. ADF’s history proves that, for the group, the Masterpiece case is not about so-called “artistic freedom” or the First Amendment; it’s about preventing LGBTQ people from being fully recognized citizens in public and even private life. If news outlets won’t call it hate in 2018, they can at least give enough information for their readers to see it for themselves.

Clueless Straight White Males Make Excuses for "Religious Based" Homophobia

George Will and David Brooks - clueless straight white guys

A Facebook friend and fellow LGBT activist shared a piece from Slate that underscores to me the most maddening thing about far too many heterosexual white males - and many heterosexual white Christians in general.  NONE of these individuals had one iota of input on their being white, being heterosexual or being born into right wing Christian families.  That had NOTHING to doe with the winning hand that they were dealt. Yet far too many act as if their random luckiness somehow invests them with special virtue and excuses them from any responsibility to hold even a shred of empathy or respect toward those who through no fault of their own happened to be born black, LGBT, Hispanic or born into non-fundamentalist Christian families.  Worse yet, they expect those not dealt such lucky hands in life to quietly accept the bigotry and discrimination targeted at them by, you guessed it, the white, heterosexual Christians.  The hypocrisy and self-centered nature these folks is simply stunning.  The Slate piece blasts those who attack gays for wanting non-discrimination laws enforced and once again would place toxic, hate based religious belief over the civil rights of others. One of the targets of the piece in New York Times columnist David Brooks who is lamenting what the GOP has become, yet continues to engage in the mindset that helped turn the Republican Party into a toxic cesspool that it is today.  Here are excerpts from Slate:

Why does it seem that, every time a national debate erupts about the place of minorities in American life, a gaggle of Straight White Guys with little connection to or understanding of these minorities holds forth on how they should or shouldn’t resolve their grievance about unequal treatment? This week’s version came in response to Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Division, the Supreme Court case of Jack Phillips, a Christian baker who refused to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple . . . Phillips is seeking a license to discriminate based on artistic and religious freedom.

This week’s featured culprits: David Brooks writing in the New York Times, and George Will and political scientist Greg Weiner in the Washington Post. Each of their pieces made some reasonable points. But each betrayed a galling inability or unwillingness to truly consider what it might feel like to be a disfavored minority in modern America—to enter a store and be stamped for rejection based on a stigma you’ve already endured your entire life. In other words, they refused to let empathy shape their thinking.

This appeal to empathy is not a plea for powerful men to feel sorry for minorities; it’s about creating the moral habits of mind that involve putting yourself in others’ shoes so you can better understand the many sides of an issue that disproportionately affects people who aren’t you. If decent white men should have learned anything from the Trump election, Charlottesville, the police killings of unarmed black men, and the nationwide sexual harassment scandal, it’s that we have a special responsibility to better learn and practice empathy so we can make more informed decisions and wreak less havoc across the world.

With that in mind, I present five arguments advanced by Clueless Straight White Guys about religious-based anti-LGBTQ discrimination and explain why they’re clueless:

Argument No. 1: It’s just cake; buy it somewhere else.

Why it’s clueless:  . . . . “go elsewhere” entirely misses the point of this case. The feeling seems to be that if a major material hardship is not at issue, LGBTQ people should just suck it up and not fuss about such ethereal things as seeking dignity and avoiding the humiliation of exclusion from the public realm. As I’ve argued, full access to both commercial accommodations and marital recognition is a basic matter of equal dignity. For black Americans, standing a few feet further back on an Alabama bus was, yes, a material hardship for toiling housecleaners and waitresses on their feet all day; but just as important, it was an affront to dignity and it was deemed, quite properly, a constitutional affront. . . . . This case is about equality, not shopping.

Argument No. 2: It’s not like we’re condoning something as bad as racial discrimination.

Why it’s clueless: This is a fundamental failure of understanding history—itself a failure of empathy because history requires putting yourself in the worlds of others. The argument here is that when religion was used to justify slavery and racial discrimination in the past, those people were obviously being disingenuous. But today’s use of religion to defend other forms of prejudice is, just as obviously, sincere.

But the Christian explanations for segregation really were deeply felt. And the Supreme Court has repeatedly thrown this rationale out. . . . . The trial judge in the case that later outlawed bans on interracial marriage declared in his decision that “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents … The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

These judges stated or conceded that the religious beliefs propping up racism were sincere. Fortunately, that didn’t hold up in court as a justification for segregation. Meanwhile, religious justifications for racial segregation are hardly a thing of the past, but have been bubbling up again for decades and have broken into the open as part of Donald Trump’s ennobling of white nationalism.

Clueless Straight White Guys seem to feel at the end of the day that, while racism is bad, homophobia really just isn’t that awful and so religious conservatives should just get a pass.

Argument No. 3: It would have been so much kinder if the gays had just been neighborly and courteous about all this, even though the baker wasn’t.

Why it’s clueless:  Really? The gays behaved “abominably”? Dragging out the actual word the Bible uses to condemn gays as disgusting threats to civilization? Will berates a gay couple for having the audacity to ask the government to enforce the law, and derides them as essentially fetishizing their own rights. This can only be said by someone who has never had to defend his rights against those who would repeatedly trample them. I’ve no doubt it’s annoying for Will to hear black, brown, female, gay, and trans people always clamoring for their rights; imagine for a minute what it feels like for them.

Telling minorities who have suffered a history of discrimination that it’s unneighborly, unseemly, or discourteous to fight for rights that they’re being denied but you’re enjoying is shameless . . .

Argument No. 4: Be patient and let the political process of persuasion and compromise run its course; the courts are the wrong place to go when your rights aren’t being protected, and it will only spur backlash.

Why it’s clueless: Has anyone else noticed how well the “political process” has been functioning lately, particularly with protecting the rights of vulnerable minorities? And are Clueless Straight White Guys aware of the tens of millions being spent by conservative religious groups pushing hundreds of state bills and lawsuits seeking to undercut the reality of marriage equality and other gains toward LGBTQ equality?

The political process did not secure marriage equality; the courts did. And the brilliance of the LGBTQ movement, as those who aren’t clueless about LGBTQ history and the long struggle for marriage will tell you, was that its advocates did engage in persuasion, conversation, and appeals to the public—for decades. One result was that Colorado passed a duly enacted law through its democratically elected legislature banning anti-gay discrimination in public accommodations.

Yes, pushing for LGBTQ equality in court spurred backlash, as Weiner notes. But it then generated a public dialogue around empathy and equality, and swept full marriage equality into being nationwide—including places like Alabama. If going to court for racial equality was the right course, it’s also the right course here.

Argument No. 5: The baker is only asking that his sincere religious beliefs and artistic freedom be respected; he is not harming anyone.

Why it’s clueless:  The prevalence and harms of discrimination are not abstractions, but have been extensively documented, including in this amicus brief signed by three dozens scholars. You could just spend some time speaking with LGBTQ people who have faced it, and you’d know this.

Most people seem to take Phillips at his word that, as a Christian, his opposition to participating in a same-sex marriage is a “sincere belief.”  . . . Yet while Phillips may experience his beliefs as sincere, it’s simultaneously possible—indeed likely—that bias and even animus are really at play. Consider this consistency test: The Bible clearly teaches not only that marriage is for straights, but that it’s for life and that divorce is a sin equivalent to adultery. Yet no one has sued for the right to refuse service to customers on their second or third marriage. Will accepts Phillips’ claim of religious belief on faith, as if the baker’s only choice is to stop selling his beloved wedding cakes entirely. But if that’s true, he would have made the same fuss over mounds of other Biblical transgressions. Courts can’t look into the minds of the parties to a case. But there is enough evidence that bias, often unconscious, is the overwhelming factor in anti-gay discrimination to take claims of religious sincerity with a grain of salt.

Even if we take religious-based anti-LGBTQ sentiment as sincere, there’s no question that refusing service to minorities causes harm. And where the wish to harm others by imposing your religion on them collides with the state’s interest in ensuring the dignity of access to public accommodations, the courts have already sided with the latter.

The last point scores a home run.  Evangelicals are in general the most anti-gay - and often equally racist - of any Christian denominations yet have the highest divorce rate (the Bible Belt also has the highest teen pregnancy rate and the highest use of Internet porn).  Obviously, only selective passages in the Bible are cited for the basis of "deeply held religious belief" - usually those that are useful in condemning others - while others are literally ignored, including Christ's purported prohibition on divorce.   Bigots like Jack Phillips need to be called out.  If they are going to cite the Bible for the basis of their belief, they'd better damn well be following every aspect of it.  And if they are not, let's be honest and call them what they are: modern day Pharisees.  And the New Testament is VERY clear on what Christ thought of the Pharisees. 

A Ruling for Masterpiece Cakeshop Could Embolden White Nationalists

Tomorrow, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop in which the plaintiff, a Christofascist, argues that his religious beliefs exempt him from compliance with Colorado's public accommodation law and that, therefore, he can refuse to provide services to same-sex couples.  Stated another way, the plaintiff claims special rights that the rest of the business community and larger public do not enjoy.  All due to real or feigned religious belief. Representing the plaintiff is a well funded anti-LGBT hate group that masquerades as a "Christian" law firm.   Should the Court accept the argument and in effect overturn prior rulings that barred exemption from non-discrimination laws, especially based claims of religious beliefs about race, a potential Pandora's Box  could be opened.  As a piece in Religion Dispatches lays out, a ruling for the plaintiff could well result in carefully crafted claims by white supremacists that they too can ignore non-discrimination laws.  Here are article highlights:

The Christian right’s utilization of “religious freedom talk,” as Wenger [Tisa Wenger, associate professor of American religious history at Yale and author of the new book Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal] calls it, to impose its own cultural mores on broader society and policy began gradually, in the late 1970s and ’80s, following Roe v. Wade.

Nascent coalitions between (white) evangelicals and conservative Catholics ultimately settled on a highly effective framing of “religious freedom,” which painted any participation in or association with abortion as a heretical infringement on the “sincerely held religious beliefs” of true believers. . . . . “They are making a kind of freedom of conscience claim for themselves, but it’s doing so in a way that also—especially in the case of contraception coverage—is enforcing their own religious standards on employees who have no connection to those beliefs.”

This approach proved so persuasive that it remains the go-to tactic for the religious right in opposing access to abortion and contraception (I’m looking at you, Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor). But in the wake of growing legal recognition for LGBT people—and especially with the advance and ultimate affirmation of marriage equality at the Supreme Court—cultural conservatives saw an opportunity to recycle the same “religious freedom” arguments to oppose what they saw as a newly emboldened social ill. No organization has capitalized on this trend more directly than the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the incredibly well-funded “Christian” legal nonprofit and SPLC-certified anti-LGBT hate group that is representing Colorado baker Jack Phillips in Masterpiece Cakeshop. 

ADF’s own filings and the amicus briefs supporting the petitioner make clear that this “artistic expression” is inextricably tied to Phillips’s religious convictions about marriage. If the court accepts that premise, it could set a precedent that may well embolden racist factions of American society that, until recently, stayed largely hidden in shadowy sub-communities and angry echo chambers on the dark web.

Pointing to the “religious freedom” arguments deployed by pro-slavery activists and segregationists of old, Wenger acknowledges that most Americans no longer view interpretations of Christianity that call for racial subjugation and white supremacy as legitimate. But given the current climate Wenger worries that a ruling affirming the religious freedom and expression claims ADF is advancing in Masterpiece Cakeshop would draw those dark forces out of the shadows.

“I think we could see white supremacist arguments carving out religious exemptions to non-discrimination laws, which were rejected in the past,” she said. “Given the public resurgence of Nazis and white supremacists, I think we could see a resurgence of those kinds of claims in the courts.”

Wenger acknowledged that, while only a handful of the neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups recently making headlines are overtly religious in nature, given the highly effective legal framing of “religious freedom,” a ruling in favor of Masterpiece Cakeshop could open the floodgates for groups looking to carve out their own faith-based hate bubbles. The fact that Masterpiece Cakeshop is challenging a longstanding Colorado non-discrimination law amplifies the possibility that, if successful, the tactic could be employed to undermine state—or even federal—protections aimed at combatting discrimination against any number of marginalized populations.

Indeed, as Wenger’s book documents in deep historical detail, the bedrock American principle [religious freedom] has already been used to justify imperialism, racism, slavery, xenophobia, misogyny, and (most recently) anti-LGBT animus.

[W]hile earlier religious freedom cases often dealt with explicitly religious behavior—rituals, houses of worship, prayer in schools or the workplace—religious freedom litigation in the 21st Century has increasingly attempted to expand the definition of what may be considered a religious practice. A ruling in favor of Masterpiece Cakeshop would expand this sphere far beyond any contemporary understanding.

But Wenger suspects that expansion is fundamental to the conservative Christian logic behind supporting a plaintiff like Phillips, or the willingness to turn “conscientious objectors” to marriage equality like Kim Davis into right-wing martyrs. . . . . “This sense that religious conservatives need to be drawing a line in the sand right there, and saying ‘I won’t cater to same-sex couples because it’s against my religion,’ is perhaps in part produced by the politics of religious freedom,” Wenger contends.
 

It is crucial that the Court reject the insidious claims of the plaintiff and ADF which have many more targets they will add to those who offend their "religious beliefs."  It is worth remembering that the Virginia Supreme Court cited the Bible as supporting the state ban on interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia.  It took the U.S. Supreme Court to end that toxic use of religion that Masterpiece Cakeshop wants write back into the nation's case law. . 

"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.