LGBT activists just won a legal battle in the case against Colorado business owner and baker, Jack Phillips. They often preach tolerance, but are all about forcing change.
Legal battles began for Phillips over a decade ago in 2012 when all he wanted to do was live and run his business according to his Christian faith.
In almost any other context, this would be considered bullying.
A man who changed his name to Autumn Scardina demanded that the baker create a cake with the colors of the transgender flag to celebrate his self-professed sexual identity. When Phillips refused, Scardina filed a complaint against the baker and Masterpiece Cakeshop.
You may recall in 2018, Phillips won a partial Supreme Court case after being sued for refusing to bake a wedding cake for two homosexuals.
Phillips lost an appeal in this new case involving his refusing to be forced to make a birthday cake to celebrate an alleged gender transition.
All it took was a three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals to rule against Phillips and in essence, suggest it is wrong on religious grounds to refuse to make a product celebrating transgenderism.
This is more than a fight over a pink cake with blue frosting. It is about forcing Christians who believe God’s Word to deny the very truth of the Bible and act against those truths.
The technicality according to the activist court states that artistry, in this case creating a cake, is not a form of free speech.
Judge Timothy Schutz authored the panel’s opinion concluding Phillips violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. The court said a state law that makes it illegal to refuse to provide services to people based on protected characteristics like race, religion or sexual orientation does not violate business owners’ right to practice their religion.
The left suggests that those who disagree with their sexual ideology “object to the idea of Ms. Scardina wanting a birthday cake that reflects her status as a transgender woman because they object to the existence of transgender people.”
See how they frame it? If you believe and want to live differently, you’re a hater. You must approve, “affirm,’ and celebrate.
ADF, the Alliance Defending Freedom is representing Phillips and denounced the decision and vowed to appeal it, considering part of a broader campaign of harassment against the Christian baker. Colorado officials began targeting Jack in 2012 and misused state law to force him to say things he does not believe.
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission acted with anti-religious bias in enforcing the anti-discrimination law against Phillips after he refused to bake a cake celebrating a homosexual wedding six years earlier. The justices called the commission unfairly dismissive of Phillips’ religious beliefs.
And today, radicals refuse to “live and let live” when it comes to Christian business owners.
ADF Senior Counsel Jake Warner stated:
“One need not agree with Jack’s views to agree that all Americans should be free to say what they believe, even if the government disagrees with those beliefs.”
This is a good reminder for us even though you and I may not be dragged through the courts. Our authority is God’s Word and Jesus Christ, our King who reigns forever.
I think of many verses in the Bible we could cite such as Acts 5:29 which states:
Acts 5:29 KJV – “Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.”
Last year the high court heard another case challenging Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, brought by a Christian graphic artist who does not want to design wedding websites for same-sex couples. Lorie Smith, who is also represented by ADF, claims the law violates her freedom of speech.
It’s not going to stop as activists are becoming more militant and emboldened by a woke culture. We’ve read about Christian photographers, florists, bed and breakfast owners, and others who have been targeted by the preachers of tolerance. Activists will do what they do and we shouldn’t be surprised.
Colorado government seems to see itself as an arbiter of morality in that it wants to drive views it disagrees with from the public square. ADF’s Warner adds:
“Cultural winds may shift, but freedom of speech is foundational to our self-government and to the free and fearless pursuit of truth.”
And therein lies a root of the problem; there is no longer a sincere pursuit of truth but the rejection or redefinition of it. So as the culture changes with the times, the church must not. Christians must hold the line and guard against compromise and infiltration.
True believers must decide to stand. We must not be silent or hide our light under a table in this cultural and historical moment.
