Supreme Court Same-Sex Wedding Cake Ruling: What About Other Cases on Christian Dissent to Gay Marriage?

Supporters of Colorado baker Jack Phillips hold signs in front of the 

United States 

Supreme Court as arguments in Masterpiece 

Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission on December 5, 2017.

By Samuel Smith
Christian Post

Although the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Colorado Christian baker Jack Phillips, the court did not definitively rule whether baking a cake for a same-sex wedding constitutes speech and still leaves questions about how other cases involving Christian business owners and same-sex weddings will play out, lawyers say.

The nation's high court ruled 7-2 on Monday in favor of the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, who faced backlash from the Colorado government after he refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding in 2012.

Although Phillips' six-year legal battle has seemingly come to an end, there are other Christian business owners throughout the country who are still in the middle of their own legal battles and still seeking relief after being punished for refusing to service same-sex weddings.

Even though the court ruled in favor of Phillips, it did so on the grounds that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission's treatment of Phillips was so overtly hostile towards his religious viewpoint and did not act in a neutral manner when it weighed his case.

Alliance Defending Freedom Attorney Kristen Waggoner, who defended Phillips in the case, admitted in a call with reporters on Monday that the court's decision didn't necessarily speak to the overlying issue at hand.

"The court said that the [government's] hostility was so open and obvious ... that [the court] didn't need to reach the issues related to whether Jack's cakes are speech and how that would play out," Waggoner said, adding that the court left such questions "open for another day."

"I think it leaves the question of how the courts will balance those [other cases] still in debate," Waggoner added. "There are a number of cases being litigated in the courts of appeal dealing with this very issue — videographers, filmmakers, hand painters and calligraphers. Those cases are in courts of appeal right now. We expect the court will eventually have the grapple with those issues but the hostility was just so overt here that it didn't need to reach it to rule on Jack's behalf."

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented gay couple turned down by Phillips, asserted in a statement that court's decision was based on "concerns unique to the case."

ACLU Deputy Legal Director Louise Melling argued that the court actually "reaffirmed its longstanding rule that states can prevent the harms of discrimination in the marketplace, including against LGBT people."

Christian Post article continues here 

Judge Plays God to Ban 'Unimportant' Bible Verse

 Marine Lance Corporal Monifa Sterling 

By Andrew Shirley, Shirley & Banister Public Affairs
National Black Robe Regiment

The military’s highest court ruled yesterday that men and women serving in the U.S. Armed Forces can be punished for exercising their religion if judges deem the practice not religiously “important.” The ruling upholds the government’s criminal prosecution of a U.S. Marine for refusing to discard personal notes that had Bible verses on them. The case may now be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2014, Marine Lance Corporal Monifa Sterling was ordered to remove from her workstation three pieces of paper with a paraphrase from the book of Isaiah, “No weapon formed against me shall prosper,” even though co-workers were permitted to keep nonreligious messages on their desks. She declined and was court-martialed. A lower court upheld Sterling’s court martial, rejecting her argument that her faith was protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

“This is a real-life example of why judges shouldn’t play theologians,” said Daniel Blomberg, legal counsel of the Becket Fund, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Lance Corporal.

“Here, a few judges concluded that keeping Scripture nearby isn’t ‘important,’ even though more than half of the world’s population belong to religions that teach the exact opposite. Avoiding obvious errors like this is why RFRA protects all religious beliefs, not just beliefs that government officials deem ‘important.'”

The majority of judges on the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces ruled that Lance Corporal Sterling’s posted verses were a “religious exercise” under RFRA and assumed that the exercise was sincere. But it held that, despite the court-martial Sterling faced for refusing to remove the verses, the military hadn’t placed a “substantial burden” on her religion because the court was not persuaded that she had a “subjective belief in the importance of [the] practice to her religion.” 

The dissent disagreed, arguing that RFRA “does not empower judges to curtail various manifestations of sincere religious belief simply by arbitrarily deciding that a certain act was not ‘important’ to the believer’s exercise of religion.” The dissent also noted that the majority’s ruling falls on one side of a “distinctive split among the federal circuit courts of appeals” which the “Supreme Court has yet to address.” That split may raise the likelihood that the Supreme Court would grant review of the case.

Read more about this story and the national black robe regiment

Note to Persecution Unveiled Readers:  This story is an example of the incremental persecution of people of faith in America, especially Christians.  America is in the first phase of persecution. The removal of prayer and Bible reading in schools was the beginning. Most pulpits in America are silent on many issues threatening our freedom, faith and families.  

"If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it…. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it.” – Charles Finney, Evangelist Preacher