The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that protecting the white man’s God is more important than protecting the rights of actual human beings because—according to the highest court in America—Jesus has feelings, too.
In a 7-2 ruling, the court ruled in favor of Masterpiece Cakeshop, a Colorado bakery that refused to sell a cake to a same-sex couple in 2012. Although the Supreme Court has recently sided with the secret gay agenda, Monday’s narrow ruling said that the devoutly Christian owner of the bakery was treated unfairly by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission because his stupid bigoted beliefs are protected by the First Amendment and therefore shouldn’t be called stupid.
Even if they are stupid.
Which they are.
In the majority opinion (pdf), Justice Anthony Kennedy said that it was uncalled for and ultimately mean when a Colorado Civil Rights Commissioner said: “Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history. ... And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to—to use their religion to hurt others.”
Kennedy mentions that none of the other commission members objected to this remark, explaining that the statement was prejudicial and hurtful. Six other justices agreed that religious liberty should supersede the protected rights of minorities because the staunchly held beliefs of people who were called by God to make desserts would all disappear if they were forced to treat everyone with a modicum of respect and equality.
Bakery owner Jack Phillips stated that “God’s intention for marriage from the beginning of history is that it is and should be the union of one man and one woman.” But the Supreme Court obviously thinks that Phillips should be able to discriminate based on the shit he made up in his head as long as he believes it’s what God wants. Basically, SCOTUS has ruled that calling a bigot a bigot is unconstitutional if the bigot’s actions are endorsed by Jesus; an invisible man in the sky; or anyone who believes that mixing sugar, flour and eggs can cause people to switch sexuality. It’s right there in the Bible.
Aside from the concurring opinions protecting pro-Jesusites from being as bigoted as they please, Kennedy also wrote that it was OK for Masterpiece Cakeshop to discriminate because bakeries in Colorado discriminate all the time, which seems to undermine the entire fucking point of the Supreme Court—to right wrongs by setting precedent.
All of the concurring justices mentioned the fact that three other Colorado stores refused to decorate cakes with words, phrases or pictures that they felt were offensive, but Masterpiece was not allowed to do so. While it seems petty, the “Why can’t I be racist, too?” defense has a long-standing legal precedent dating back to when the first slave arrived in America and some white man said, “I gotta get me one of those!”
In fact, much of the opinion referenced the example of customers who were denied two cakes by other bakeries that weren’t punished. In one of those cases, the customer requested an anti-gay cake with two groomsmen holding hands, with a red “X” over the Bible. The fact that other businesses denied that order but were not punished by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was evidence, according to the majority opinion, that Masterpiece Cakeshop was being unfairly persecuted for their religion.
But in her dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that the gay couple denied by Masterpiece “mentioned no message or anything else distinguishing the cake they wanted to buy from any other wedding cake Phillips would have sold.” Ginsberg added:
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. ... What matters is that Phillips would not provide a good or service to a same-sex couple that he would provide to a heterosexual couple.
The ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission overturns the lower court’s decision in this case but does not maintain that all businesses have the right to discriminate against whomever they choose if they do so on the grounds of their First Amendment rights. What the Supreme Court is saying is that it’s not fair to call a bigot a bigot because ... that’s just mean.
SCOTUS essentially ruled that people who hold racist, homophobic or otherwise prejudiced beliefs should never be treated the exact same way they treat other people, which I can understand, because if white people were treated the way they treat everyone else ...
Never mind.