Corporations lobby SCOTUS on Masterpiece case
Anticipating the Dec. 12 oral arguments from Colorado baker Jack Phillips, the Human Rights Campaign has convinced Apple, Amazon, Citi, and Marriott to sign their names to a friend-of-the-court brief that will be reviewed by the justices.
The Masterpiece Cake Shop case is viewed as a looming landmark decision after the controversial Obergefell decision in 2015, which delighted homosexual-rights supporters by finding an Equal Protection right for homosexual marriage in the U.S. Constitution.
“Businesses that are open to the public should be open to anyone and should not discriminate based on an individual’s identity,” a spokesperson for the HRC said in an Oct. 31 media call in which OneNewsNow participated.
“When they offer a good or service to the public,” the spokesperson continued, “that should be offered to anyone who is able to purchase that service, and there shouldn’t be an exception for wedding-related services.”
Yet the Colorado baker and others who have run afoul of liberal anti-discrimination laws have repeatedly insisted that they never turned away customers due to their “identify”– homosexual or otherwise. What they turned away, instead, was an order they refused to fill for moral reasons.
“If I was judging people, I wouldn’t allow them in my store,” Phillips (pictured above) told the left-wing hosts of “The View” in July, shortly after the high court announced it would hear the case, which began with a lawsuit in 2012.
Phillips went on state that he has also turned down orders for bawdy-themed bachelor cakes and Halloween cakes with evil-themed decorations.
That stance mirrors the policy of Blaine Adamson, a Kentucky print shop owner who turned down a t-shirt order for a gay rights parade. Sued by a local human rights commission, Adamson won his legal fight after telling the court he has turned down business from a strip club while he has fulfilled orders from homosexual customers in the past.
OneNewsNow reported in a 2015 story that a lesbian business owner came to Adamson’s defense, pointing out that her online print business could be forced, for example, to print anti-gay messages for the controversial Westboro Baptist Church. Yet that view is rare among homosexual activists – at least in public – who equate the Masterpiece case to a 21st century civil rights issue.
Just because the current culture suggests a man should be able to marry a man, and a woman should be able to marry a woman, the culture should not force an artist to participate in that event, says Robert Kuykendall of 2nd Vote.
“And that’s essentially what Jack Phillips is. He’s an artist and he expresses himself through his cakes,” he says, “And when it comes to being involved in a wedding, a wedding vendor does not provide just a service or provide a good to be picked up. They are intimately involved with an event that is more than just a simple business transaction.”
Regarding HRC and its corporate allies, Kuykendall says most Americans would be appalled to learn that these well-known corporations have joined with the homosexual lobbying group to fight a Christian baker in a landmark legal case that affects religious liberties.
“Essentially with this case, the Masterpiece Cakes case is a religious liberty issue,” he says. “And HRC, the LGBT left and these companies like Marriott, Apple and Citi, want to say you have to participate in a same-sex wedding, even if your religious belief says that marriage is between one man and one woman.”
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