The woke left makes it really tough to be a person of faith in today’s America.
Take for example Christian cake artist Jack Phillips, who owns and operates Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado.
They just won’t leave the poor guy alone.
The first time he was sued was when he refused to design a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. They were offered any cake in the display case but using his artistry to celebrate a gay wedding violated his religious beliefs.
When the Colorado Civil Rights Commission found Phillips guilty of violating state law, he appealed his case — eventually to the U.S. Supreme Court.
And he found himself the target of the woke left again.
On the same day in 2017 that the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would hear Phillips’ gay wedding cake case, attorney Autumn Scardina ordered a cake from him to celebrate her transition from male to female.
She even admitted that the high court’s decision to hear Philips’ gay wedding cake case prompted her to place the order.
Given the timing of Scardin’s gender transition cake order, her lawyer, Paula Greisen, was asked whether the cake order was a "setup." She claimed it was not.
"It was more of calling someone’s bluff," she said.
A year later the high court ruled 7-2 that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had erred by not even considering Phillips’ First Amendment rights to freely exercise the tenets of his religion when it ruled against him.
Tom Jipping, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told Newsmax that cases like these aren’t true controversies — they’re just meant to intimidate.
"These lawsuits aren’t necessarily genuine legal conflicts that the courts need to resolve," he said. "These lawsuits are part of an intimidation strategy. So whether they win or not, gay rights activists are using these kind of lawsuits to, in effect, threaten businesses."
Jipping explained that unfortunately, Phillips’ previous Supreme Court victory was only partial, therefore it’s not necessarily precedent for his new case.
"It was a lot narrower than most people think it was," he said. "It was based on pretty shocking evidence that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was overtly hostile to religion when they considered his case. It wasn’t broader than that. It didn’t change the underlying law."
Jipping described Phillips’ case as “a clash between a First Amendment right (to practice one’s religion) and a civil right (to be free from discrimination)."
The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case this term that appears to be closely on point with Phillips’ case: 303 Creative v. Elenis. And it was addressed during a Heritage Foundation virtual roundtable discussion in late September.
Similar to Phillips, Lorie Smith, the owner of 303 Graphics, a graphics design firm, declined to design a wedding website for a same-sex couple, citing her religious beliefs.
"The court will now take up her case with a slight twist. The court has declined to consider Lorie Smith’s Free Exercise (of religion) challenge," noted John Malcolm, Heritage vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government.
"But what they will take up is her claim that this law violates her free speech rights" — another right guaranteed under the First Amendment.
Jipping noted that business owners that are targeted by LGBT activists are ultimately left with two choices.
"If the strategy is to sue businesses that don’t comply with your sexual identity, the choices are either go out of business or fight back, "he said.
And in Phillips’ case it’s important to fight back if we’re going to retain our values as a country.
The Pilgrims set sail for the New World in September 1620, seeking something that 17th century Europe failed to offer — religious freedom.
In September 1789, 169 years later almost to the day, James Madison drafted the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, which collectively became known as the Bill of Rights.
The same religious freedom the Pilgrims sought is embodied in the very first of those amendments, which begins, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . "
In his 1941 State of the Union address, Franklin Roosevelt identified four essential human rights that should always be protected: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
Two years later those rights were immortalized in Norman Rockwell’s "Four Freedoms" series of paintings.
If we have any interest in retaining our identity — that which makes us uniquely American — we need to get back to basics, back to our roots.
We have to fight back.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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