Not much time has passed since Christian baker Jack Phillips fought to defend his choice not to make cakes celebrating homosexual unions (2018), and Christian florist Baronelle Stutzman dealt with multiple lawsuits regarding her choice not to arrange flowers for similar functions (2021). Yet, earlier this December, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for 303 Creative v. Elenis, a case which is shaping up to be the next high-profile skirmish between the homosexual movement and Christian providers of wedding services. The civil rights snipers are at the same old game again—this time zeroing in on Christian wedding website designer Lorie Smith.

IFI’s cultural affairs writer Laurie Higgins has already slashed apart the argument against Smith in a mic-drop opinion piece on this case. And with legal battles like these, it’s often very easy to uncover the left’s real agenda, an agenda that deserves a floodlight and an industrial-size vacuum cleaner. But while it’s not hard to see where the left is going, it’s often harder to see how they even got here in the first place. Our society has gone through decades of liberalization—supposedly intended to free us from government censorship—but is now beholding the rise of censorship yet again.

For its first century and a half, America was a nation permeated by Christian values. These values didn’t just sit nice and proper in the pews on Sunday morning—they actually influenced the country. In 1811, eminent jurist James Kent issued the landmark ruling People v. Ruggles, upholding a blasphemy case on the grounds that “we are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply ingrafted upon Christianity.” This case stood as good law for well over a century, joined by a host of other cases all agreeing that the government—even while submitting to the free speech protections of the First Amendment—had proper authority to prohibit blasphemy.

Some cases explicitly acknowledged that this was because Christian morals undergirded so much of our society (see Updegraph v. Commonwealth [1824], State v. Chandler [1837]), and others painted it more broadly as maintaining societal order (see Commonwealth v. Kneeland [1838], State v. Mockus [1921], Oney v. Oklahoma City [1941]). Whether it was openly stated or subtly implied, our nation’s legal system acknowledged that Christianity occupied a special place in our societal fabric. Therefore, government had legitimate authority to censor blasphemy in order to preserve legitimate community standards. But that wasn’t all: if you were propagating such other types of caustic speech as the lewd, the obscene, the profane, the libelous, or fighting words, the First Amendment would not save you (see Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire [1942]).

However, this state of affairs did not last forever. In a series of unfortunate developments in 20th-century legal opinion, America’s culture and law began to view “expression” as a good in-and-of-itself, regardless of whether the expression communicated something good or bad. Because “expression” became a good of its own, this now meant that any attempts to suppress the act of speaking—whether you were publicly displaying a four-letter word in a courthouse or publishing pornography—were harmful to society, and violations of the First Amendment (see Cohen v. California [1971] and Miller v. California [1973], respectively). And therefore, the label “freedom of expression” was now all that was needed to ward off those oppressive government censors trying to stamp out individualism and human dignity with their mumbo-jumbo about public morality.

After Burstyn v. Wilson (1952), blasphemy laws themselves were relegated to the dustbin along with all those other archaic colonial relics of religious intolerance. We had now entered a blessed era in which freedom of expression was king, and we could forget about any absolute standards for public morality because we had opened up our society to an open marketplace of ideas. Everything anyone wanted to say—except for the rare case of a clear and present danger—was given a fair hearing, Christians and pornographers alike.

If that sounds odd, it’s because it is. The contemporary interpretation of the First Amendment strives for a weirdly laissez-faire society in which our only definite core value is the absence of any definite core values. And so, Christians and pornographers now team up against the common enemy of “censorship,” which is really the only enemy left in the ring—now that we’ve given a big warm hug to all contradictory points of view at the same time. This self-contradictory societal plan might have tottered along for a few decades, but we are beginning to see it fall before our eyes. Core values are what hold societies together. Without them, societies are merely amorphous population statistics, without any form of identity. Thus, every society has an orthodoxy which it enforces, and now that we’ve evicted Christianity and swept the house clean, a new orthodoxy has moved in. Now we’ve gotten to the 303 Creative case.

The new orthodoxy is the religion of tolerance, and its blasphemy laws are creatively re-named “hate speech” laws. If you tolerate—i.e., accept and affirm—whatever manners of sinful behavior are dictated by societal winds, you can expect to live a happy and peaceful life. If, however, you dare to promote and live out ideas that blaspheme against the prevailing orthodoxy, say, that marriage is an institution ordained by God to join one man and one woman together for life, you can expect to be hounded by the government.

“Wait a minute!” you say, “Aren’t we supposed to be living in a society where we can all speak our mind and live out our own religious convictions?” “Ah, yes,” is the reply, “but of course that doesn’t apply to hateful [translation: blasphemous] speech like yours. You can say what you want as long as you don’t offend other people [translation: the prevailing orthodoxy]. Since your conscience contradicts the fundamental principles of tolerance, you must violate your conscience or pay the price.”

And here the real gloves have come off. The period of liberalization was really just a transition period from one form of censorship to another. In the name of freedom of expression and liberation from ideological tyranny, we threw off the yoke of Christian morality and the accompanying government powers to suppress caustic expression that eroded that foundation. But societies are defined by core ideas—and attempting to value the absence of core values just doesn’t cut it. When we removed the Christian set of core values, it was only a matter of time before we found something else to take its place. And now our censorship policies are moving right back to where we started, this time saluting to the devil instead of to the Lord.

In light of this, it’s time for Christians to stop playing the game that we can all get along without having any rules for getting along. Society will have rules for getting along—the question is whether those will be rules honoring to the Lord or disobedient to Him. As it is now, we relegate Christianity to the personal and private, and acquiesce to the lie that the Constitution requires such a separation of church and state that anything Christian is banned from the realm of public policy. We huddle up next to the pornographers and violent video game manufacturers, and appeal to the fading mantras of “freedom of expression” to justify living out our basic Christian convictions, completely ceding the possibility that there is something objectively true and good about Christianity, something objectively true and good about God’s design for marriage, something objectively true and good about God’s created sexuality. God created the world with a certain created order, and law has an obligation to reflect that order. Period.

Because the legal system runs on precedent, Christian lawyers will often have to appeal to misguided precedent to win needed victories for the side of truth. But it’s important to not let the short game overshadow the long game. The more we appeal to misguided precedent, the more we cement it in legal tradition and the harder it is to eradicate. We must always keep in mind that the ultimate reason we fight to defend the Lorie Smiths of the world is not because censorship is bad. It is because evil is bad—objectively bad, and ought to be so in the eyes of the law—and Lorie Smith is standing for the good.

On Monday, December 5, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, another case that pits the purported rights of same-sex couples to force Christian business-owners to create products (or provide services) that express messages related to same-sex “weddings” in violation of the Christian business-owners’ First Amendment rights.

The Court case is a challenge filed by Coloradan Lorie Smith, a wedding website designer who, in expanding her business, understandably wants to include a statement clarifying that she does not create websites for same-sex weddings. But Colorado’s boneheaded pro-religious discrimination, pro-censorship law “that bars businesses that are open to the public from discriminating against gay people or announcing their intent to do so” mandates both what Smith must do and may not say.

Smith has made clear the intent of her work:

As a Christian artist, I want to create freely and create messages that glorify and honor God. And for me, this means designing for weddings and telling the story of a couple through God’s lens of marriage. But the state of Colorado is forcing me to celebrate messages about marriages that are inconsistent with my faith. There’s a lot of misconceptions about my case and what it is that I’m asking for. I love everyone and my faith has taught me to love everyone, and I have worked with those who identify as LGBT. There are just certain messages that I cannot promote because of my faith.

While Smith originally challenged the Colorado law based on its violation of both speech and religious protections, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken it up only on free speech grounds. The threat posed to religious liberty, however, is at least as grave.

This case follows on the judicial heels of cases in which those who choose to place their homoerotic desires at the center of their identities have sued bed and breakfast inns, videographers, florists, cake bakers, and calligraphers. The plaintiffs in those cases like to pretend they are the Rosa Parks of the sexual revolution—the oppressed victims of irrational hatred based on a condition equivalent to skin color.

Anyone with an ounce of rationality should be able to see that this whole “LGBTQIAP+” political movement is based on a big fat, slimy lie—a lie not unlike a Guinea worm that works from deep inside the body politic, worming its way painfully through the muscles and sinews of its host. The only difference is the Guinea worm rarely leaves permanent damage.

For the millionth time, there are no points of correspondence between skin color per se and homoeroticism per se.

Skin color is an objective, 100 percent heritable, in all cases immutable, environmentally unaffected condition with no behavioral implications—and, therefore, morally neutral.

In contrast, homoeroticism is a subjective condition, with little to no genetic involvement, shaped in many cases by one’s environment, and constituted centrally by volitional acts that are appropriate objects of moral assessment. Making judgments about the morality of homoerotic acts and relationships is as legitimate as making judgments about any other erotic acts and relationships constituted by such acts.

Saying homoerotic acts and relationships are immoral no more constitutes hatred of “gay” persons who believe differently and act in accordance with their beliefs than does saying polyamory and plural unions are immoral constitute hatred of polyamorists.

Refusing to make floral arrangements, bake cakes, or create websites for weddings of two men is no more unjust or hateful than refusing to make floral arrangements, bake cakes, or create websites for weddings of five polyamorists, three brothers, or a man and his horse.

And refusing to create products or provide services for “weddings” of two men or two women is in no way akin to refusing to allow blacks to sit at a lunch counter. Only fools and deceivers would claim it is.

Here’s one way to know that that these cases have nothing to do with discrimination or hatred of persons and everything to do with the religious bigotry and discrimination of people who seek compulsory approval of their deviant sexual desires: Virtually every one of the Christians sued by homoeroticists, including Christian florist Barronelle Stutzman and cake baker Jack Phillips, happily made products for and served homoeroticist customers.

Theologically orthodox Christians do, indeed, sell their wares and services to homoeroticists. They simply will not use their gifts, time, and labor in the service of an event that violates their deeply held religious convictions, mocks marriage, and offends God.

Ignorant of both the meaning of the First Amendment as well as the nature and role of Christianity in the lives of Christ-followers, many non-Christians harbor (at least) two fallacious ideas. First, they believe Christians should exercise their religion only within the confines of their church building. And related, they believe the First Amendment protects only what takes place in church buildings.

Leftists want no protections for the exercise of religion outside the confines of church on Sunday. But here’s the cultural rub: For Christians, the exercise of their religion encompasses the totality of their lives, including their work.

Just as skin color, homoeroticism, and religious exercise have natures, so too does marriage. Marriage is something. It has a nature that does not change based on the legislative whims or prurient desires of humans. The law can no more change the nature of marriage than it can change the nature of horses by redefining them.

Until very recently, sexual differentiation has been central to any definition of marriage throughout history and cultures. In fact, jettisoning sexual differentiation is far more radical a change than would be jettisoning criteria regarding blood kinship, number of partners, or age of partners.

Of course, those changes are coming because—ya know—”love is love.” All that polyamorists, sibling-lovers, and hebephiles need to do now is organize, pressure the American Psychological Association to designate their erotic predilections “sexual orientations,” and abracadabra, their unions will be covered by anti-discrimination law and legalized.

When that day comes, will Christians who refuse to provide goods and services for sibling weddings, poly weddings, and hebephile-teen weddings be hauled before courts for discriminating based on “sexual orientation”? Will they be accused of bigotry and hatred?

The ceremony solemnizing an erotic relationship between two men or two women is not a wedding. Such a relationship is by nature and design non-reproductive, so it is neither sexual nor uniting. Since the central constituent feature of a true wedding is the sexual differentiation of partners, a ceremony recognizing and solemnizing a non-sexual, non-uniting relationship is not a wedding. It is the antithesis. It is an anti-wedding. And it harms all involved.

Leftists are trying to force Christian photographers, florists, bakers, calligraphers, and wedding website designers not only to create and sell products that violate their religion but also to create products that they have never before created: Anti-wedding cakes, anti-wedding floral arrangements, and anti-wedding websites.

Remember the prisoners as if chained with them—those who are mistreated—since
you yourselves are in the body also. ~Hebrews 13:3

Where are Christians suffering the most for their faith? Nigeria and China would be very good answers. In both countries, suffering for the sake of Christ is very real, although the suffering takes on different forms in each nation.

China, the largest country in the world in terms of population, is still dominated by a communist government that, since coming to power, has killed an estimated 60 million people (this estimate is likely on the low end). Numbers of this magnitude are almost impossible for us to grasp.

Praise the Lord that despite this almost unbelievable adversity, there are still many Christians in China. These believers choose to follow Christ, knowing full well that they will most likely suffer because of their faith.

One of many inspiring stories of courage and suffering is that of Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, China. This faithful congregation grew from 63 members in 2008 to approximately 500 members today.

In December 2018, the Chinese government started directly attacking this congregation. To date, more than 200 members of this church have been arrested, though most have been released. In 2019, church elder Qin Defu was sentenced to four years in criminal detention. Pastor Wang Yi was sentenced to nine years in criminal detention. Beyond arrest, the government has also seized church and personal property. Many families have faced the cruel reality of eviction from their homes and even deportation from the city of Chengdu.

A recent update reported that Preacher Wu Wuqing and his family have been locked into their homes by government forces. Guards now surround their residences.

Nigeria is the largest country in Africa, with a population of almost 220 million. It is unique in that it is both one of the largest Christian and Muslim countries in the world.

It is estimated that, since 2015, over 12,000 Christians have been murdered simply because they are not Muslim. Many, many more have been displaced by violence as the Fulani Tribesmen invade rural villages and unleash a targeted genocide against Christians. This suffering is in addition to the great harm caused by another Muslim terrorist group, Boko Haram.

Recently more than 125 students from a Baptist school were kidnapped. In the following six days, at least thirty-three Christians were killed, four churches were burned, and hundreds of homes were also burned.

Again, it is very difficult for us to fully appreciate the atrocities that take place in China and Nigeria. Yet, the call of Scripture is to remember, to remember all our brothers and sisters in Christ, to remember we are part of the body of faithful believers all over the world.

It is important to keep these things in mind so we have the right perspective on what we, as Christians, face in our nation. It would be wrong to try to directly compare what American Christians face with what believers in China, Nigeria, or many other countries face. But, at the same time, it is also foolish to ignore the very many stories of harassment and even government-sanctioned persecution against faithful believers in the U.S.

While we shouldn’t exaggerate or directly compare the trials of faithful Christians in America with the suffering of those in China or Nigeria, we must not ignore or forget the stories of believers like Jack Phillips (Masterpiece Cakes), Barronelle Stutzman (Arlene’s Flowers), Aaron and Melissa Klein (Sweet Cakes by Melissa), Jim and Beth Walder (Timber Creek Bed and Breakfast), Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski (Brush and Nib Studios), and, no doubt, many others whose stories have not been as widely publicized.

As best we can, we must stand with faithful believers both in our nation and around the world. We need to pray, give, and learn more about what is happening, and then share that information with those who are unaware of the moral, spiritual, and legal attacks perpetrated against Christians in our nation.

We must keep a proper perspective and not be ignorant of these matters.

Please learn more by visiting these websites:

1] Persecution.com

2] chinapartnership.org/early-rain-covenant-church

3] acts29.com/nurturing-gospel-encouragement-in-suffering

4] The Crisis of Christian Persecution in Nigeria

5] adflegal.org

In a shocking U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch voted with the axis of evil—that is, with Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. In Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the axis of evil decided that in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the word “sex” includes “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”—both subjectively constituted conditions. As a result, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in employment based on “race, color, religion, sex, and national origin,” now prohibits employers from firing employees who self-identify as homosexual or as the sex they are not and never can be.

The crux of the argument goes something like this: If a company that allows a woman who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work fires a man who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work, the company has discriminated against him based on his sex and, therefore, violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Not only are “trans”-cultists eradicating all public accommodation of real sex differences, but they’re also eradicating every cultural convention that recognizes, honors, and reinforces sex differences. They’re saying that not only are they permitted to reject cultural conventions regarding hairstyles, jewelry, clothing, and makeup, but everyone else must. Further, even biological reality as a signifier of biological sex must be rejected by everyone. So, as the very liberal author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, has learned, no one may say that only women menstruate.

The tyrannical Supremacist Court of the United States has declared from on its high horse that no employer with over 15 employees may fire an employee who decides to cross-dress at work. For those who remain blissfully unaware, there are efforts afoot to make such a view apply to companies with fewer than 15 employees too.

What if the owner of an independent toy store with three locations in neighboring towns employs 15 people and one of those employees announces he will henceforth “identify” as a woman. Now he cannot be fired—not even if the store where the cross-dressing man works will be destroyed because parents will no longer bring their toddlers and young children to an establishment that will require them to explain perversion to children who are too young to understand it and may be disturbed by it.

Many obstetrician-gynecologists staff their offices with only women—including only women nurses. Now imagine that one of those nurses announces she will be socially, chemically, and surgically “transitioning” and hopes to look like this biological woman one day (yes, this is a woman):

Is it just for doctors to be prohibited from firing her?

In their dissent, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito issued a stinging rebuke of the hubris of the majority opinion:

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination on any of five specified grounds: “race, color, religion, sex, [and] national origin.” … Neither “sexual orientation” nor “gender identity” appears on that list. For the past 45 years, bills have been introduced in Congress to add “sexual orientation” to the list, and in recent years, bills have included “gender identity” as well. But to date, none has passed both Houses. Last year, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would amend Title VII by defining sex discrimination to include both “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” … This bill remains before a House Subcommittee.

Because no such amendment of Title VII has been enacted in accordance with the requirements in the Constitution … Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination because of “sex” still means what it has always  meant. But the Court is not deterred by these constitutional niceties. Usurping the constitutional authority of the other branches, the Court has essentially taken H. R. 5’s provision on employment discrimination and issued it under the guise of statutory interpretation. A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall.

The Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous. Even as understood today, the concept of discrimination because of “sex” is different from discrimination because of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.” And in any event, our duty is to interpret statutory terms to “mean what they conveyed to reasonable people at the time they were written.”

Alito and Thomas preview the deleterious effects this decision will have on American life and liberty:

As the briefing in these cases has warned, the position that the Court now adopts will threaten freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and personal privacy and safety. No one should think that the Court’s decision represents an unalloyed victory for individual liberty.

While churches and other religious organizations, including religious schools, will probably be allowed what is called a “ministerial exception”—at least for a time—for those involved in teaching the tenets of their faith, it is unlikely that exemption will apply to those employed in other positions. For example, a private Christian school will be prohibited from firing any math, science, Spanish, or P.E. teacher, secretary, custodian, cafeteria worker, playground supervisor, or crossing guard who decides to identify as the opposite sex, cross-dress, take cross-sex hormones, and surgically disguise his or her sex.

For those churches, Christian schools, and parachurch organizations that reassure themselves that such events are unlikely, just remember what’s happened to Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who has been relentlessly sued by “LGBT” persons. Sexual subversives are going to specifically target Christian institutions.

Alito and Thomas warn that this pernicious SCOTUS decision will likely be used force the sexual integration of bathrooms, locker rooms, and women’s shelters; to force people to use “gender” obliterators’ “preferred pronouns”; to force employers to cover “costly sex reassignment surgery”; and to force colleges to assign dorm rooms based on the sex students wish they were rather than the sex they are.

This pernicious decision will be used too as a precedent when challenges to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 appear before the U.S. Supreme Court. How could the Court now conclude any way other than that the word “sex” in Title IX includes “gender identity.” When the axis of evil decides that, women’s sports are destroyed, and eventually all women’s records from high school, college, the Olympics, and professional sports will be broken by men.

Good job feminist supporters of the “trans” cult.

In Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s separate dissent, he emphasizes the violation of the separation of powers that the decision represents:

Under the Constitution’s separation of powers, the responsibility to amend Title VII belongs to Congress and the President in the legislative process, not to this Court. … [W]e are judges, not Members of Congress. And in Alexander Hamilton’s words, federal judges exercise “neither Force nor Will, but merely judgment.”… If judges could rewrite laws based on their own policy views, or based on their own assessments of likely future legislative action, the critical distinction between legislative authority and judicial authority that undergirds the Constitution’s separation of powers would collapse, thereby threatening the impartial rule of law and individual liberty. …

Both common parlance and common legal usage treat sex discrimination and sexual orientation discrimination as two distinct categories of discrimination—back in 1964 and still today. As to common parlance, few in 1964 (or today) would describe a firing because of sexual orientation as a firing because of sex. As commonly understood, sexual orientation discrimination is distinct from, and not a form of, sex discrimination. The majority opinion acknowledges the common understanding, noting that the plaintiffs here probably did not tell their friends that they were fired because of their sex. That observation is clearly correct. In common parlance, Bostock and Zarda were fired because they were gay, not because they were men. …

Who likes this SCOTUS decision? The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), that’s who. GLSEN’s raison d’être, is to use schools to normalize sexual deviance, which, of course, means eradicating theologically orthodox views on sexuality. GLSEN tweeted,

[T]oday’s landmark SCOTUS ruling will help to protect the many LGBTQ educators in K-12 schools who have faced harassment or job loss for simply being who they are. It also underscores the need for Congress to pass the Equality Act.

“Who they are” is a convenient bit of Newspeak to conceal what “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” really are. According to cultural regressives, “sexual orientation” is constituted by subjective, internal romantic and erotic feelings and volitional erotic acts. “Gender identity” is constituted by subjective, internal feelings about one’s maleness and/or femaleness or lack thereof. Now that SCOTUS includes conditions constituted—not by any objective criteria—but by subjective sexual feelings, all that remains is for sexual anarchists allied with other anarchists to expand the definition of “sexual orientation” and the job of sexual wokesters will be done. #CultureDestroyed.

So, in the service of “inclusivity,” they will work like the Devil and for the Devil to include polyamory, Genetic Sexual Attraction (i.e., consensual, adult incest), Minor Attraction (i.e., pedophilia, hebephilia, and ephebophilia), infantilism, zoophilia (i.e., bestiality), and every other sexual philia in the list of sexual orientations.

Then once that is accomplished, laws will protect celebrants of sexual disorder from being fired and schools will teacher kindergartners that love is love. Poly “love” will be called good. “Love” between two adult brothers will be deemed equivalent to interracial love. And teaching that “love” between humans and animals is wrong will be condemned as ignorant bigotry based on the hateful ideology of speciesism.

By the way, those naively depending on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to protect their religious liberty can forget about it. The Equality Act, which eventually will pass, explicitly guts RFRA.

This SCOTUS decision is not a victory for the country or for freedom. It’s another tragic defeat for the constitutional separation of powers, self-government, morality, truth, speech rights, and religious liberty. Conservative Christians, you’ve been warned—again.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Shocking-SCOTUS-Decision-Shockingly-Written-by-Gorsuch.mp3

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Written by Dr. John A. Sparks

Among recent actions by the U.S. Supreme Court, a four-sentence order may set the stage for the court to eventually address the collision between free speech and religious freedom on one hand and gay rights on the other. The order voided a judgment by the state of Oregon that had imposed a $135,000 fine on Portland-area bakery owners—the Kleins—for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. Oregon maintained that its anti-discrimination law condemned such a rebuff even when the bakery owners’ religious convictions run counter to participating in a same-sex wedding.

Besides vacating the fine, the court sent the case back to the Oregon Court of Appeals to be reconsidered in light of the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. Masterpiece involved a similar situation in Colorado for Christian baker, Jack Phillips, when he refused, on religious grounds, to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple’s marriage. In Masterpiece, Colorado’s case against Phillips had relied on language in an earlier case, Employment Division v. Smith (1990), which said that religious liberty claims could not be used as a defense against “generally applicable” laws that were “neutrally” enforced. However, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the Colorado proceedings against Phillips were far from “neutral.” In fact, they were rife with religious hostility toward him. Besides that, the court found that Colorado had selectively enforced its anti-discrimination laws, making them less than “generally applicable.”  Now the court is ordering the Oregon court to review the Klein case looking for the same examples of unfairness it had discovered in Masterpiece.

Klein is the second case of this type that the U.S. Supreme Court has sent back to the courts below for reconsideration in light of the Masterpiece decision. Earlier, the Washington Supreme Court was ordered to make such a review in a case involving a florist, Barronelle Stutzman, and her business, Arlene Flowers. Stutzman had refused to provide wedding flowers for a gay couple’s ceremony. Just recently (June 6, 2019), the Washington court found that proceedings were not conducted with “religious animus.” The Washington court closed that review by repeating its conclusions that neither free speech, free exercise, nor freedom of expression were infringed upon by the anti-discrimination law in question.

It seems likely that the Oregon court will make similar findings of the absence of religious hostility. Once the Oregon court has spoken on the matter in the way it is expected to rule, the questions of religiously hostile proceedings and selective enforcement will have been disposed of. That will leave the central constitutional questions of free speech and free exercise of religion for the U.S. Supreme Court to face which it effectively avoided in Masterpiece. The arguments on those issues made by the Kleins and Mrs. Stutzman in their existing court filings will be brought up again.

What are the Constitutional claims supporting the positions of faith-guided commercial providers who are asked to set aside their religious beliefs by customers who ask them to offer services contrary to their convictions?

The first basis for relief from the reach of the anti-discrimination laws is the claim that such laws violate the freedom of speech of the providers. At first blush, it may seem a stretch to regard baking a cake or arranging flowers as “speech.” However, federal Constitutional cases have long recognized that protecting speech is not limited to “the spoken or written word.” Engaging in conduct that expresses a point of view or idea is speech, and that expressive conduct is protected by the First Amendment.

In addition, and important for these cases, citizens cannot be forced to deliver a message provided by the government or another person. The oldest and best-known case recognizing this idea—called the “compelled speech doctrine”—is W. Va. State Board of Education v. Barnett. There the court said that public school children could not be required to salute the American flag or say the pledge of allegiance when to do so was against their religion’s teaching. The case, though it involved religious convictions, is usually viewed as a free speech case in which the court forbade the government from making citizens express a message contrary to their beliefs. Both wedding providers—the Kleins and Stutzman—maintain that Washington and Oregon laws are, in effect, requiring them to use their artistic expression to further a conjugal union against which they have serious religious reservations, or face a legal penalty. When their only other choice is to abandon the means to make a livelihood that they have chosen, the burden placed upon them is unconstitutional.

The second constitutional claim asserted by the two wedding providers is that their religious liberty under the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment has been denied to them by the anti-discrimination laws. Employment Division v. Smith, as already mentioned above, makes that claim more difficult. The Smith defendants consumed an illegal drug—peyote—as part of a Native American religious ceremony. They were dismissed from their jobs with a drug rehabilitation organization and lost a claim for unemployment compensation. They argued that their free exercise of religion was being infringed upon by Oregon.

The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, maintaining that “neutral” and “generally applicable” regulations could not be avoided by religious liberty claims. The result was probably right: religious ceremonies do not give participants the right to use controlled substances. But, unfortunately, the court’s opinion needlessly swept away an almost three-decades-old case which had established a sensible legal formula for addressing those instances in which religious convictions clash with existing legislation. That formula, called the Sherbert test after Sherbert v. Verner (1963), protected religious believers when the court found that a law or regulation “substantially burdened” their “free exercise of religion,” and that the government had no “compelling interest” at stake, or that it overlooked a “less restrictive” way to further its interest. Congress vigorously sought to counter the Smith decision by passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which required the restoration of the Sherbert test. However, the RFRA was ruled as only applicable to federal laws and regulations and not to the states and therefore does not help the Kleins and Stutzman.

Given the clear facts of these cases, and the uncertainty that remains for religious providers, it is high time for the court to hear and decide them. For the most part, the reasoning of Smith should be discarded and Sherbert reinstated. The court should not avoid these fundamental questions of free speech and free exercise of religion any longer. Rather, it must courageously set the cases for oral argument and address these key issues head on.

This article was originally published by The Institute for Faith & Freedom.

What if I told you that a community of American citizens who are defined by a set of subjective, self-disclosed, and self-defined characteristics and personal behaviors have designated at least 163 days of the calendar year to national and international observances honoring their choices? What if I also told you that the group made up only a fraction of the U.S. population? What would you think?

You would probably have two questions: who are these people and what gives?

“These people” are members of the LGBTQ+ syndicate and we’re right in the middle of their annual “LGBT Pride Month.” If you think 30 days of celebrating anal sex, leather bondage, gender confusion, self-mutilation, sadomasochism and other expressions of sexual anarchy might seem like more than enough, you’re wrong. They’re only halfway through the year and you’ve already missed:

Aromantic Awareness Week, Bisexual Health Awareness Month, Day of Silence, Harvey Milk Day, International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, International Non-Binary People’s Day, International Stand Up to Bullying Day, International Transgender Day of Visibility, Lesbian Visibility Day, National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, National GLBT Health Awareness Week, No Name-Calling Week, Pan Visibility Day, Pulse Night of Remembrance and Zero Discrimination Day.

Although you probably weren’t aware of these observances, don’t worry. There’s plenty more for you to engage with. Beginning at the end of June with the Stonewall Riots Anniversary, the rest of the year offers:

Ally Week, Asexuality Awareness Week, Bisexual Awareness Week, Celebrate Bisexuality Day, International Drag Day, International Lesbian Day, International Non-Binary People’s Day, Intersex Awareness Day, Intersex Day of Remembrance (or Intersex Solidarity Day), LGBT History Month, National Coming Out Day, Pan Pride Day, Spirit Day (annual LGBTQ awareness day), Trans Parent Day, Transgender Awareness Week, Transgender Day of Remembrance and World AIDS Day.

The only month not represented by any of these annual observances is August, which is kind of like a seventh inning stretch (only longer). After all, you’ve got to take some time off from all that observing!

A couple of the observances are understandable. International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the Pulse Night of Remembrance honor the homosexual victims of both events, none of whom deserved losing their lives to madmen.

But the rest? The most curious thing about all this is the inverse relationship of their minority status with their complete domination of the Gregorian calendar. Eleven million people have staked a claim to 45% of available days which seems, I don’t know, excessive. Imagine some version of the 10-member Glee Club appearing on every other page of the high school yearbook. For comparison, the nine largest world religions representing 5.5 billion people (or about 80 percent of the world’s population) observe 138 days combined. Christianity, the largest of the nine with 2.4 billion followers, only observes 12 days.

What gives?

A quick analysis reveals four main themes behind the designated LBGTQ+ observances: 1) to raise awareness, 2) to prevent bullying, 3) to honor select people or events and 4) to celebrate. If we break down the 35 observances I cite by theme, here’s what we find (some observances have multiple themes):

This tells us “what gives.” The majority of these observances (28 of 35) are to “raise awareness” and to “prevent bullying,” which account for 95 percent of designated days (156 of 163). The LGBTQ+ community is extremely concerned about educating the rest of us about their proclivities and suppressing any kind of bullying.

I will be the first to say that no one, including members of the LGBTQ+ community, should be bullied. Bullying is cruel and unloving, no matter the reason. “‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’” says Jesus. The only problem with the anti-bullying initiative is that none of those days make a clear and explicit distinction between bullying and moral disapproval. While bullying does happen and should be opposed, one wishes that the LGBTQ+ folks would heed their own advice and stop bullying people like Jack Phillips, Barronelle Stutzman, or Aaron and Melissa Klein.

As far as being “educated” or having my “awareness” raised, does anyone seriously think that we need more awareness of the LGBTQ+ crowd? They are represented in music, film, television, advertising, sports, science, federal government, state government, city government, the military, business, education, children’s programming, legal mandates, law enforcement, dedicated parades and, as of this writing, we have an openly gay (and “married”) man running for president of the United States.

It may be true that back in the 1960s, people who called the LGBTQ+ community home were an obscure minority. But that’s no longer true. What is true is that the over-indulgence of the queer-all-year calendar is no longer just about becoming visible, but about pushing an agenda. In fact, that’s what it’s been all along.

The LGBTQ+ movement isn’t just “educating” us; it is indoctrinating us. It isn’t just opposing bullying; it’s demanding no resistance at all. The 163 days are 163 days of impressions being made on you, your children and our society. It’s how advertising works.

“Because of this repeated ‘nudging’ effect, advertising achieves best results on market share when it maintains a continuous presence and a sufficient weight relative to competition. (We also know this to be largely true because brands, on average, gain or lose share of market when their ‘share of voice’ becomes larger or smaller.)”

As further evidence, in their 1989 book, “After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90’s,” Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen wrote, “Thus propagandistic advertising can depict all opponents of the gay movement as homophobic bigots who are ‘not Christian’ and the propaganda can further show them homosexuals as being criticized, hated and shunned…” (p. 152-153). Madsen earned “a doctorate in politics from Harvard and was an expert on public persuasion tactics and social marketing.”

The more impressions you receive, the more inclined you are to choose the advertised product over a competitor’s. In this case, the “competitor” is the Church. For example, Chai Feldblum, a lesbian and leading gay rights activist, a former law professor at Georgetown University, and an Obama-era appointee who served almost nine years as the Commissioner of the EEOC, said during an interview in 2006 that she was “having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win,” when religious and sexual liberties competed.

Fifteen years ago Albert Mohler, Jr., wrote,

“There can be no doubt that Christianity represents the greatest obstacle to the normalization of homosexual behavior. It cannot be otherwise, because of the clear biblical teachings concerning the inherent sinfulness of homosexuality in all forms, and the normativity of heterosexual marriage.”

If you are a believer and you (or your children) participate in any of these so-called “Pride” observances, you have been seduced by a lie. Refuse to participate any longer and “be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16).

No group needs 163 days of recognition. It’s all propaganda, part of a master plan for the LGBTQ+ consortium to acquire more power, pressure society into approving sexual anarchy and, ultimately, to destroy the Church.

IFI Fall Banquet with Franklin Graham!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

Written by Michael Foust

The U.S. Supreme Court handed religious liberty advocates a victory Monday when it vacated a lower court’s opinion that had ordered a Christian baker to design a cake for a same-sex wedding.

At issue was a ruling by the Oregon Court of Appeals that upheld a state decision forcing Aaron and Melissa Klein to pay a $135,000 penalty after they refused to design a cake celebrating a wedding for a lesbian couple. The Kleins eventually closed their business, known as “Sweet Cakes by Melissa.”

The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday issued a one-paragraph order vacating the judgment and sending it back down to the Oregon Court of Appeals.

“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the Court of Appeals of Oregon for further consideration in light of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n,” the unsigned order read.

Masterpiece was a 2018 ruling in which the Supreme Court sided with a Colorado baker who refused to design a wedding cake for a gay couple. Former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled the Colorado Civil Rights Commission demonstrated hostility toward religion when it ordered bakery owner Jack Phillips to design the cake.

The Kleins are represented by First Liberty Institute.

“This is a victory for Aaron and Melissa Klein and for religious liberty for all Americans,” said Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty. “The Constitution protects speech, popular or not, from condemnation by the government. The message from the Court is clear, government hostility toward religious Americans will not be tolerated.”

First Liberty had hoped the Supreme Court would hear oral arguments and expand on its Masterpiece decision. The high court, though, punted on that decision.

First Liberty filed suit after the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) ruled the Kleins had violated a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. The BOLI also handed down a $135,000 penalty. The Oregon Court of Appeals ruled against the Kleins, and the Oregon Supreme Court declined to take the case.

“The State of Oregon drove Melissa and Aaron Klein out of the custom-cake business and hit them with a $135,000 penalty, because the Kleins could not in good conscience employ their artistic talents to express a message celebrating a same-sex wedding ritual,” First Liberty’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court read.

The Kleins “opened and operated” their baker as an expression of their Christian faith,” the petition said. Further, they believe “God instituted marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”

They served all customers “regardless of sexual orientation.” They even had sold a cake to one of the lesbian complainants in the case for her mother’s marriage to a man. But they could not, the petition said, create a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding.

“The Kleins created these cakes, in part, because they wanted to celebrate weddings between one man and one woman,” the petition said. “The Kleins do not believe that other types of interpersonal unions are marriages, and they believe it is sinful to celebrate them as such.”

The state’s order violated the First Amendment, the First Liberty petition argued.

“Unless this Court enforces the First Amendment,” the petition said, “similar cases will continue to arise, as creative entrepreneurs are compelled, under the guise of public accommodations statutes, to participate in same-sex marriage rituals that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs, or – as the Kleins did – to sacrifice their livelihood.”

The Thomas More Society, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Cato Institute were among the groups that asked the Supreme Court to side with the Kleins. The attorneys general for 11 states also issued a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Kleins. Those states were Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.

This article originally posted on ChristianHeadlines.com

Written by Paul G. Kengor

One of the major U.S. Supreme Court decisions we’ll soon hear about is the Bladensburg cross case. This is the case in which secularists are demanding the removal of a large cross that memorializes veterans in the town of Bladensburg, Maryland because the cross resides on public property.

It’s crucial to realize that the cross wasn’t erected yesterday. The “Peace Cross” was constructed in 1925 in honor of 49 fallen veterans of World War I. It was designed by the Gold Star mothers and erected by the local post of the American Legion.

The case is known as The American Legion v. The American Humanist Association. The “humanists” argue that the memorial is unconstitutional because it’s fashioned in the shape of a cross on government property, and thus stands in violation of “separation of church and state”—a phrase, of course, not found anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. That language was expressed by Thomas Jefferson in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, and has been badly abused and misinterpreted ever since.

The fact that the cross is a cross is what makes it unacceptable. (Replace it with a statue of Barney the purple dinosaur and the humanists would withdraw their objections.) Secularists appeal to the First Amendment of the Constitution, which says, in part, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Obviously, allowing the old cross to continue to stand would not create a congressional “establishment of religion.” Anyone who thinks allowing this cross to remain means that the feds are conspiring to implement a national theocracy needs to have his head examined. As they invoke that select handful of words from the First Amendment, the secularists misleadingly do what they always do, namely—avoid the remainder of what the First Amendment says about freedom of religion: the government “shall not prohibit the free exercise thereof.” The American Legion and Gold Star mothers of Bladensburg exercised their freedom of religion in 1925 to honor their fallen brothers and sons. They naturally commemorated them with the cross that represents their faith.

The secularists, however, refuse to view it that way. And that’s quite unfortunate. They would never view themselves and their actions as hostile, but, in reality, that’s what they are. This is hostility toward religion. They likewise would never view themselves and their actions as intolerant, but, in reality, that’s likewise what they are. This is yet another remarkable example of their intolerance. How can people who preach diversity be so blatantly intolerant of the beliefs of others?

For a sense of the lack of respect, consider one of the worst affronts in the case:

A federal appeals court in October 2017 had ruled the cross unconstitutional, asserting that it “excessively entangles” the government with religion. That verdict was rendered in a 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, which argued that the Peace Cross “aggrandizes the Latin cross” and thereby constitutes a U.S. government endorsement of Christianity. So said a 33-page opinion written by Judge Stephanie Thacker and joined by Judge James A. Wynn Jr.

Thacker’s overall opinion demonstrated a troubling lack of historical-theological awareness. Worst of all was the insensitivity displayed during oral arguments. Thacker, an Obama appointee approved by the U.S. Senate in 2012 by a vote of 91-3, offered a truly novel solution. During oral arguments, Thacker asked the attorney defending the memorial: “What about … my suggestion of chopping the arms off?”

Yes, the judge offered a compromise: slice off the horizontal arms. You heard that right: slice off the arms from the cross of Christ.

Can you imagine? Can you picture it? Grab a photo of the memorial and do your own airbrush. How does it look?

For the record, the Peace Cross, mercifully, does not have a corpus. Thus, the demolition crew wouldn’t be sawing off the arms of Jesus. Nonetheless, imagine the precedent proposed. Presumably, using the Thacker Solution, similar large memorial crosses on government property could all be targeted for arm-removal.

In fact, that prompts this thought: in the interest of fairness and equality, why stop with crosses? Shouldn’t we thus also target the horizontal parts of the Star of David—another religious symbol—if we find them as similarly large memorials on government property? Should they be hunted down? Should they be permitted to remain only if we sawed off the horizontal parts? Of course, the star would no longer be a star, but apparently dismembering it would be a triumph in this greater good of not “entangling” government with religion.

Do we go down this road?

I pose a serious question to Judge Thacker and the secularists: Do you not see how your objections to the cross of Christ might be offensive? In the name of not offending, you’re offending. In the name of inclusion, you’re excluding. In the name of tolerance, you’re engaging in intolerance.

It isn’t like this cross was planted yesterday or is being scheduled for construction in 2020. It has been there for nearly a hundred years. It’s as much historical as spiritual. Can’t you leave it alone at least for that reason? This isn’t a bronzed statue of a Confederate general who whipped slaves on a plantation. This is a testimony to the faith of the men who died for their country in World War I—for peace. Do you not see the aggression in your actions? Why go on the offensive with bulldozers? Leave it alone.

If this was a giant Star of David on public land, I’d be the first to stand with a group of rabbis demanding that secularists back off and respect a century-old memorial. I will fight for the rights of every Christian and Jew and cross and Star of David. The same isn’t true for secular liberals. They pick and choose. They’re the first to harass, fine, sue, shut down, and toss in jail the Christian baker, florist, or marriage clerk. I will defend the liberty of a Muslim baker in Dearborn as well as a Christian baker in Colorado. I will defend the right of an Orthodox Jewish caterer to decline a wedding on the Sabbath just as I’ll defend the right of a Christian florist in Washington state to decline a same-sex wedding ceremony that violates the teachings of her faith and her freedom of conscience.

Far too many secular liberals, however, will not. To this day, Jack Phillips, the Christian baker in Colorado, is hounded with new legal challenges. Militant secularists will not back off from badgering him.

And yet, a colleague of mine who’s an attorney on religious-liberty cases tells me he’s unaware of a single case in which a same-sex couple has sued a Muslim baker for declining a same-sex wedding ceremony. Progressives will not pursue Muslims, even as Muslim bakers likewise openly refuse homosexual couples. They leave them alone. It’s a double standard they impose against Christians.

If they insist there’s no double standard, then let’s see it. Prove otherwise by having the decency to leave the Bladensburg memorial cross alone.

A version of this article first appeared at The American Spectator.

When Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992, his campaign strategist James Carville gave him the formula for success: Focus on the economy. In Carville’s famous words, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Today, President Donald Trump could easily campaign with a similar mantra, since many Americans are pleased with the economic uptick under his leadership.

But, in terms of a lasting legacy, in terms of societal impact, the real mantra should be, “It’s the courts, stupid.” You can be assured that Trump and his Republican colleagues have a good grasp on this already.

And now, with a strengthened majority in the U.S. Senate, the sky is the limit with the good they can do.

As noted (with great concern) by Jennifer Bendery in the Huffington Post, “With a newly strengthened Senate majority, Mitch McConnell can plow ahead with reshaping the nation’s courts.”

Yes, “McConnell has said all along that judicial confirmations are his No. 1 priority as Senate leader. That won’t change going forward.”

And this, in fact, is a major reason many of us voted for Donald Trump: U.S. Supreme Court appointees and, more broadly, federal court appointees at all levels. Transforming the courts was our No. 1 concern.

How much has been done already?

Bendery writes, “To date, the Republican leader has confirmed two U.S. Supreme Court justices, 29 circuit judges and 53 district judges. He’s confirmed so many circuit judges, many of whom are strongly anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ rights and anti-voting rights, and nearly all of whom are ideologues handpicked by the conservative Federalist Society, that 1 in 7 seats on the U.S. circuit courts are now filled by judges nominated by Trump.”

Some might say, “But this is not healthy. The courts will now become distinctly conservative. They’re supposed to be neutral and impartial.”

To the contrary, the goal is to get the courts back to where they’re supposed to be, namely, rightly interpreting our Constitution rather than creating new laws. Yet for decades, many of the courts have swung dangerously left, leading to rampant (and dangerous) judicial activism.

Judicial activism, in turn, has become a direct threat to our freedoms. (For Mark Levin’s now classic exposé, see here.)

A lengthy, 2013 article published by the Heritage Foundation gave three glaring examples of judicial activism whereby the courts were guilty of “Contorting the Text” (meaning the First Amendment), “Playing Legislator,” and “Abusing Precedent.” (For the liberal argument that it is conservatives who are the judicial activists, see here. For an effective rebuttal to this position, see here.)

Since 2013, we have seen the courts redefine the very nature of marriage (in 1,000 lifetimes, the Founders would have never envisioned this) as well as rule against fundamental freedoms of conscience and speech. And it was judicial activism that made abortion legal in 1973.

Sixty-million slaughtered babies later – far more than the population of Canada (about 38 million), even more than the population of England (about 55 million), and roughly equal to the population of Italy – our nation is still reeling from this unjust and unconstitutional ruling.

It’s about time we had a reformation in our courts.

More recently, what if the U.S. Supreme Court had ultimately ruled against Hobby Lobby? Against the Little Sisters of the Poor? Against Jack Phillips?

Back in 1962, without any legal precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court removed organized public prayer from our schools.

Fifty years later, on June 16, 2012, the Saturday Evening Post ran this story: “Atheists v. Evangelists: The School Prayer Decision of 1962.”

“50 years ago, school prayer was declared unconstitutional, causing Billy Graham to wonder if we were becoming a spiritually-bankrupt nation.”

The article begins with these simple but striking lines: “How much has America changed in the past 50 years? Imagine kids in American public schools now starting each day with a prayer.” (For my answer to the question of how much America has changed since the early 1960s, see here.)

Earlier in the year, Graham had warned Post readers that “if the Court decrees negatively, another victory will be gained by those forces which conspire to remove faith in God from the public conscience.

“American democracy rests on the belief in the reality of God and His respect for the individual. Ours is a freedom under law. But it is also a freedom that will evaporate if the religious foundations upon which it has been built are taken away.”

Of course, he was right, although he had no idea of just how radically the society would be transformed in the decades that followed.

As for prayer in the schools, from the founding of our nation until 1962, it never occurred to the courts that this was a violation of separation of church and state. It was judicial activism that made this landmark decision.

And even though the prayer itself was quite generic and any student could opt out of praying, it was the symbolism that mattered. Prayer no longer belonged in our schools.

All of which leads us back to where we started: It’s the courts, stupid.

Thank God President Trump is keeping his promise to nominate conservative justices – meaning, Constitutionalists – to the courts. Keeping this up for two more years (or, better still, 6 more years) could well be his greatest legacy, not to mention the greatest legal bulwark against the loss of our fundamental freedoms.

As for those who protest, “Trump and the Republicans have no right to do this!”, to the contrary, the American people elected them to office.

They are doing what we the people have empowered them to do.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.com.

What the heck is wrong with Denver attorney “Autumn” Charlie Scardina? Oh yeah, he’s delusional. He thinks he is or wants to be a woman. And he definitely masquerades as one. That’s not an excuse for his reprehensible act of going after Masterpiece Cakeshop baker Jack Phillips, but it may help explain it.

In June 2017, just after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take Phillips’ case regarding his refusal to bake a cake for a same-sex faux-marriage and in full knowledge that Phillips would refuse his request, Scardina called the bakery to try to order a cake with a blue exterior and a pink interior for the celebration of his futile quest to become a woman—something he erroneously calls a “transition.”

As Scardina knew he would, Phillips refused, so Scardina filed a complaint with the loathsome Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which has “issued a finding” in which it declares that “there is sufficient evidence to support” Scardina’s “claim of discrimination.”

And we’re off to the races. “Autumn” may find running in heels challenging.

Phillips did not “discriminate” against Scardina based on Scardina’s desire to be a woman or his choice to masquerade as one. Phillips refused to use his skills and labor to create a product he has never created and that would convey a message that violates his religious convictions. If Scardina, still adorned in all his inglorious fakery, were to request a cake to celebrate, for example, his parents’ anniversary, Phillips would create it and sell it to him. Why is the distinction between refusing to sell a type of product or refusing to create an offensive message or refusing to serve a type of event and refusing to serve persons so difficult for cultural regressives to understand?

A word about “transitioning.” Men and women don’t and can’t. Castrations on anatomically and biologically healthy men don’t turn them into women. They turn them into eunuchs. Inverting penises to turn into fake vaginas doesn’t turn men into women. Tracheal shaves, feminizing facial surgeries, cross-sex hormone-doping, and evening gowns don’t turn men into women. Sure, with multiple surgeries, lipstick, flowing hair, and elaborate costuming, men can create disguises more likely to deceive people, but they cannot transition from man to woman.

This effort to destroy the small business of a Christian baker who seeks nothing other than to live his life as an authentic Christ-follower is revolutionary. Many dark forces impel and sustain this science-denying madness. There is the sexual revolution that ushered in the notions that our bodies are only instruments for our pleasure; that bodies have no intrinsic teleology (and certainly not related to procreative potential); and that there are no absolute, transcendent, objective moral truths. Second-wave feminists taught that there are no substantive differences between men and women (well, except when they argued there are, and women are superior). Then came the “LGBTQ” revolution that taught us the lie that men and women are interchangeable when it comes to sexual partners. The old heresy of Gnosticism reared its ugly head. Gnosticism teaches that the human person is dualistic rather than an integrated, inseparable whole composed of body and soul. Add to this toxic stew the cowardice of Christians who should know, care about, and speak truth but now stand largely silent while the bodies of men, women, and children are being mutilated in Frankensteinian and futile experiments, and voilà, a revolution of historic proportions is upon us.

At the most fundamental level, this revolution constitutes rebellion against God and his created order. It’s yet another manifestation of man’s pursuit of disordered desires, including the desire to be like God, which are the desires that get humans into mess after mess. Some messes, however, are worse than others. This is among the worst.

And cultural regressives will brook no resistance. They demand that every man, woman, and child genuflect to all cultural manifestations of their madness. In our schools, in our leisure activities, in our language, in our restrooms and locker rooms, and one day in our churches, we will be made to pretend that men can become women—or else. Live and let live is definitely not their motto.

Remember the concerted effort to force Jack Phillips to bake multiple cakes with unholy, deceitful messages next time some cultural regressive scoffs at the suggestion that Christians are being persecuted. Remember this next time some cultural regressive says the “lgbtqqap” ideology affects only the persons who embrace it. Remember this next time an opportunity presents itself for you to speak truth and, instead, you feel like God is “leading” you to remain silent.

Isn’t it remarkable how often we Christians feel “led by God” onto the path of least resistance—you know, the same path everyone else is on—the wide, crowded path lit by thin strands of those tiny, bedazzling lights that illumine little?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Male-Attorney-Who-Pretends-to-Be-a-Woman-Goes-After-Jack-Phillips.mp3

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It has been an eventful term for the U.S. Supreme Court, which has provided many closely decided cases and ended with the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. For those interested in free speech and religious liberty, there have been plenty of decisions to keep track of and digest. Here is what you need to know.

Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission

The story is well-known. Jack Phillips, a Christian cake shop owner from Colorado, refused to create a cake for the same-sex “wedding” of two men. They filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which held that Mr. Phillips violated the state’s public accommodation laws. Much of the litigation centered around whether creating a wedding cake fell under the free expression protections of the First Amendment, but the Court punted on this argument, leaving it for a future case. Instead, the Court ruled for Mr. Phillips on two separate grounds.

First, the Commission did not employ religiously neutral standards when deciding Mr. Phillips case, and instead showed unwarranted hostility towards his Christian faith. One official on the Commission even referred to Mr. Phillips’ faith as “one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use.”

Second, the Court found that the Commission had used different standards for different bakery owners. An individual named Bill Jack (no relation to Jack Phillips) went to several bakeries asking them to create a cake with a message critical of homosexuality derived from the Bible and was—unsurprisingly—refused service. When complaints were filed, the Commission found that bakeries can refuse to make a cake with a message they deem to be derogatory.

The popular narrative is that this case was decided on narrow grounds and sets little precedent for future cases. However, Masterpiece has already proven to be more influential than that narrative suggests. Anti-religious animus by government officials is common in religious liberty cases, and there’s no better example than Arlene’s Flowers.

Arlene’s Flowers Inc. v. Washington

Similar to Jack Phillips, Barronelle Stutzman, a Washington florist, refused to offer her services for a same-sex wedding. However, in this case, when she refused to create a floral arrangement for a same-sex couple, it was not the couple who took action. Rather, the state’s attorney general, on his own initiative, filed a complaint against Ms. Stutzman, showing unusual hostility towards her religious beliefs. This led to the Washington Supreme Court holding that Ms. Stutzman engaged in unlawful discrimination. However, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the decision and remanded it back to the state supreme court to consider the decision in light of Masterpiece.

National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra

This case had less headline appeal than Masterpiece but will likely end up being the more influential in First Amendment jurisprudence. The Court found that California’s Reproductive FACT Act, which forced pro-life pregnancy centers to post disclosures about the state’s abortion services, to be a violation of the pregnancy centers’ free speech rights. The decision was important on several fronts. Most notably, the Court refused to create a lesser standard of First Amendment protection for “professional speech.” The argument was that the state should be given greater power to prevent and compel the speech of professionals (like doctors, lawyers, and mental health counselors) than the usual First Amendment protections would allow. But Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, criticized such “professional speech” doctrine as being a tool to suppress unpopular ideas or information. The decision may open possible litigation on the issue of so-called reparative therapy bans, which ban professional counselors from talking with minors about their unwanted same-sex sexual attraction.

In his concurrence, Justice Kennedy came down particularly hard on California for its intolerance of the pro-life viewpoint:

The California Legislature included in its official history the congratulatory statement that the Act was part of California’s legacy of “forward thinking.” But it is not forward thinking to force individuals to “be an instrument for fostering public adherence to an ideological point of view [they] fin[d] unacceptable.” It is forward thinking to begin by reading the First Amendment as ratified in 1791; to understand the history of authoritarian government as the Founders then knew it; to confirm that history since then shows how relentless authoritarian regimes are in their attempts to stifle free speech; and to carry those lessons onward as we seek to preserve and teach the necessity of freedom of speech for the generations to come.

Trump v. Hawaii

This case stems from then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s promise of a “Muslim ban” during the 2016 presidential campaign. Initially, President Trump signed an order that banned entry in the U.S. from seven predominantly Muslim countries regardless of visa status. However, after getting blocked by the lower courts because of its disproportionate effect on Muslims and because of several anti-Muslim statements from the Trump administration, the president issued a moderated version of the order. This time, the order did not outright ban travel from the seven countries but it did add extra scrutiny before people were allowed to enter the U.S. The final order was also backed by evidence that the nations with restricted access posed legitimate national security risks and were not just chosen based on anti-Muslim animus.

Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out that although five of the seven countries with restricted access were predominantly Muslim, the countries made up only 8% of the world’s Muslim population and were previously designated as posing national security risks. The decision continues the longstanding judicial deference to the Executive Branch on decisions affecting national security. The High Court also renounced the infamous Korematsu v. United States decision, which allowed the executive branch to establish internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II.

Janus v. AFSCME

This case is not just of interest for its First Amendment jurisprudence but also its close connection to Illinois politics. Illinois was one of the 22 states that allowed unions to charge nonmembers fees for the costs of collective bargaining with employers. Mark Janus, a government social worker from Springfield, filed suit against Illinois arguing that the government requiring him to pay a private organization like a union violated his First Amendment right to free speech and association. By subsidizing the union’s administrative costs, Janus argued that he was being forced by the government to support the union’s political activism. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in a 5-4 decision. Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the law “violates the free speech rights of nonmembers by compelling them to subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern” like tax increases or collective bargaining rights. One important distinction is that this ruling only applies to public sector unions, not to any in the private sector.

Rowan County v. Lund

One notable case that did not get the U.S. Supreme Court review comes from Rowan County, North Carolina, where the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal barred the opening prayer at county board meetings. The prayer was led by the elected commissioners, who took turns leading at each meeting. Three residents were offended by the prayers and sued the county. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the prayer policy as violating the Establishment Clause despite clear precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court allowing public prayers in Town of Greece v. Galloway. Unfortunately, the High Court denied cert (i.e., declined to review the lower court decision) on the county’s appeal, and the Fourth Circuit’s decision stands.

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On Friday night, Stephanie Wilkinson, owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, kicked out Sarah Huckabee Sanders and seven members of her family because Sanders works for the president. “Progressives”–once again demonstrating their inability to think analogically–believe this ill-treatment of Sanders and her family is analogous to the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

Once more for the obtuse among us, Jack Phillips didn’t refuse to serve homosexuals or kick them out of his bakery. He refused to create and sell a product for a type of event that violates his deeply held religious convictions. He served homosexuals regularly. The Red Hen restaurant refused to serve any product to a particular person and her family.

Written by Benjamin Smith

For decades now, sexual anarchists have declared June as LGBTQIA Pride Month, which is orchestrated in cities and towns across the nation with parades, drag shows and other revealing exhibitions. Of course, central to this leftist agenda is an aggressive push for political and cultural activism. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Jack Phillips case; a pro-family leader says Christians should respond with action and love.

Peter LaBarbera, the president of Americans for Truth suggests that this year’s Pride Month is taking on added significance in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Jack Phillips case. Justices ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission acted with hostility toward the cake baker’s religious beliefs concerning same-sex marriage. LaBarbera is hoping the High Court’s decision in the Phillips case will help to embolden Christians to share the Gospel message during Pride Month.

In a 7-2 decision the U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of Colorado baker Jack Phillips who was sued by a homosexual couple, Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, for declining to bake a wedding cake for their pseudo-wedding. While the decision is, indeed, a victory, a careful reading should dampen the celebration.

Phillips was appealing a decision reached by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission—a decision suffused with unmitigated religious hostility condemned by Justice Anthony Kennedy writing for the majority:

Phillips was entitled to a neutral and respectful consideration of his claims in all the circumstances of the case. That consideration was compromised, however, by the Commission’s treatment of Phillips’ case, which showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs motivating his objection. As the record shows, some of the commissioners at the Commission’s formal, public hearings endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust…. The comments thus cast doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the Commission’s adjudication of Phillips’ case.

It was refreshing to hear Justice Kennedy express proper condemnation of religious hostility and the anti-constitutional view that religious beliefs are prohibited from the public square, but what followed from Kennedy was troubling:

When it comes to weddings, it can be assumed that a member of the clergy who objects to gay marriage on moral and religious grounds could not be compelled to perform the ceremony without denial of his or her right to the free exercise of religion.  This refusal would be well understood in our constitutional order as an exercise of religion, an exercise that gay persons could recognize and accept without serious diminishment to their own dignity and worth. Yet if that exception were not confined, then a long list of persons who provide goods and services for marriages and weddings might refuse to do so for gay persons, thus resulting in a community-wide stigma inconsistent with the history and dynamics of civil rights laws that ensure equal access to goods, services, and public accommodations….

Petitioners conceded… that if a baker refused to sell any goods or any cakes for gay weddings, that would be a different matter and the State would have a strong case under this Court’s precedents that this would be a denial of goods and services that went beyond any protected rights of a baker who offers goods and services to the general public and is subject to a neutrally applied and generally applicable public accommodations law….

Any decision in favor of the baker would have to be sufficiently constrained, lest all purveyors of goods and services who object to gay marriages for moral and religious reasons in effect be allowed to put up signs saying “no goods or services will be sold if they will be used for gay marriages,” something that would impose a serious stigma on gay persons.

Constitutional lawyer and member of the Bars of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Supreme Court of Illinois, Joseph A. Morris, warns that Kennedy’s narrowing of the argument to a “question of procedure,” offers little judicial “light to free speech or free exercise jurisprudence”:

Justice Kennedy pretty much telegraphs that if the Commission had only been more circumspect in its language, and less obviously insistent on expressing disdain for people whose religious views do not accept the ‘‘dignity” of homosexual conduct or the “sanctity” of same-sex marriages, its decision would have been sustained instead of reversed…. [I]t is a convenient roadmap for the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (and other would-be thought police) to have their way the next time. Commissioners will just have to restrain their own self-expression a bit while they go about their business of suppressing the wrong, and compelling the correct, expression of others.

It’s troubling enough that Kennedy believes the government has the authority to prohibit acts because some individuals may perceive such acts as diminishing their sense of “dignity and worth,” but it’s worse still that Kennedy claims to know what those acts are and are not.

The great and powerful Kennedy proclaims that the refusal of church leaders to officiate at same-sex faux-weddings is hunky dory because he knows that such a refusal would leave homosexuals’ sense of dignity and worth intact. But what if homosexuals claim otherwise?

Evidently, Kennedy also knows that if lay Christians seek to live their lives—including their professional lives—in accordance with their religious convictions, the subjective, internal psychological health of homosexuals will be damaged. If the refusal of Christians to supply goods or services to homosexuals for their “weddings” damages their psyches sufficiently to warrant forcing Christians to contravene their own religious beliefs, what other acts would Kennedy mandate or prohibit in the service of homosexual self-esteem?

Many—this writer included—believe that no theologically orthodox Christian should be required to provide goods or services for an event that violates their religious beliefs. Whether they are engaged in creative arts or own companies that provide linens and chairs, Christians should be allowed to decline to provide goods or services for an event that the God they serve detests.

The Court compared the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s decision in Phillips’ case to the commission’s decision in the case of Mr. William Jack who had visited three bakeries to request cakes with religious messages about homosexuality:

He requested two cakes made to resemble an open Bible. He also requested that each cake be decorated with Biblical verses. [He] requested that one of the cakes include an image of two groomsmen, holding hands, with a red ‘X’ over the image. On one cake, he requested [on] one side[,] . . .  ‘God hates sin. Psalm 45:7’ and on the opposite side of the cake ‘Homosexuality is a detestable sin. Leviticus 18:22.’ On the second cake, [the one] with the image of the two groomsmen covered by a red ‘X’ [Jack] requested [these words]: ‘God loves sinners’ and on the other side ‘While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.  Romans 5:8.’

All three bakeries refused to make such cakes for Mr. Jack, so he sued and lost. Kennedy—who has a habit of contradicting himself—argued the following regarding the difference in the decision in favor of the three bakeries by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission as compared to its decision against baker Jack Phillips:

A principled rationale for the difference in treatment of these two instances cannot be based on the government’s own assessment of offensiveness…. [I]t is not, as the Court has repeatedly held, the role of the State or its officials to prescribe what shall be offensive…. The Colorado court’s attempt to account for the difference in treatment elevates one view of what is offensive over another and itself sends a signal of official disapproval of Phillips’ religious beliefs.

But don’t Kennedy’s references to “stigma,” “dignity,” and “worth” in his earlier advocacy of constraining “purveyors of goods and service” from refusing to serve homosexual “weddings” elevate one view of what is offensive over another? When Kennedy suggests that a refusal to serve a same-sex “wedding” is a stigmatizing act that diminishes the “dignity” and “worth” of homosexuals, isn’t he stigmatizing the theological beliefs that impel refusals?

In their dissent, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor argue that because the three bakeries that refused to bake cakes with biblical messages condemning same-sex marriage had previously made cakes with Christian symbols, they couldn’t be accused of discriminating based on religion. As further evidence that there was no religious discrimination at play in the three bakeries’ refusal, Ginsburg and Sotomayor argue that they “would have refused to make a cake with Jack’s requested message for any customer, regardless of his or her religion.”

The fact that the three bakeries were willing to bake cakes with religious symbols proves nothing about whether they were motivated to refuse Mr. Jack’s request by religious hostility. The use of Christian symbols has no necessary connection to religious devotion. Sometimes the use of religious imagery is a sign of religious intolerance, bigotry, mockery, and hostility. The recent Met Gala whose theme was religious imagery saw irreligious Hollywood starlets awash in religious imagery. Further, one can approve of some religious beliefs while detesting others.

The customer, Mr. Jack, was religious, he was motivated by his faith, and his requested message was distinctly religious. The refusal of the three bakeries to sell a cake with a religious message to a religious person motivated by his religion may, indeed, constitute religious discrimination.

The fact too that non-religious people may hold a view that Mr. Jack holds and which the three bakeries deemed “demeaning” does not make his view non-religious—or objectively demeaning.

Jack Phillips had on many occasions sold baked goods to homosexuals, so based on Ginsburg and Sotomayor’s reasoning, how could he be accused of discriminating based on “sexual orientation”? Well, here’s how they attempt to undermine the hard evidence that Phillips did not discriminate based on sexual orientation: They argue that the fact that the three bakeries would sell all their products to Christians was relevant because it shows their motivation for refusing Mr. Jack’s cake message was not religious bigotry but, rather, the “demeaning message.” In contrast, the fact that Mr. Phillips would sell almost all products to homosexuals was not relevant because the one product he wouldn’t sell (i.e., wedding cakes) proved he was motivated “solely by the identity of the customer requesting it.”

Whoa, Nelly.

What constitutes a “demeaning” act or message is subjective. Many people of faith would argue that a same-sex faux-marriage is itself demeaning to the celebrants and that participating in, facilitating, or serving such an event is demeaning. If same-sex faux-marriage is, in reality, abhorrent to God, saying so cannot be demeaning, though hearing that claim may be unpleasant.

Ginsburg and Sotomayor assert that the refusals of three bakeries to make cakes with biblical messages were not religiously discriminatory in that it was the offending message to which they objected—not the religious identity of the customer. But calling a biblical message “offensive” or “demeaning” is ipso facto evidence of religious discrimination. It’s not one’s religious “identity” per se that the First Amendment protects but one’s religious free exercise which for Christians is a holistic, comprehensive endeavor that encompasses, among other things, their work and their publicly expressed messages.

As an aside, isn’t calling Mr. Jack’s biblical views on marriage “demeaning” tantamount to calling Mr. Phillips’ views on marriage “despicable” as did one of Colorado’s Civil Rights commissioners whom Kennedy chastised?

Ginsburg and Sotomayor strain futilely to establish a moral distinction between what the three bakeries refused to do and what Mr. Phillips refused to do:

When a couple contacts a bakery for a wedding cake, the product they are seeking is a cake celebrating their wedding—not a cake celebrating heterosexual weddings or same-sex weddings—and that is the service Craig and Mullins were denied.

Ginsburg and Sotomayor make clear that Craig and Mullins were asking Mr. Phillips to supply a product for a particular event—a celebration of their union—which is a union that God detests. Phillips’ refusal was based on the type of event he was asked to serve—not the sexual identity of the customer.

Again, it was not the “identities” (i.e., sexual predilections) of the homosexuals that formed the basis of Phillips’ refusal. He would have refused to bake a wedding cake for a celebration of a homosexual faux-wedding regardless of the sexual orientation of the customer requesting it. If the heterosexual parents of a homosexual couple were the customers seeking to purchase a cake for their sons’ homosexual “wedding,” Phillips would have refused. He wasn’t refusing to serve homosexuals. He was refusing to use his business to serve a type of event that violates fundamental tenets of Christianity.

All cakes are not created identical. Just because all cakes are made with flour, butter, and sugar does not mean all cakes are the same kind of cakes. What makes a cake a wedding cake are not its ingredients or its design. What makes a cake a wedding cake (or birthday, anniversary, or Independence Day cake) is the type of event for which it is made.

For people of faith, a wedding is something. It has a nature that the law cannot change. A same-sex union may now be recognized in law as a “marriage,” but for theologically orthodox Christians, it is not and never can be a marriage, and the ceremony solemnizing it can never be a wedding. A U.S. Supreme Court decision can no more turn an intrinsically non-marital union into a marriage than it could turn a whole person into 3/5 a person. Craig and Mullins asked Jack Phillips to supply a product for a type of event for which he has never supplied a product: an anti-wedding.

Mr. Morris brings to the foreground yet another important question ignored in this case and rarely discussed in the public square of whether public accommodation laws violate the constitutional principle regarding freedom of association (or assembly):

The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which supplied the basis for the same-sex couple’s complaint and the Colorado Commission’s decision, is a rather extensive model of the genre, prohibiting the denial of a “public accommodation” to any individual or group on the basis of “disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, or ancestry.”

In a society characterized by freedom of association one would expect that people would be free to associate with, including do business with, anyone they chose, for any reason: Or not to do so, also for any reason.

We long ago agreed to abridge the freedom of association in order to prohibit discrimination on the basis of race and previous condition of servitude, in order to eliminate “the badges and incidents of slavery.” How long freedom of association must be abridged to achieve that end is an open question, clearly one of prudence confided to our national and State legislatures.

Over the years and decades, however, the discussion of when that end has been accomplished, and how to tell that it has been accomplished, has been abandoned, and has given way, instead, to an ever-expanding new list of categories in the service of which the freedom of association is to be further abridged.

In a healthy society one would think that the pressure would be toward finding a path to end the special restrictions needed to redress a grave and pervasive legal wrong (slavery) with persistent legal consequences (state-compelled segregation) and, in due course, restore the full and unfettered freedom of association—a condition in which government does not care and does not monitor with whom one associates and why, and does not compel private association for any reason.

Instead, our society now features incessant competitions by aggrieved groups to achieve highly-desired designations as “victim classes” to bring them within an ever-expanding list of categories of people with whom private association may be compelled and, thus, the freedom of association be ever further abridged.

As I say, nary a mention by the Court of Assembly / Free Association, although that, even more than the Religion and Speech clauses, is the freedom that is at stake in this case.

The anorexic thinness of Kennedy’s decision portends the future bloatedness of the ravenous “progressive” beast that gorges on constitutionally protected rights, often in the service of sexual deviance.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Troubling-SCOTUS-Decision-on-Cake-Baker.mp3

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In a 7-2 decision the U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of Colorado baker Jack Phillips who was sued by a homosexual couple, Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, for declining to bake a wedding cake for their pseudo-wedding. While the decision is, indeed, a victory, a careful reading should dampen the celebration.

Phillips was appealing a decision reached by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission—a decision suffused with unmitigated religious hostility condemned by Justice Anthony Kennedy writing for the majority…

READ MORE