Colorado baker sues state officials, claiming continued religious persecution

[DonViejo]

Source: The Hill



BY MEGAN KELLER - 08/15/18 11:41 AM EDT

A Colorado baker who won a Supreme Court case after refusing to make a custom cake for a same-sex wedding is suing Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) and members of the state's Civil Rights Commission, saying he is still being persecuted for his religious believes.

Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips filed the lawsuit late Tuesday night in U.S. District Court, The Denver Post reports. It alleges that Colorado officials are still trying to force him to bake cakes he finds objectionable, despite the Supreme Court ruling in June that found previous attempts to do so amounted to religious persecution.

According to the filing, an attorney called Phillips on the same day of the court's decision and asked him to make a cake that faded from pink to blue in celebration of a gender transition from male to female.

The request conflicted with Phillips religious beliefs and he declined, according to the lawsuit, which adds that Colorado officials found probable cause that state law required him to bake the requested cake 24 days later.

Read more: http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/401937-colorado-baker-sues-colorado-officials-claiming-continued-religious

[sandensea]

1. The GOPee obviously put him up to this.

They know Hickenlooper will be re-elected handily, and are hoping this could work as a Hail Mary pass.

All they'll end up with, is a lot of cake on their face (and egg).

[Jake Stern]

52. I assume you meant Polis

Hick is term limited and can't run again.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. How could a gender change be in the bible, and thus, be a religious belief?

The sex change/gender change concept wasn't even in the realm of possibilities back 2000 years or so...this baker is just coming up w/ just about anything remote that may infringe on his so called beliefs...enough is enough of this hypocrisy.

Anything that these people object to, and not in the bible, they are fussing etc. It should be 'nothing in the bible about this, so it's allowed'...don't allow these religious freaks/nuts to push their ideology etc. on us!

[christx30]

14. They don't believe that gender change is a thing.

They consider it to be a mental health issue, like schizophrenia. It’s one of their arguments against having transgendered people in the military. “You wouldn’t want some crazy person watching your back, would you?”
So it’s not 100% a moral issue.
And his refusal to make this particular cake probably a moral issue. He is saying that the attorney that ordered the cake doesn’t actually want to celebrate anyone’s transformation. They want to get him in trouble. It’s not a legit order. It’s like going to a Palestinian bakery and ordering a cake celebrating Israel’s 70th anniversary.

[Oneironaut]

50. John 3:16

No idea WTF that passage is, but neither do they. I automatically win the argument!

[jcgoldie]

3. Haha!

I love that somebody saw that supreme court decision and went, "oh yeah? well how about this, asshole?"

[ProudMNDemocrat]

4. There is NO Christian persecution taking place in this country......

This Baker is full of baloney, along with Sugar and Cake Flour!

His religious beliefs are not being trampled on. The Government is not forbidding him in his practice of religion as he sees fit..

It is however, questioning his use of Religion as a means to discriminate against a segment of society that is deserving of equal protections under the law and that of the 14th Amendment.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

19. The most persecuted religious people in the U.S. are white Christians, haven't you heard?

I thought it would be the Muslims, but I guess I'd be wrong.

[Roy Rolling]

5. "Forced to bake cakes"

The Colorado Cake Force is legendary for being viscous.

[dameatball]

6. Another bad SCOTUS decision.

So, my religion says I can discriminate against anyone that I object to, GLBT, Blacks, browns, non-Christians.


My religious belief is that women should stay in the home, so my wife can't work?

My religious belief allows me to heal my children only through prayer?

Freedom to practice the religion that suits you should end at your fingertips for the most part. Once it affects other people then it is not legitimate to cry "persecution."


This SCOTUS decision is a Pandora's box.

[SunSeeker]

9. Yep. nt

[DBoon]

13. "My religious belief is that women should stay in the home..."

so I can refuse to hire women in my business?

[dameatball]

15. Yes, that too. Many directions this could go.

[azureblue]

20. Leviticus forbids a lot of things:

among them, eating pork and shellfish, going to church if you have defective vision, trimming your beard, and more. Can that court decision be used as a defense if i say that it is my religious right to refuse to give money to am eater of bacon or any business that employs eaters of bacon? If they take me to court for non payment, can I use that ruling as a defense?

The full list:
76 things banned in Leviticus
1. Burning any yeast or honey in offerings to God (2:11)
2. Failing to include salt in offerings to God (2:13)
3. Eating fat (3:17)
4. Eating blood (3:17)
5. Failing to testify against any wrongdoing you’ve witnessed (5:1)
6. Failing to testify against any wrongdoing you’ve been told about (5:1)
7. Touching an unclean animal (5:2)
8. Carelessly making an oath (5:4)
9. Deceiving a neighbor about something trusted to them (6:2)
10. Finding lost property and lying about it (6:3)
11. Bringing unauthorized fire before God (10:1)
12. Letting your hair become unkempt (10:6)
13. Tearing your clothes (10:6)
14. Drinking alcohol in holy places (10)
15. Eating an animal which doesn’t both chew cud and has a divided hoof (cf: camel, rabbit, pig) (11:4-7)
16. Touching the carcass of any of the above (11:8)
17. Eating – or touching the carcass of – any seafood without fins or scales (11:10-12)
18. Eating – or touching the carcass of - eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat. (11:13-19)
19. Eating – or touching the carcass of – flying insects with four legs, unless those legs are jointed (11:20-22)
20. Eating any animal which walks on all four and has paws (good news for cats) (11:27)
21. Eating – or touching the carcass of – the weasel, the rat, any kind of great lizard, the gecko, the monitor lizard, the wall lizard, the skink and the chameleon (11:29)
22. Eating – or touching the carcass of – any creature which crawls on many legs, or its belly (11:41-42)
23. Going to church within 33 days after giving birth to a boy (12:4)
24. Going to church within 66 days after giving birth to a girl (12:5)
25. Having sex with your mother (18)
26. Having sex with your father’s wife (18:8)
27. Having sex with your sister (18)
28. Having sex with your granddaughter (18:10)
29. Having sex with your half-sister (18:11)
30. Having sex with your biological aunt (18:12-13)
31. Having sex with your uncle’s wife (18:14)
32. Having sex with your daughter-in-law (18:15)
33. Having sex with your sister-in-law (18:16)
34. Having sex with a woman and also having sex with her daughter or granddaughter (18:17)
35. Marrying your wife’s sister while your wife still lives (18:18)
36. Having sex with a woman during her period (18:19)
37. Having sex with your neighbor’s wife (18:20)
38. Giving your children to be sacrificed to Molek (18:21)
39. Having sex with a man “as one does with a woman” (18:22)
40. Having sex with an animal (18:23)
41. Making idols or “metal gods” (19:4)
42. Reaping to the very edges of a field (19)
43. Picking up grapes that have fallen in your vineyard (19:10)
44. Stealing (19:11)
45. Lying (19:11)
46. Swearing falsely on God’s name (19:12)
47. Defrauding your neighbor (19:13)
48. Holding back the wages of an employee overnight (19:13)
49. Cursing the deaf or abusing the blind (19:14)
50. Perverting justice, showing partiality to either the poor or the rich (19:15)
51. Spreading slander (19:16)
52. Doing anything to endanger a neighbor’s life (19:16)
53. Seeking revenge or bearing a grudge (19:18)
54. Mixing fabrics in clothing (19:19)
55. Cross-breeding animals (19:19)
56. Planting different seeds in the same field (19:19)
57. Sleeping with another man’s slave (19:20)
58. Eating fruit from a tree within four years of planting it (19:23)
59. Practicing divination or seeking omens (tut, tut astrology) (19:26)
60. Trimming your beard (19:27)
61. Cutting your hair at the sides (19:27)
62. Getting tattoos (19:28)
63. Making your daughter prostitute herself (19:29)
64. Turning to mediums or spiritualists (19:31)
65. Not standing in the presence of the elderly (19:32)
66. Mistreating foreigners – “the foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born” (19:33-34)
67. Using dishonest weights and scales (19:35-36)
68. Cursing your father or mother (punishable by death) (20)
69. Marrying a prostitute, divorcee or widow if you are a priest (21,13)
70. Entering a place where there’s a dead body as a priest (21:11)
71. Slaughtering a cow/sheep and its young on the same day (22:28)
72. Working on the Sabbath (23:3)
73. Blasphemy (punishable by stoning to death) (24:14)
74. Inflicting an injury; killing someone else’s animal; killing a person must be punished in kind (24:17-22)
75. Selling land permanently (25:23)
76. Selling an Israelite as a slave (foreigners are fine) (25:42)

[SunSeeker]

7. So if his "religion" allowed race discrimination, he could turn away black customers?

How far does he think he can take this?

[FBaggins]

41. No. He can't turn away any customers for who they are

Even in the broadest interpretation of where the court was going (they avoided it... but almost certainly would with Kavanaugh), he could turn away a black customer who ordered a BLM cake that said "white christians are the problem"... but he couldn't turn away the same customer if he ordered a cake that said "Happy Birthday".

But SCOTUS didn't even reach that far... which is probably where this case came from.

[SunSeeker]

42. But he was allowed to turn away gay people for who they are. nt

[FBaggins]

43. No he wasn't

He reportedly had plenty of gay customers.

None of his arguments in court claimed that he didn’t have to deal with certain types of people. They were that he didn’t have to express certain messages.

[SunSeeker]

44. He turned away gay customers when they wanted to buy a wedding cake.

If you're in the business of selling wedding cakes, you should not be able to descriminate based on sex or race. And that is what happened. Because of the sex of one of the two customers buying that wedding cake, he wouldn't put his name on that wedding cake.

[FBaggins]

46. That's an incomplete description of what was alleged.

If I say that I won't sell cakes with vulgar language on them and a hobbit shows up to buy one... does that mean that I discriminate against Tolkien races? Of course not. The hobbit has a right to put whatever vulgarity he wants on a cake, but I don't have to bake it for him. His right of expression clashes with mine and it's unlikely that a court would rule in his favor anywhere in the country.

If he was unwilling to do business with gay clients, then they couldn't buy a get well soon or 4th of July cake either... there hasn't been any evidence of that... and the courts would not have allowed that. Instead, they made clear that the interests being weighed were his right to control his own expression vs. their protection from discrimination. The court didn't reach to that answer because they found that his expression rights had not properly been considered in the first place. But if it had been their right to avoid discrimination against his "right" to discriminate... it never would have made it past the first court.

[SunSeeker]

48. Oh but it is, FBaggins. It was all about WHO was buying the cake, not what was said.

Prohibiting vulgarity does not involved discrimination, since the same rule applies no matter who is buying the cake. All the gay couple wanted was a wedding cake with their names on it, like any other marrying couple.

But when it came to his wedding cakes, he refused to make them for gay couples. That is discrimination. Whether or not he might still sell a gay couple other products like cookies is irrelevant. He still discriminated against them in that instance.

This is why a landlord would be popped for housing discrimination if he refused to rent to black families at his properties in a white neighborhood, even if he would rent to them at another property he owns in a black neighborhood. Ask Trump.

[keithbvadu2]

8. Would he bake a cake for a second marriage after a divorce?

Would he bake a cake for a second marriage after a divorce?

Jesus had some strong words about divorce and adultery.
---------------
Holy matrimony for Christians - Kim Davis

[Bettie]

16. You know, this is kind of tangential, but

it brings to mind something my niece posted on Facebook.

It was meant to be a cute little kid story, but I didn't find it cute, I found it very telling and more than a little disturbing. Her husband is an evangelical minister.

She was talking to her five year old and he asked what she wanted for her birthday.

She said she would like her kids to be nice to each other.

He said that can't happen, because there is sin in the world, so no one can really be good.

Sounds like a cop-out to me, but what do I know? I'm a known heathen.

[workinclasszero]

10. How does this person stay in business?

His potential customers must first pass his religious right wing worthiness test before he takes their money.

[benld74]

11. IF the cake falls while baking

who will be blamed?

[niyad]

12. ohhh, the pooooooor widdle homophoibc, religious zealot snowflake--I mean, victim.

ALL this publicity martyr had to do originally was say, "sorry, booked solid, can't fit you in". .

but NOOOOOOOOOO--we had to hear all about his "sincerely held" bigoted beliefs. I wonder how much his latest gofundme effort is raising/

[moose65]

30. That's the question I'd like to ask!

If he really didn't want to bake the gay cake, he could have come up with another excuse: "Sorry guys, I've already got too many orders for that weekend," or "sorry guys, that's the week that I have scheduled my vacation," or "Sorry guys, I have to go to my niece's baptism that weekend," or any of a million other reasons. But no, he had to go out of his way to proclaim his religious beliefs and twist the knife in their backs a little more. No business like that can accommodate everyone who walks in, because sometimes there are just too many orders. No law can make him bake a cake if he doesn't have time to do it!

[PatSeg]

17. And these are the people

who call liberals "snowflakes"? You know, this is not only narrow minded and petty, it is really terrible business. Maybe the baker should try another line of work.

[heaven05]

18. my his business falter bigley nt

[left-of-center2012]

21. "Phillips is seeking restitution for legal fees and $100,000"

He probably thinks they'll give him $100,000 rather than go to court.

[bluestarone]

22. It is THESE TYPE of religious people that

TURN others to be AGAINST RELIGION!!!! FUCK THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bucolic_frolic]

23. The baker should transition to baking bread

He is adding yeast to his religious beliefs at this moment so they will rise beyond marriage and fix around changing orientation.

Great editor - "religious believes" hoped for hurriest court resolving.

[plantwomyn]

24. Persecution?

Seriously? So if they find that the authorities overstepped their bounds on ONE ruling, that means that they have no future authority to make future rulings? It seems that Phillips believes that he is immune to the statute into perpetuity. I didn't read that in the SCOTUS ruling.

[Igel]

35. He's being trolled by somebody.

And a second complaint is in the works on largely the same grounds.

[SCVDem]

25. What a Whiny Little Bitch!! nt

[bitterross]

26. SCOTUS did NOT find "previous attempts to do so amounted to religious persecution."

That is a misrepresentation of what the court found.

Given what the court did say, if I lived in CO, I would have gone and asked for a cake for another same-sex wedding. That would give the Commission the chance to rule on the merits and ensure there was no religious bias.

In fact, if I were the commission, I'd be using verbiage from RBG's dissent to find in favor of the plantiffs.

[Democrats_win]

27. Remember when Paul Harvey called these frivolous guys, "sewers?"

Of course Paul Harvey is dead but his "CON-job-servatives" are the new "sewers." This is about POLITICS not freedom of religion! Is he really seeking protection from the government rather than following the dictates of the Bible: love your neighbor?

Who would Jesus sue? Why doesn't the baker really follow Jesus' command from Matthew 28:19 : "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." The Jesus of the Bible NEVER discriminated against people. This guy is a tool of the Libertarian/Conservative axis to fragment our society and protect the riches of the wealthy.

[Nitram]

28. I think it is amusing that he is being harassed by LGBTQ customers.

Of course they're all going to be ordering cakes from him.

[unblock]

29. Was there anything inherently transgender about the cake requested?

Obviously he should just be happy to serve all customers, but there's a difference between a cake that clearly depicts a gay wedding or a gender transition, as opposed to a more generic cake that could be used for other purposes (straight wedding or some other event) where the baker just happens to know the customer is gay or transgender.

His "artistic expression" argument, weak as it is anyway, completely falls flat if he'd have had no problem making the exact same cake for a different customer.

Let's say a straight couple says they want a cake for a baby shower but they don't know the sex yet, so they want a cake that fades from blue to pink. If he has no problem with that, but won't sell the exact same cake to a transgender person, there's clearly no artistic expression issue there. Only bigotry.

[Firestorm49]

31. Law suits don't come cheap.

There must be one hell of a mark up in cakes and cupcakes to be able to fight on as he is doing.

[jmowreader]

33. He went through Alliance Defending Freedom for the last one

They beg for money to do this crap. The baker isn't paying a damn dime.

To be perfectly blunt, I'm getting a little sick of right-wingers throwing around the word "persecution." There is religious persecution in the world. North Korea maintains a network of concentration camps for Christians, and they're not hesitant to put people in them - the CIA estimates there are 50,000 people locked in those camps, where they can be tortured and even killed for any or no reason. It's twenty years in prison for any non-North Korean who brings a Bible to the DPRK. Saudi Arabia just chops your head off for being a Christian. I could go on but you get the picture. This asshole got his feelings hurt because someone asked him to make a cake.

[Corgigal]

32. Looks like a new cosplay location.

Dress in opposite, then go down to order a cake. Let them guess what is going on.

[0rganism]

34. a cake that faded from pink to blue - is this a thing?

where have these scintillating strobe cakes been all my life? i'm not celebrating a gender transition but i do happen to think that a pallet-swapping cake could be pretty damn cool.

[Igel]

36. Yes.

Except it's not the entirety of the take that does it.

It transitions or fades from one color to the next as you proceed from center to exterior.

Actually, you could have one that slowly goes from one color to another. Have a pH indicator and a time release chemical that slowly changes pH as it reacts with the cake; or have the coloring be temperature sensitive (perhaps because of temperature-sensitive pH?) and let the cake warm to room temperature as it's being cut.

[0rganism]

37. i don't know if i'd eat that cake, but i'd watch it with interest

thanks for the clarification btw - looks like i had quite the wrong idea about the pink-to-blue cake

[jcgoldie]

40. lol that sounds pretty fancy

I just thought they meant "fade"to mean this but with pink perhaps:

[moose65]

49. What gives the baker a right to pry into someone's personal business?

If I walked in there and ordered a rainbow cake, does he have the right to ask me what it’s for? It’s none of his fucking business. If I have the money to pay him, that should be all that matters to him. Does he make all of his customers fill out a detailed Cake Application so he can be sure that he’s not selling to sinners?!? These Holy-Roller types drive me up the wall.

[RhodeIslandOne]

38. Why do people keep trying to give him their money?

There are many liberal, progressive bakers in Colorado who would be more than happy to take your business and probably make a better cake....

[christx30]

39. Because it's not about the cake.

It’s about making someone do something they don’t want to do. It’s about force.

[SunSeeker]

45. OFFS, no one "forced" him to go into the business of selling cakes to the public.

Since he chose this profession, he must comply with the laws applicable to that profession, like not discriminating against his customers for who they are.

[Takket]

47. Where in the Bible are gender transitions banned?

[Oneironaut]

51. Probably near where it's dictated that, if someone works on Sunday, summarily execute them.

[B2G]

53. Has Colorado considered opening another bakery? Nt

[ck4829]

54. Hmm...