Masterpiece Cakeshop, Finally

I am not, after all, going to do a major post on the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. You've already got my bottom line on it, so this is just by way of providing a little detail.

The big issue is the Court's interpretation of comments by members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. From Towleroad, a take on that issue that echoes my own:

. . . the Court found that statements from Commissioners sitting on the Colorado Civil Rights Commission evidenced so much anti-religious bias that they denied the Christian baker a fair, impartial hearing. But those statements don’t really evidence bias. Here was the most offending statement:

I would also like to reiterate what we said in the hearing or the last meeting. Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust, whether it be—I mean, we—we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to—to use their religion to hurt others.

In reaction to this, the Court said, “To describe a man’s faith as ‘one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use’ is to disparage his religion in at least two distinct ways: by describing it as despicable, and also by characterizing it as merely rhetorical—something insubstantial and even insincere.”

But that is not at all what the Commissioner did. His comment called out using religion as a pretext for discrimination. And besides, the Commissioner is one hundred percent correct. Christianity justified the Holocaust. Religion was used to justify slavery. Religion was used to justify Jim Crow, apartheid, and laws against interracial marriage.

Ed Brayton has a good discussion of the ruling at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and RawStory provides a history of religious freedom jurisprudence.

Of course, Tony Perkins is claiming a huge victory for "religious freedom" über alles, and Brian Brown is taking credit for the decision. Linda Harvey, who is known to have an adversarial relationship with reality, thinks this decision paves the way for getting rid of sex education in schools. But, as I've noted elsewhere, the actual facts of the ruling are not going to alter the right-wing propaganda one bit.

The justices dodged the bullet, although there would seem to be ample precedent for upholding the Colorado Civil Rights Commission's decision, not the least of which is Employment Division v. Smith, which held that there is no religious exemption from otherwise generally applicable laws -- unless, of course, one wants to present the argument that there is no compelling government interest in enforcing equal treatment for all citizens.