Am I the only one who believes that the homosexual lobby would find more acceptance if they’d just leave people who don’t agree with their lifestyle and beliefs alone?

California court rules in favor of Christian baker who refused to bake cake for lesbian wedding

Jon Brown | Sunday, October 23, 2022

A California court ruled in favor of a Christian baker Friday following a years-long legal battle after she refused to bake a custom cake for a lesbian wedding in 2017, citing her religious beliefs.

Text of the decision: Department of Fair Employment and Housing v Cathy’s Creations, Inc dba Tastries

“We applaud the court for this decision,” Thomas More Society Special Counsel Charles LiMandri said in a statement. “The freedom to practice one’s religion is enshrined in the First Amendment, and the United States Supreme Court has long upheld the freedom of artistic expression.”

Cathy Miller, a cake designer who owns the popular Tastries bakery in Bakersfield, California, won what her lawyers at the Thomas More Society called “a First Amendment victory” when Judge Eric Bradshaw of the Superior Court of California in Kern County ruled against California’s Department of Fair Housing and Employment, which had brought the lawsuit against her.

Miller was subject to multiple lawsuits after she referred a lesbian couple to another baker when they requested a cake for their wedding. Because of her Christian belief that marriage is between one man and one woman, Miller declined to design a custom cake for their ceremony, believing it would be tantamount to a tacit affirmation.

There’s more at the original.

Given that the bakery referred the couple to another baker who would — we assume; it isn’t specified in the article — bake the requested cake, there was no denial which would have prevented them from getting their ‘wedding’ cake. Rather, this was an attempt to force the Millers to go against their religious beliefs, or go bankrupt for holding them, because the homosexual activists want to use the power of government to compel compliance and obeisance to their lifestyles and belief. What part of live and let live do the activists not understand?

Oh, I’m sorry: it’s not that they don’t understand it, it’s that they feel that they have the power to force compliance, to force unquestioning acceptance, and they are damned well going to use it.

This was the problem with Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd v Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018): Rather than ruling broadly that religious liberty protected the owners of the bakery, the Supreme Court ruled on more narrow grounds that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission did not use religious neutrality in taking their decision.

In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas addressed the real issue:

Forcing Phillips to make custom wedding cakes for same-sex marriages requires him to, at the very least, acknowledge that same-sex weddings are “weddings” and suggest that they should be celebrated—the precise message he believes his faith forbids.^[1]Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Page 8 of Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion, page 45 of the .pdf file.

Sadly, the Supreme Court did not rule on the baker’s freedom of religion and speech, but only on the failure of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission to employ religious neutrality in taking their decision. Had the Court ruled more broadly, that it was Jack Phillips’ right to his free exercise of religion, subsequent cases trying to find edges in the law would not arise.

It was not that long ago that homosexual activists claimed that what they did in their bedrooms was nobody else’s business, a position with which I agree. But, as Justice Thomas predicted, the decision in Obergefell v Hodges which required all states to allow homosexual ‘marriages’ would lead to real conflicts with the freedom of religion:

It appears all but inevitable that the two will come into conflict, particularly as individuals and churches are confronted with demands to participate in and endorse civil marriages between same-sex couples.^[2]ibid, Page 14 of Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion, page 51 of the .pdf file.

The activists could have avoided all of this if they would just live and let live, as they so loudly demanded before Obergefell and various other decisions protecting homosexual rights. But, for activists, allowing others to live as they wish is just not something of which they can approve. There’s an old maxim which holds that, eventually everything which is not forbidden becomes compulsory; that’s what the activists want, and that’s what we must deny them.