While we were on pilgrimage, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) held forth its opinion in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (CCRC), popularly known as the “anti-gay bakery case.” I would like to revisit it now, because the popular views of the court’s ruling (both for and against) were so misinformed as to be unintelligible, and to consider what this case portends with respect to the ongoing crisis of incivility.
First, to the facts of the case. It is important to understand that what I write in this paragraph is not an opinion of mine or anyone else. The facts of this case were never in dispute: neither the plaintiff nor the defendant disagreed about them. Those facts were: Mr. Phillips was a Colorado baker who makes both normal, daily bakery items and custom-ordered designs. Mssrs. Craig and Mullins were a homosexual couple living in Colorado and planning to get married in Massachusetts, and they went to Phillips’ Masterpiece Cakeshop to order a custom cake to celebrate their impending nuptials. Phillips refused to create such a cake, due to his religious beliefs that marriage was only between a man and a woman. Phillips admitted he had no religious obligation to refuse them normal service, and offered any off-the-shelf product to his customers. Mssrs. Craig and Mullins filed a civil complaint before the CCRC contending that Phillips violated Colorado’s law against discrimination. The CCRC held Phillips in violation of the statute and fined him.
SCOTUS held for Phillips, the plaintiff, voiding the penalties applied to him by the CCRC under Colorado law. Conservatives of various stripes hailed this as a victory for personal religious liberty; progressives cited it as a legitimization of hate. Most news coverage highlighted these viewpoints, even though both views were wrong. Let me explain.
The plaintiff’s case relied heavily upon freedom of speech, and only secondarily on freedom of religion. Phillips’ argument was that making a custom cake was artistic expression (already held to be freedom of speech by SCOTUS), and he could not be compelled to express a belief (gay marriage) he did not hold simply because his services were for sale. While all the opinions discussed this issue, it was not the basis of the decision. Writing for the 7-2 majority (an important point, that), Justice Kennedy never resolved the discrimination vs. religious liberty issue, although he did concede that freedom of speech was at risk. What he focused on was the CCRC ruling, or more specifically, what the CCRC did and said in making that ruling. This is where it gets very interesting.
Citing the transcripts of the CCRC hearings, Kennedy found that the commission–which is responsible for protecting against all unjust discrimination, including anti-religious discrimination–had in fact engaged in anti-religious hostility. Commissioners “endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, implying that religious beliefs and persons are less than fully welcome in Colorado’s business community.” One commissioner “even went so far as to compare Phillips’ invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust.”
I mentioned the outcome was 7-2. Unlike some of the controversial 5-4 SCOTUS decisions recently announced, Masterpiece Cake shop’s majority included Justice Kennedy (who established Gay rights in his former majority opinions) along with Justices Breyer and Kagan! The last two published a concurring opinion which emphasized that it would be ok for a state to punish the baker’s refusal, but in this case the state had engaged in religious hostility. Thus this aspect was not narrow, and the outcome even more striking.
Contra much public reporting, this case neither established a religious exemption for behavior nor legalized hate. What it did do was more important, in my opinion. SCOTUS held that suggesting religious believers, even individual ones, cannot express and act on their views in public is a form of anti-religious bigotry. Further, suggesting “religious people” are inherently no different than Nazis or slave holders is inappropriate. One can hear these arguments made regularly on social media. It is heartening to know that in the United States, such views are beyond the pale, and subject to civil sanction.
Civility demands we not question each other’s motives. Everyone is free to bring ideas forward for consideration, and those ideas will fail or succeed based on the merit in them. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., hoped for a nation where one was not judged by the color of one’s skin, but on the content of one’s character. It goes without saying our ideas should not be judged by the religion (or irreligion) of whoever proposes them, but by the quality the ideas possess.
An interesting case of how a community can be litigating and make an elephant out of a mosquito.
Talking about mosquito: are these insects a pest along Laguna de Chapala (and prehaps Ajijic)?
All your experiences are most interesting reading!
I earlier told folks I had not experienced much in the way of mosquitoes around lakeside, but being here almost two years has convinced me that the closer you are to the lake, the more mosquitoes you encounter. Screens solve much of the problem in your casa, but you need to use repellent when eating out at restaurants. While diseases like Dengue are a possibility, they are also a rarity, so it is more of a nuisance than a real problem.