The Masterpiece Cakeshop Decision

The Supreme Court has decided in favor of the Colorado baker who declined to make a wedding cake for gay wedding.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, in one of the most closely watched cases of the term.

In a 7-2 decision, the justices set aside a Colorado court ruling against the baker — while stopping short of deciding the broader issue of whether a business can refuse to serve gay and lesbian people. The opinion was penned by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is often the swing justice in tight cases.

The narrow ruling here focused on what the court described as anti-religious bias on the Colorado Civil Rights Commission when it ruled against baker Jack Phillips.

“The Commission’s hostility was inconsistent with the First Amendment’s guarantee that our laws be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion,” Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion.

 

There is a lot that has been written about this decision in the weeks since it has been handed down by the Supreme Court, and I don’t imagine I have too much to contribute to the discussion. Still, There are three or four comments I would like to make about it.

First, Jack Phillips did not refuse to serve the couple because they were homosexuals. He did not tell them that he didn’t serve their kind, as the couple asserted and he actually offered to sell them any pre-made cake in his store. What Mr. Phillips refused to do was to use his artistic talent in a way that was against his religious beliefs. He would not decorate a cake for a gay wedding because his religious beliefs were in opposition to gay weddings. Evidently, Mr. Phillips has long made a practice of refusing to go against his religious values, refusing to decorate cakes with adult themes or even cakes for Halloween.

This is not the same as refusing to allow Blacks to sit at a lunch counter, or forcing someone to sit at the back of the bus. It is more like a gay baker not wanting to bake a cake labeled, “God hates fags” for the Westboro Baptist Church. No one’s rights were being infringed because Jack Phillips declined to decorate a cake for a particular occasion. No one has the right to compel Jack Phillips to bake a cake for a particular occasion.

Second, you might ask how I would feel if someone would refuse to provide some such service to me. Well, I would be upset, of course, and would probably not patronize that particular bakery, or whatever, again, but I would not take them to court to force them to serve me. In fact, I would fight for the right of any baker to refuse to serve me.

Why would I do that?  Well, I wouldn’t want someone to be forced to bake a cake for me because would be afraid of getting the Yelper Special.

But, aside from that, I would support their right to refuse me service for a very simple reason, which leads into my third comment. It seems to me obvious that a government or a court with the power to force someone else to do something I like but they detest has just as much power to force me to do something I would prefer not to do. A government that can mandate a Christian baker to bake a cake for a gay wedding can just as easily force people to follow  Christian,values, whether they want to or not. It is simply astonishing to me that no one ever seems to consider this simple factor.

I have noticed that a lot of the people who believe that a “bigot” like Jack Phillips should be forced to bake the cake are also convinced that Donald Trump is a would-be Fascist dictator, or that the conservative Christians or alt-right racists, or both, are on the verge of taking over this country and eliminating all freedom. If this were even the remotest of possibilities, why on Earth would these people want to give any potential oppressors the tools they need to practice repression? Wouldn’t we be a lot safer with a smaller, more limited government that lets people live in peace. We would have less to fear from any dictator if the government had less influence on our daily lives.

And last, it is something of a scandal that this Supreme Court decision was a 7-2 decision. It ought to have been 9-0. If previous presidents had appointed Supreme Court justices who put the words and intent of the constitution first and their political ideology second, this decision,  and many similar decisions, would have been 9-0. But, consider this any conservative Never-Trumper who might be reading this. If Hilary Clinton were president and had appointed a Justice to replace Antonin Scalia, this decision could very well have been 6-3, with worse to come as Clinton would managed to appoint more Justices. Whatever you may think of Trump’s shortcomings, especially his boorish personality, there is no doubt that the cause of liberty has been better served by his winning the presidency than his opponent.

 

Trump is a Bad Racist

It has become an article of faith on the left that President Donald Trump is a racist, voted into office by legions of White supremacists who want to put Blacks back into chains and ship Hispanics back to Latin America. If this is the case, than Donald Trump must very bad at being a racist and his racist supporters must be very disappointed in him. According to the Washington Examiner, more Americans are saying they are better off under Trump, especially Blacks and Hispanics.

The improving economy has helped President Trump keep the support of his “base” of 2016 voters strong, and is opening the door for blacks, Hispanics and younger voters to join them.

Citing those results in new surveys, Democratic pollster John Zogby is declaring that Trump will be tough to beat in 2020 despite his high disapproval ratings.

“President Donald Trump’s support is actually increasing among voters and offers data to explain why he may be re-elected in 2020,” he said.

In a blog post, Zogby, who co-writes the weekly Trump report card for Secrets, noted that more and more Americans believe they are increasingly better off since the president took office.

“More than two in three (68 percent) tell the pollsters that the economy is strong, while 32 percent say it is weak – and this includes 76 percent of men, 61 percent of women, 64 percent or more of all age groups, 57 percent and 58 percent of Hispanics and African Americans respectively, and 63 percent of political moderates,” blogged Zogby citing a new Harvard University-Harris poll.

“More voters say they are doing better off in their personal financial situation (31 percent) or about the same (38 percent) than the one in four (25 percent) who say they are doing worse off. The ‘better off’ crowd includes the 30 percent of Hispanics and 33 percent of African Americans,” added Zogby on the Forbes website.

Of course, presidents don’t actually have that much control over the economy and things were getting better before Trump took office, but Trump’s tax cut and attacks on excessive regulations are helping the economy grow. More importantly, since a lot of economics is actually a matter of psychology, having a president in the White House who is definitely on the side of the job creators is a lot better than having a president who talks about spreading the wealth around.

Maybe, Trump is not actually racist at all. Or maybe it does not matter if he was slow to renounce the various racists and white nationalists who expressed support for him. Maybe what is important are President Trump’s policies which seem to be helping every American, particularly Black and Hispanic Americans. I have noticed that the people who claim to the greatest fighters against racism, the ones who are always accusing conservatives, and Americans generally, of being hopelessly racist, tend to support the sort of liberal policies that have been absolutely catastrophic to the Black community. The same people on the left who are always on guard against every vestige of racism support the Democrats whose mismanagement have turned many Black neighborhoods into crime-ridden wastelands. These leftists who want to help the marginalized and disadvantaged have done more damage than the worst Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan or the segregationist politicians of the Old South could have imagined.

Maybe actions are more important than words and maybe it is better to do the right things than to merely say the right things.

Roseanne Barr and Hollywood’s Unforgivable Sin

I don’t actually know all that much about Roseanne Barr. I don’t believe I have ever watched an episode of her old show and I haven’t had a chance to see her new show. The only times that Roseanne Barr has ever come to my attention has been when she has said or done something really obnoxious or stupid. For that reason, I am not inclined to defend her allegedly racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett. ABC had every right to fire her, and while I would prefer not to live in the kind of world in which a casual statement or tweet might destroy a person’s life, I am not sure that Roseanne should be elevated to the status of free speech martyr.

I will say that if I were a major stockholder in ABC, I might question their priorities in canceling one of their top rated shows and losing the company tens of millions of dollars. But then, if I were a major stockholder in ABC I might question the wisdom allowing a woman who has posted pictures like this

to produce and star in her own show. It seems to me that Roseanne Barr is not particularly stable and it was probably inevitable that she would do something to embarrass herself and anyone associated with her.

I have to wonder just what are the standards are though. What does it actually take to be fired? This same week, Samantha Bee made a truly nasty comment about Ivanka Trump, a comment worse, in my opinion, than Roseanne Barr’s tweet. Even worse, while Roseanne Barr’s indiscretion was a random tweet, while Samantha Bee’s comment was made on her television show and was presumably vetted by her writers and producers who apparently had no problem with it. Bee still has her job.

So, just what is the standard? What is acceptable and what is unforgivable? Are insulting comments about a person’s appearance acceptable so long as race is not alluded to? Are crude comments about a person’s ancestry and irregular circumstances of birth, and implications that he has conjugal relations with his mother acceptable but any reference to race however oblique beyond the pale? This seems somewhat incoherent. Or, is it that President Trump and his family are acceptable targets for abuse while President Obama and his associates sacrosanct?

It seems to me that Roseanne Barr’s real crime was to support President Trump. It was bad enough that she player a sympathetic Trump supporter in her show, but once she indicated that she supported Trump in real life, her days were numbered. You can be a wastrel, a drug addict, a sexual degenerate, a domestic abuser, a felon, a traitor, even a convicted child rapist who has fled the country to avoid prison and all can be forgiven. Show support for a Republican, particularly Donald Trump and you have committed the one, unforgivable sin. Well, at least they have some standards, even if it is only a double standard.