Hey, everybody! Even-longer-than-usual time no see. I blame…
I dunno, the NRA; that seems like a safe bet in recent times.
As the title suggests, I want to talk a little bit about
this Supreme Court decision on 4 June of this year, because I think it deals
(and intentionally does not deal)
with some crucially important issues, and I’ve seen an amount of
misunderstanding about it that is equal parts appalling and impressive. I
should follow that inordinately pretentious statement with a disclaimer that I’m
a) not a lawyer b) not a Constitutional lawyer and c) kind of an idiot in
general, so fair warning, this post, as all my posts, are opinionated and
unobjective hot garbage of the highest order.
With that said, I want to hear your more salient opinions on
the subject, dear reader; leave me a comment with what you think, or message me
privately, whatever. The idea here is a dialogue. C:
Now, for those with absolutely no clue what I’m talking
about, on 4 June the Supreme Court finally ruled on a case argued back in
December of 2017, known to me and no one else as the Colossal Cake Kerfuffle of
2017. The scene: in 2012, a gay couple from Colorado, married in Massachusetts
(same-sex marriage had yet to be legalized in Colorado until two years later),
returns home to celebrate their union and goes to Masterpiece Cakeshop in
Lakewood in search of a tasty baked confection.
What a lovely story! Sweet, like cake.
Jack Phillips, the shop’s owner, refuses to bake the couple a
custom cake on two grounds.
Huh. Not so sweet. But remember that, because it’s important:
he refuses to bake them a cake.
Now, the grounds Phillips cited: Masterpiece doesn’t bake
cakes for same-sex weddings because he’s a Christian (more on that in a
second), and Colorado doesn’t (didn’t, at the time) recognize same-sex unions.
There’s a refined point here that I don’t think gets covered
enough: Phillips refused to bake them a
custom cake, while representing that they were free to purchase any other
baked goods from the store. This may seem like a weird technicality, but I can
see a sort of logic to it; if I had a client (ha!) who wanted me to write a post
extolling the virtues of communism (or fascism, or whatever) I would refuse
categorically, on the classic and well-articulated grounds of “shit’s one-sided,
yo.” I’m not going to ban the person from my blog outright, but I wouldn’t take
creative action on behalf of an ideology with which I disagree.
I want to take a sidebar out here and declare that I think Phillips
is wrong. Theologically, Scripturally, Biblically speaking, he just isn’t
correct on this particular point. I also think I have the right to tell him so,
but furthermore that he has, in a weird turn of grammar, a basic and unalienable
right to be wrong.
The couple in question seemed to think he was wrong too, so
much so that they lodged a complaint with their local civil rights commission.
This case is moving into the heady and the surreal, so here’s a grounding
thought: cake is a protected human
right by this point, isn’t it? And if it isn’t, why not? Cake for all, God
dammit.
The rights commission, armed with these allegations and a
thorough knowledge of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, goes “daaaaaaaamn”
and orders Phillips to "change its company policies, provide
'comprehensive staff training' regarding public accommodations discrimination,
and provide quarterly reports for the next two years regarding steps it has
taken to come into compliance and whether it has turned away any prospective
customers." (Quoted from the ACLU site).
Because I’m still blathering on about the backstory, you may
safely conclude that Phillips did not comply with the state’s orders. He removed
his business from the wedding cake market altogether and kept appealing the
case, with the gathering crap-storm of media attention these things usually
gather, until it wound up dropped at the doorstep of the United States Supreme
Court.
Thank God, Peter’s arrived at the point!
The Supreme Court ruling demanded that the Colorado Civil
Rights Commission reverse the decision it had made. Now, depending on where you
sit on the spasming bronco of American politics, you may be thinking anything
from “Yeehaw, the Supreme Court doesn’t like the gays!” to “I thought we’d
already had the Supreme Court rule the opposite way” to just simple,
unadulterated “WAT.” I can’t say as I
blame you, in any case; most of the news articles I’ve read on the subject have
been… misleading, let’s say for the sake of diplomacy.
So what did the Supreme Court actually say, or more
importantly what did it not say?
What it didn’t say is quite a laundry list, but here are
some claims I’ve seen made and I want to refute.
I’ve seen it said that they were ruling in favor of Phillips
and Masterpiece Cakeshop, which is not… exactly
correct. The Supreme Court examines the Constitutionality of the laws and
rulings passed by lower courts; when a case comes before the Supreme Court it’s
no longer a simple civil matter of “person A has placed their fence too far
into person B’s property and person B is Quite Put Out.” Supreme Court
decisions run more on the scale of “person A’s fence represented a manifest
threat to person B’s rights under the Constitution, and so all fences, forever and
in perpetuity, must not be placed thusly, or the entire towering legal edifice
of the United States of America will be Quite Put Out.”
And that may be why the Supreme Court’s ruling was so
mercifully, irritatingly narrow. I’ve seen it said that this ruling was an
attack on gay marriage, which I think constitutes either a horrendous
misunderstanding or an intentional representation of the case. Indeed, the
ruling specifically, deliberately doesn’t address that topic at all; I
encourage you to read the Court’s full opinions, because they’re all
interesting, but they’re very careful to avoid discussing the intersection of
free speech, free exercise and anti-discrimination law entirely.
This is kind of the crux of the issue for me, and the case
title says it all: Masterpiece Cakeshop
v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
Wait, I thought this was a case about a baker refusing
service to a gay couple.
Well, it was, and
I think that’s why there’s been so much confusion on this topic of late. Phillips’
decision was the catalyst, let’s say, that set off some tremendous, bubbling
and appallingly smelly reactions in the journalistic and legal spheres, but it
wasn’t the final issue on which the Supreme Court ruled.
The final contest was between Phillips, in his guise as the
business Masterpiece Cakeshop, against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The
Civil Rights Commission was rather harshly smacked down, but the Court’s decision
wasn’t an attack on civil rights, or an endorsement of any particular religious
denomination, or any of the myriad things I’ve heard people claim.
The Court’s decision was that the Colorado Civil Rights
Commission, when presented with the opportunity to rule on the issue between
Mr. Phillips and the couple, absolutely bungled
it.
From that sentence you might infer that I mean “bungled” as
in the Civil Rights Commission lost the paperwork, their dog ate the paperwork,
or they themselves ate the paperwork. I do not. I mean “bungled” in the sense
that the Supreme Court found the Commission’s handling of the case evinced
overt hostility to Phillips’ religious beliefs, namely by comparing them to
defenses of American slavery and the Holocaust.
Putting it less diplomatically, the commissioner in question
went so far as to claim that Phillips, bowing out of a making a cake on religious
grounds (admittedly questionable grounds at that, but certainly within his
right to free exercise), was on an equal moral footing with the Fire-Eaters of
the Antebellum South and the degenerates who frequent places like The Daily Stormer.
So that, in short, is the much-under-reported reason the Supreme
Court ruled the way they did. It wasn’t an espousal of anti-gay hatred
(although God knows there’s enough of that going around from other sources),
and it wasn’t a tacit or explicit endorsement of Phillips’ religious views;
rather, it was a declaration of Phillips’ right to a fair trial, which the
Commission signally failed to provide, unburdened by institutional hostility to
his beliefs. On a subtler level, I think the ruling was an acknowledgment of Phillips’
right to even have such beliefs in
the first place.
Put another way, the Supreme Court in this case wasn’t
agreeing or disagreeing with either Phillips the Commission at all; they ruled
instead that the Commission, by virtue of its hostility toward religion in
general and most especially Phillips’ religion, had (as they say in the French)
fucked it all up.
But maybe I’m wrong; it certainly wouldn’t be the first time,
and I’m equally as certain it won’t be the last. This is a complicated, sticky
topic, and I’d love to know your thoughts, dear reader, on any aspect of it.
Some things to consider: is it relevant in your view that the baker in question
was Christian, specifically? If so, why or why not, and would the picture be
different if it were, say, a Muslim or Jewish baker? On that note, do you see
this as strictly an issue of religious freedom vs. the law, or is there more at
play here?
I see this as an issue of a) people resorting to the big
blunt hammer of the state as a solution in a situation that might merit a more
sociable scalpel and b) the people who compose said institution failing to carry
out their role as neutral adjudicators, in a spectacular and corrupt fashion. I
may be wrong about that; I have a natural distrust of institutions in general,
and perhaps that’s skewing my thinking.
In any case, let me know what you think about this topic in a
comment or a message at your leisure; it’s an absolute mess, this case, and I’d love to hear your opinion about any angle
or aspect of it. Furthermore, if there are topics you’d like to see me write
about (God forbid), let me know that as well; I’m quite thoroughly mad, but my
hope is that my madness might be edifying, educational or even merely interesting
to someone.
Thank you for your time and attention, and have a lovely
rest of your Sunday (or whatever day it is, when you read this). Anything you’re
thinking, let me think about it too. C:
