A Colorado baker is being faced with a civil rights complaint, after refusing a customer request. But the difference between this complaint and many recent bakery complaints is the requested message on the cake in question.
Azucar Bakery has found itself embroiled in controversy after the bakery’s owner refused to write an anti-gay message on a cake. The message was requested by a customer who has been identified (somewhat cryptically for 1970s movie buffs) as “Billy Jack.”
The bakery owner, Marjorie Silva, was asked to write “God Hates Gays” on a cake with an “X’ed” out image of two men holding hands. Colorado’s NBC 9 News reports:
“After I read it, I was like ‘No way,'” Silva said. “‘We’re not doing this. This is just very discriminatory and hateful.'”
Silva then received a complaint from DORA for religious discrimination.
“It’s unfair that he’s accusing me of discriminating when I think he was the one that is discriminating,” Silva said.
However, the plaintiff, Billy Jack, told reporters from World Magazine that Silva mistook the phrasing he wanted written on the cake. According to The Washington Post:
In an email to WORLD, he wrote that he requested two cakes in the shape of an open Bible. He asked that the first cake show on one page, “God hates sin—Psalm 45:7,” and on the facing page, “Homosexuality is a detestable sin—Leviticus 18:22.” He requested that the second cake have on one page, “God loves sinners,” and on the facing page, “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us—Romans 5:8.”
Some have taken this controversy and made the comparison between this case and the Masterpiece bakery. Masterpiece was sued for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. Jeff Johnston, from the Focus On The Family organization, has made the case that the baker should not be forced to write this type of message on a cake:
“This is a free speech issue, and we support freedom of speech. It’s also a religious or conscience issue — the government should not force people to violate their core beliefs,” said Johnston.
“Just as a Christian baker should not be required to create a cake for a same-sex ceremony, this baker should not be required to create a cake with a message that goes against her conscience.”
Allahpundit of Hot Air offered a political angle on the controversy:
Actually, as half a dozen people on Twitter pointed out after I tweeted the link to this story, the way to make the left squirm on matters of religious conscience isn’t to have Christians demanding cakes with anti-gay messages from pro-gay bakers. That’s an easy call for liberals; gay rights are a core part of their agenda whereas, per the Hobby Lobby case, free exercise rights by Christians are … not. The way to go about this is to demand cakes with pro-gay messages from Muslim bakers — or, to avoid the problem I described above, to demand cakes from them for gay weddings. Inevitably one will refuse and then you’ll have two Victim Classes at loggerheads with religious liberty in the balance. I’m surprised a clever Christian lawyer hasn’t arranged for that test case already.
Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern offers one possible solution in his article, “I Am Ready to Declare a Truce in the Gay Cake Wars”:
And you know what? Fine. To the Bill Jacks of the world, I offer a truce in the cake wars, contingent on the following compromise: Let’s embrace laws that require bakers to serve any customers who walk into their store—gay, Christian, trans, black, Jewish, whatever. But let’s also embrace the principle—hell, we can even make it a law—that bakers won’t be forced to write, design, or otherwise depict any message they disagree with. An anti-gay baker doesn’t have to write “congratulations on your marriage!” on a cake for a same-sex couple. A pro-gay baker doesn’t have to write “God hates gays” on a cake for a Christian.
The Denver Department of Regulatory Agencies has yet to rule on whether Billy Jack had been discriminated against. Due to an extension filed by the agency, a verdict is not expected for a few months.
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