Friday, June 15, 2018

Wedding Cakes

The Supreme Court case, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), was decided on June 4th in favor of the cakeshop, by a 7-2 vote, 2 of the 4 liberal judges dissenting.

Here are the essential details:

In July 2012, Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, a gay couple who were planning to wed, entered Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado to order a wedding cake. At the time, Colorado law did not honor gay marriages; so, the couple had planned to travel to Massachusetts – where gay marriages were legal – get married there, fly home and celebrate their union with their family and friends; it was for this after-party that the couple wanted a special cake. Jack Phillips, the owner of the bakery, was a man of “sincerely held (Christian) religious beliefs,” and he refused to make the couple a cake, based on his religious belief that marriage was between a man and a woman. There was no discussion of a message or customization or even any decoration of the cake; the discussion never went beyond a gay couple wanting the cakeshop to make a wedding cake for them and the owner refusing.