Bakery must sell to gay couple

The free speech aspect of this case is difficult, for few persons who have seen a beautiful wedding cake might have thought of its creation as an exercise of protected speech. Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth.

The second is the right of all persons to exercise fundamental freedoms under the First Amendment, as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. In the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled for a bakery that had refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple.

And there are no doubt innumerable goods and services that no one could argue implicate the First Amendment. Phillips claims, however, that a narrower issue is presented. The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a local baker in Colorado was within his rights to refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex couple's wedding, but it did not go beyond this case.

That requirement, however, was not met here. For that reason the laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of their civil rights. But, nonetheless, Phillips was entitled to the neutral and respectful consideration of his claims in all the circumstances of the case.

This is an instructive example, however, of the proposition that the application of constitutional freedoms in new contexts can deepen our understanding of their meaning. A same-sex couple wanted a cakeshop to design their wedding cake, but the owner refused due to his faith.

Still, the delicate question of when the free exercise of his religion must yield to an otherwise valid exercise of state power needed to be determined in an adjudication in which religious hostility on the part of the State itself would not be a factor in the balance the State sought to reach.

Nevertheless, while those religious and philosophical objections are protected, it is a general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law.

In the process, the Supreme Court declined to rule on the broader constitutional issue of how to address situations in which First Amendment protections conflict with civil rights protections. The exercise of their freedom on terms equal to others must be given great weight and respect by the courts.

It is unexceptional that Colorado law can protect gay persons, just as it can protect other classes of individuals, in acquiring whatever products and services they choose on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other members of the public. He argued that the ruling violated his First Amendment rights by compelling him to make a cake that conflicted with his religious beliefs.

It did so on grounds that are specific to this particular case and will have little to no applicability to future cases. The same difficulties arise in determining whether a baker has a valid free exercise claim. The neutral and respectful consideration to which Phillips was entitled was compromised here, however.

He argues that he had to use his artistic skills to make an expressive statement, a wedding endorsement in his own voice and of his own creation. On July 25, , the Commission met again. When it comes to weddings, it can be assumed that a member of the clergy who objects to gay marriage on moral and religious grounds could not be compelled to perform the ceremony without denial of his or her right to the free exercise of religion.

In a same-sex couple visited Masterpiece Cakeshop, a bakery in Colorado, to make inquiries about ordering a cake for their wedding reception. The case dealt with Masterpiece Cakeshop, a bakery in Lakewood, Colorado, which refused to design a custom wedding cake for a gay couple based on the owner's religious beliefs.

At the same time, the religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression. In view of the comments that followed, the latter seems the more likely. The freedoms asserted here are both the freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion.

Standing alone, these statements are susceptible of different interpretations. If a baker refused to design a special cake with words or images celebrating the marriage—for instance, a cake showing words with religious meaning—that might be different from a refusal to sell any cake at all.

The case presents difficult questions as to the proper reconciliation of at least two principles. When the Colorado Civil Rights Commission considered this case, it did not do so with the religious neutrality that the Constitution requires. Yet if that exception were not confined, then a long list of persons who provide goods and services for marriages and weddings might refuse to do so for gay persons, thus resulting in a community-wide stigma inconsistent with the history and dynamics of civil rights laws that ensure equal access to goods, services, and public accommodations.

The first is the authority of a State and its governmental entities to protect the rights and dignity of gay persons who are, or wish to be, married but who face discrimination when they seek goods or services. (Reuters) - A Colorado baker who had won a narrow U.S. Supreme Court victory over his refusal to make a wedding cake for a gay couple on Thursday lost his appeal of a ruling in a separate case.

As Phillips would see the case, this contention has a significant First Amendment speech component and implicates his deep and sincere religious beliefs. This refusal would be well understood in our constitutional order as an exercise of religion, an exercise that gay persons could recognize and accept without serious diminishment to their own dignity and worth.