Remember my post about when homosexualists come to destroy your Christian business? HERE
Now there is this!
At Town Hall I saw that someone is fought back.
Colorado Double Standard: Bakers Should Not Be Forced to Make Anti-Gay Cakes
Bill Jack wants to make one thing perfectly clear: Bakers should not be forced to make a cake that would violate their conscience or freedom of expression.
Jack, of Castle Rock, Colo., is making national headlines over an experiment he conducted in the wake of attacks on Christian business owners who refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages.
Last year, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled that the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood unlawfully discriminated against a gay couple who wanted a wedding cake. Jack Phillips, the owner of the cake shop, is a devout Christian, and his attorneys argued that to force him to participate in the gay wedding would violate his religious beliefs.
The Civil Rights Commission saw it differently.
So if Christian bakers who oppose gay marriage are compelled under law to violate their beliefs – what about bakers who support gay marriage? Would they be compelled to make an anti-gay marriage cake? [Who wants to make a bet?]
Jack, who is a devout Christian, asked three bakeries to produce two cakes – each shaped like an open Bible.
On one side of one cake he requested the words, “God hates sin – Psalm 45:7.” On the other side he wanted the words, “Homosexuality is a detestable sin – Leviticus 18:22.”
On the second cake he asked them to write another Bible verse: “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us – Romans 5:8” along with the words “God loves sinners.”
And finally, Jack wanted the bakers to create an image – two grooms holding hands, with a red “X” over them – the universal symbol for “not allowed.”
Now if you read the national news accounts of Jack’s experiment – you would’ve read that he wanted gay slurs written on the cakes. But that wasn’t true.
According to the commission’s own report, there’s no mention of Jack using any gay slurs – unless you consider Bible verses to be gay slurs.
Mark Silverstein, the legal director for Colorado’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, accused Jack of wanting obscenities written on the cakes. [Figures. It’s the ACLU.]
“There’s no law that says that a cake-maker has to write obscenities in the cake just because the customer wants it,” he told the Associated Press.
Does the ACLU consider the Bible to be obscene?
As you probably guessed, the bakeries rejected Jack’s request for what some would call “anti-gay” cakes.
“If he wants to hate people, he can hate them not here in my bakery,” Azucar Bakery owner Marjorie Silva told 7NEWS. She called the writing and imagery “hateful and offensive.”
So Jack filed a discrimination complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission – just as the gay couple did in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.
Using the commission’s logic – if a Christian baker is forced to violate his beliefs, shouldn’t all bakers be forced to violate theirs, too?
Absolutely not, says the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
It ruled that Azucar did not discriminate against Jack based on his creed. It argued that the bakery refused to make the cakes because of the “derogatory language and imagery,” The Denver Channel reported.
Jack told me it’s a double standard – pure and simple.
“I think it is hypocritical,” he said. “It’s unequal treatment before the law. The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act is being used to coerce businesses to participate in events that violate their consciences.”
Jack said he decided to conduct his experiment to prove the Colorado law was “only being applied to Christian business people.”
[NB] “Christians need to understand that this is the state of Christianity in the United States,” he said. “We are now second-class citizens. Our free speech is being censored.”
[…]
Read the rest there.
This is coming to us, my friends. It’s coming fast, too.
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Isn’t this just an extension of the “prejudice plus power” line of thought? Since there are more Christians than homosexuals, and more Christians have more power than homosexuals, it is only possible for Christians to be bigots. Because homosexuals are the minority and they do not have power, it is impossible for them to be bigoted. Hence their exoneration by the commission.
But then again, this redefinition of bigotry strikes all rational folk as ridiculous. Only those intellectuals who, as Dr Kreeft says, are so “much better at hiding from themselves as ordinary people” can somehow wrap their mind around such a position.
The American Conservative has an interesting interview with a “closeted” Christian professor from one of the country’s elite law schools. The professor has some insights into how Christians need to approach the coming marginalization/persecution.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-post-indiana-future-christian-religious-liberty-gay-rights/
This issue is going to divide families and Churches. I also have little hope that the GOP will resist “going rainbow” once gay marriage is the law of the land. Still, it is a little frightening that the homosexual lobby seems to have the deep pockets and friends in power. You would have no power over me if it wasn’t given you from above…
The attorneys could make a (bad) argument against the first cake, but the second is very benign. I wonder if they removed the no gay marriage logo if they would have refused as well.
Very fast, Father. I anticipate that all real Catholic bloggers will be forced to stop blogging on anything like this and references to the Bible as soon as the Supreme Court passes ssm.
I am really weary of Catholics who are in denial, as this ruling will split parishes, even dioceses.
We shall clearly see who are the Faithful.
The day will come when homosexuals use violence against those who oppose the agenda. We must all be prepared to face death in the coming years. It’s coming, and it’s going to be bloody. Are you prepared for red martyrdom?
This is a very frightening prospect as the overtones are so familiar to the treatment of Jews in 1930’s Germany. It is coming here very quickly, and people are falling away and will fall away from the faith in droves.
I am an Easter person though, so I know that my Redeemer lives. He can fix this, because there is no mess too big for Him. Stay strong brethren, and continue to expose the hypocrisy. St. Thomas More, pray for us.
“Absolutely not, says the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.”
Whaddaya bet most of the fine folks on the CCRC believe there are *no* absolutes? Hmmm?
MSM
Blatant hypocrisy aside, wonder if leaving out the X’ed out sodomite union ideogram would have been enough. IOW, the solution I pondered (though I like Fr. Z’s as well) was sort of the inverse:
Take their business by all means. Have a no exceptions policy of choice Bible verses on all product. Leviticus 18:22 and 1 Corinthians 6 (and 7) if not Mark 10:6-9 and Matthew 19:4-6. Not necessarily even the verses themselves but just the citation.
No self-disrespecting sodomite is going to want that on their pictures or cake and their deception will be exposed.
Kudos to Bill Jack for courageously doing this test and revealing what’s really going on. It would be nice to see experiments of the same kind in other states, as well, to really show the hypocrisy of the LGBT rights movement.
That the ACLU should cavil at obscenities, of all things, is truly front-page news.
The liberal front range of Colorado has been a ‘liberal’ (immoral) stronghold for some time now. Colorado voted to approve abortion before Roe v Wade for example. These people legalized pot! They approve of all sorts of immorality. There is BIG big money to fund the homosexual agenda in the state. The prosecuting attorney in the case of the baby cut from her mother’s womb and then proceeded to die did not bring a murder charge…why not? He is a pansy in the pocket of PP and NARAL. Do not want to do anything to limit a woman’s ‘right’ to kill her unborn child so when an unborn child is murdered before birth for any reason, that life has no protection under the ‘law’.
CCRC is in a state of mental disorder.
Are there any Muslim bakeries? I would like someone to go to one and order a ssm cake and see what happens. Go to confession first…
Lovely how Bible verses are now referred to as “obscenities” (!!!) and “derogatory language”…
How long until they proscribe the Bible and remove it from circulation?
Brave New World!
Great credit is due to Mr Jack and he is a fine example to us all. I wonder what would have been the reaction if some relevant passages from the Koran had been considered for placement on top of a cake?
The merits of the question aside (what more is there to be said?), that’s a pretty fluid rendering of Leviticus 18:22 (in the Vulgate, “cum masculo non commisceberis coitu femineo quia abominatio est”).
It’s also a pretty distorted translation of the excerpt from Psalm 44/45:8 (not 7): “Thou hast loved justice, and hated iniquity: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” (D-R) “You love justice and hate wrongdoing; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellow kings.” (NAB). Cf. “Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness….” (KJV). The subject of the first stanza is not “God,” but the righteous ruler to whom the Psalm is addressed (one could argue the point, I suppose, based on the prophetic character of the psalms, but that’s ticky tacky).
Sorry I saw this so late. Mr. Jack gets an A for heart, but a D- for experimental design. In any well-constructed experiment, the goal is to change only one variable at a time. In this case, he changed at least two, so confounded any experimental results. In the original case, the cake for the homosexual “marriage” was a celebratory cake that supported their travesty of marriage. That is two variables: celebration and support for “marriage.” Mr. Jack changed both variables: his cake was certainly not celebratory in nature and it was anti-homosexual. In order for this to be a real experiment, he should have only changed one or the other variable.
Here is how he could have done it and had a much stronger case: ask the bakers to bake a traditional wedding cake with a man and woman statue at the top of the cake with the lettering from Matthew 19:15
“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh.”
Now, if they refused this, then this is clearly discrimination on religious grounds. Let’s be clear, if the idiots in power refuse to accept the definition of marriage in Christ’s own words, then they have no right to the name, Christian, and should be treated like the quisling tax-collectors they are.
As it is, Mr. Jack’s cake was, clearly, intended to condemn homosexual “marriage” using Scriptural references. There was nothing celebratory about it. It was, condemnatory, clearly, so it is not a mirror-image test of religion, only. He flipped the switch on both celebration and support. In my scenario, the baker would have been forced to admit that he does not accept marriage as given from the mouth of God. This, then would have struck at the very heart of the matter: how is marriage to be viewed – as, primarily, a religious act or as a civil act? He could have even, instead of using Bible verses, made an appeal to Natural Law in the quotes. The point is that homosexuals must, by necessity, reduce marriage to a man-made artifice. That is how they want it viewed so that mere men can be hood-winked into treating this as a man-made discrimination case. As long as they can get God out of the picture (or even Natural Law) the sky’s the limit. God has the right to discriminate in the nature he made and owns. So, I’d like to see the ACLU file a law suit against God. No, they will simply either try to change the nature of God or pretend that He doesn’t exist. They will do anything to make man the final arbiter of truth.
“According to the commission’s own report, there’s no mention of Jack using any gay slurs – unless you consider Bible verses to be gay slurs.”
That is exactly how they interpreted the condemnatory nature of the quotes. They see God as a sunshine God perpetually smiling at people. That is the result of allowing God to be defined as unconditional love. Many people hear that as God’s unconditional permissiveness. I don’t recall the use of the term, “unconditional love,” any time before the 1960’s. If love had been properly defined to them, that love is attached to truth and the good, then there would have been less of the tendency to try to argue with Scripture.
In any case, don’t get me wrong, I am not condemning Mr. Jack’s actions. Mr. Jack meant well, but he set himself up by his poor experimental design, although his heart was in the right place. I wish he had done the experiment correctly, the first time. It would have been more subtle, but it would have gone a lot farther in exposing the hypocrisy.
The Chicken
Chicken,
For all that I understand your point, I must disagree with you. Your argument seems to be that Jack’s experiment went too far by requiring particular content on the cake. You’d agree to discrimination had the request been less obviously opposed to same sex couples. I think you’ve set the wrong standard.
It’s not a question of whether the content on the cake might be offensive to someone or not. We have every reason to believe that almost anything on a cake that isn’t supportive of “gay marriage” will be construed as a slur. The question is whether a customer may demand that any vendor may be required to bake a cake as requested, regardless of religious sentiment.
Mr. Jack’s effort aimed to prove that the Courts are not making these decisions based on fair or equal treatment under the law; these decisions are being based on an attitude that clearly holds a prejudice against religious sentiment.
If they didn’t have a problem with religious ideals, they wouldn’t have a problem with something on a cake.
Thank you for the link chantgirl. The interview is very eyeopening.
I thought his opinion about how the various Bishops react to these situations within their diocese very interesting.-especially how it may affect any possible case in the courts.
Titus,
I have read neither the text of the “discrimination complaint”nor the Commission’s “report”, but as far as this article goes, I am not sure anyone is saying that those are translations: the ambiguity may lie in Todd Starnes’s uses of “another” and the plural “verses”. That is, ‘cake 2’ has a quotation from and citation information for one verse, while ‘cake 1’ has citation information for two other verses and two comments, one relating to each of the two verses indicated.
I’m not sure in what sense you are using “ticky tacky”, since the Christological exegesis of Psalm 44/45 is a traditional commonplace (C. S. Lewis devotes several interesting pages to it in ch. 12 of his Reflections on the Psalms), but the ‘cake 1’ comment need not even implicitly address that – for surely, if the person addresses “hatest wickedness” (KJV verse 7) and “therefore God […] hath annointed thee”, this seems inescapably to imply that God hates wickedness, too (indeed, in the first place).
The comment on the Leviticus verse seems clearly to allow the exact sense in which “Homosexuality”is being used in it to be defined by the content of the verse (as you quote it, “cum masculo […] coitu”.
Supertradmum writes, “Are there any Muslim bakeries? I would like someone to go to one and order a ssm cake and see what happens.”
Steven Crowder has done this and posted filmed excerpts from his attempts in several of the Muslim bakeries he approached: the post about it on his site is dated 2 April (in it, he writes, “I taped this video a long time ago but due to audio corruption issues, was never able to upload it. Now that my in-house whizz kid, Jared was able to salvage the footage, I am passing it on to you”) and the film is on YouTube.
My apologies for the typo “addresses” for “addressed”, the misspelling of “anointed”, the sloppy spacing, and the unclosed parenthesis!
“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”
Pope John Paul II
In Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites, they are an Easter people and Salve Regina is their song (precisely not abandoning themselves to despair!).
This deserves repeating, as it is the principle in contention. “The point is that homosexuals must, by necessity, reduce marriage to a man-made artifice. That is how they want it viewed so that mere men can be hood-winked into treating this as a man-made discrimination case. As long as they can get God out of the picture (or even Natural Law) the sky’s the limit.”
Chickens may not have lips, but are excellent marksmen!
And this as well, “We shall clearly see who are the Faithful.”
Speech that is “hateful and offensive” to the State is out of bounds. Speech that is “hateful and offensive” to God is compulsory.
The clear message is that God has no rights. The State has usurped His place as the absolute subject of rights.
Anita Moore, O.P.- Yes, it’s pretty rich of the ACLU considering they have sued public libraries for blocking porn to patrons. http://www.christianpost.com/news/aclu-sues-wash-public-library-for-restricting-access-to-porn-68652/
My guess is that the ACLU would not have an issue with a customer asking a baker for a naughty cake for their bachelorette party.
One wonders how the progressive, atheistic, secular, materialistic, nihilistic left, (did I omit anything), would reply to this, “Why is hatred wrong? If religion is just an opinion, then claiming that hatred is wrong is also just your opinion. It hurts people? Why is that wrong…? What is special about people? ” And so on.
I don’t really suppose this line of questions will bring anyone to reason. The science is settled, and reason has been shoved aside by ‘critical thinking’
Most of the people who got really nasty about promulgating and enforcing Prohibition were not teetotalers themselves. They saw no reason why they shouldn’t write exceptions into the law for people like Congressmen, so that they could import “medicinal” Scotch from Scotland; and they saw no reason why ordinary voters shouldn’t just lump it.
Similarly, it would seem that most of the people threatening the lives of Christians are not people with same-sex attractions and lifestyles, but rather, heterosexual people who love being tyrants and busybodies.
I will not eat, I will not even touch a piece of food that someone was forced to cook. (I would even walk out of the building, I don’t want to tempt fate).
Don’t piss off people who handle your food.
Interestingly, the baker in question is a Catholic who supports SSU.
And yes, the bakers in Dearborn, MI have been filmed refusing to provide a wedding cake for a SSU. No one will picket them because they are terrified of Muslims. Christians are not practicing beheadings and defenestration.