Colorado opens new front in war against Christian baker

Targeted harassment.

A Colorado judge ruled this week a Christian baker must make cakes celebrating gender reassignments.

It’s the latest development in a prolonged campaign by transgender activists and state lawmakers to coerce Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips into creating cakes with messages that conflict with his religious beliefs.

“[A]nti-discrimination laws are intended to ensure that members of our society who have historically been treated unfairly, who have been deprived of even the every-day right to access businesses to buy products, are no longer treated as ‘others,’” said Denver District Court Judge A. Bruce Jones in his ruling. “This case is about one such product — a pink and blue birthday cake — and not compelled speech."

The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents Phillips, is not pleased.

“Jack Phillips serves all people but shouldn’t be forced to create custom cakes with messages that violate his conscience,” said General Counsel Kristen Waggoner. “Radical activists and government officials are targeting artists like Jack because they won’t promote messages on marriage and sexuality that violate their core convictions.”

Waggoner decried “the weaponization of our justice system to ruin those with whom the activists disagree.”

“The harassment of people like Jack,” she said, “has been occurring for nearly a decade and must stop. We will appeal this decision and continue to defend the freedom of all Americans to peacefully live and work according to their deeply held beliefs without fear of punishment.”

The ruling this week stems from a request Phillips received in 2017 from attorney Autumn Scardina.

“She requested a custom cake — pink on the inside, blue on the outside — reflecting her gender transition,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

Scardina submitted the order immediately after learning the Supreme Court would hear the baker’s appeal in a separate incident involving his refusal to make a cake celebrating a same-sex union.

Phillips declined Scardina’s request. The attorney then complained to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the same organization that sanctioned Phillips after he declined to make the same-sex union cake. (The Supreme Court ruled the commission showed anti-religious bias and hostility when it did this.)

Scardina’s attorney, Paula Greisen, maintains her client’s order was not part of a “setup.”

“It was more of calling someone’s bluff,” Greisen said.

In March 2019, “lawyers for the state and Phillips agreed to drop both cases under a settlement which still allowed Scardina to pursue a lawsuit on her own,” the Associated Press reports.

Scardina claimed later in a court filing that the denied request was for a birthday cake, not a cake celebrating the gender transition. The filing also accused Phillips of turning down the request, specifically because it came from a transgender woman.

“But her story has shifted,” the Wall Street Journal notes. “In her original complaint to the commission, she wrote that she’d told the bakery the design was ‘intended for the celebration of my transition from male to female.’”

The Colorado judge who ruled this week against Phillips certainly seems to be under the impression the case is about transgender rights, not a birthday cake.

It’s important to note Scardina also asked Phillips to make a second cake featuring Satan smoking a joint. Asked why Sardina wanted a Satan-themed cake, the would-be customer said the intention was to force the baker to see the “errors of his thinking.”

“Jack didn’t single Scardina out for being transgender,” Waggoner said. “He wouldn’t bake cakes with those messages for anyone.”

For reference, Phillips won’t even make Halloween-themed cakes. In fact, to avoid a repeat of what happened after he declined to make a cake celebrating a same-sex union, Phillips stopped making wedding cakes altogether, which was, by all accounts, his bread and butter. The New York Times once described his handiwork as actual art. Phillips's decision to stop making wedding cakes has led to a nearly 40% drop in business, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Based on the specificity of Scardina’s requests and the attorney admitting out loud the point was to make an example of Phillips, who already has gone to the Supreme Court over his right to deny service based on religious objections, it's clear the baker is being targeted. And the state of Colorado is an all-too-happy participant in this campaign of harassment.

It's well-known Phillips is Christian. It’s also well-known he won’t create anything that endorses something at odds with his faith. So, “customers” such as Scardina intentionally ask him to do things they know he won’t do, all with the intention of weaponizing the legal system against him. It’s a cruel and vindictive game, which the state of Colorado is more than happy to oblige. Asking Phillips to do things he likely won’t do is the entire point.

The baker himself explained recently in First Things that his declining to bake certain cakes is not about the customers but the messages he’s being asked to endorse.

“I’ll serve any person,” he wrote, “but I won’t communicate all messages. Serving people is merely about recognizing each individual as a person worthy of respect, made in the image of God. I’m not trying to force any person to see the world the way I do, or to embrace my beliefs about God and the Bible. If you want to reject Jesus and purchase a cupcake, go ahead. I’ll gladly sell you that cupcake, and a cup of coffee to go with it, maybe even engage in a conversation about our differences.”

He adds, “But asking me to draw on my creativity to communicate a message I believe is wrong? That’s asking me to stop being me. To change my own relationship with the Lord. To deny the deepest convictions of my heart, and pretend I haven’t learned the most difficult lessons of my life, or that they don’t matter. That’s not something any person has the right to ask of another. Or a command any government has the right to force one of its citizens to obey.”

Judge Jones sees it differently.

Hopefully, the Supreme Court, which will almost certainly hear this Colorado case later, doesn’t.