We're assured that the Supreme Court's 7-2 ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado does not give carte blanche to bakers, photographers, florists and lunch counters to claim a religious right to discriminate against customers.
No, the justices tell us that this case was all about how the Colorado Civil Rights Commission mistreated the baker after he refused to bake a wedding cake for a couple getting married. One of the commissioners charged that religious justification of discrimination has been historically "despicable." Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote,
"The commissioner even went so far as to compare Phillips’ invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust. This sentiment is inappropriate for a Commission charged with the solemn responsibility of fair and neutral enforcement of Colorado’s antidiscrimination law—a law that protects discrimination on the basis of religion as well as sexual orientation.In their dissent, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonya Sotomayor noted that the couple had not asked Masterpiece Cakeshop to include any pro-marriage equality text on their cake, and were turned away because of their identity as a same-sex couple. Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer noted as much in their concurrence with the court's conservative majority, but were swayed by that commissioner's going all Christopher Hitchens about the case.
"The record shows no objection to these comments from other commissioners. And the later state-court ruling reviewing the Commission’s decision did not mention those comments, much less express concern with their content. Nor were the comments by the commissioners disavowed in the briefs filed in this Court. For these reasons, the Court cannot avoid the conclusion that these statements cast doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the Commission’s adjudication of Phillips’ case."
So let this be a lesson to all friends of the LGBTQ community, as well as all liberal-minded people in general. I appreciate that it's frustrating to live under the Corrupt Trump-McConnell-Ryan, Republican-gerrymandered-statehouses regime, but we all bear the burden of watching our tongues.
Go overboard criticizing a homophobic baker's religion, and it becomes all about you.
Hurl a sexist slur at Ivanka Trump after Roseanne Barr loses her TV show, and that becomes all about you.
Start your introduction of Bruce Springsteen at the Tony Awards with a four-letter verb plus "Trump," and even his locking immigrant children in cages, insulting our closest allies, and giving the Korean peninsula away to Kim Jong Un become all about you.
Gosh, I hope I haven't offended any right-wing snowflakes just now.
I don't think it's too much to ask for a fair hearing before turning someone down, and it's clear the justices expected the baker to be turned down. Compare it to Miranda v Arizona, where he was clearly guilty but the Court declared his conviction unfair because he hadn't been advised of his rights. In that case, there was a new trial, the confession was not used, and he was found guilty and sent to prison. In this case, the moment for the cake had passed, but there's a new case coming up, Adele's Flowers v Washington, which will give the Court a cleaner target. If they uphold the florist's right to discriminate, I'll be both appalled and astonished.
ReplyDeleteWe'll see how clean Adele's Flowers is by the time it reaches the court. Is floral design art? What rights do artists have? Was Rob Rogers discriminating against Trumpworld by refusing to draw what his editors wanted him to?
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, we had Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and Sarah Succubus Sanders using the Bible to defend the administration's despicable policy of separating refugee children from their families at the border. But we'd better not cite that as an example of using the Bible to defend the despicable.