The Supreme Court’s decision Friday in the 303 Creative case greenlights discrimination in spite of civil rights laws. It brought back difficult memories for us.
In 2018, we were walking up the court’s marble steps hoping the justices would uphold Colorado’s anti-discrimination law that protects LGBTQ+ individuals by providing equal access to public accommodations.
In 2012, we were denied service at a Colorado bakery simply for being two men who wanted a wedding cake. We were not turned away because of any special design or unusual request – once the owner knew the cake was for us, the conversation was over. And our case began.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court made a very narrow ruling in our case, leaving the big legal question – the religious license to discriminate – unanswered. Since then, we have considered it our responsibility to publicly share our story and our love for each other by putting human faces to the harm caused to LGTBQ+ individuals who are denied equal access to public accommodations.
That harm has many facets, spanning our lives from birth to death: such as the lesbian couple whose doctor refused to treat their infant because they were in a same-sex relationship, or the man whose partner passed away and the funeral home was accused of refusing to pick up his body because they were gay.
Public accommodations encompass all of the basic day-to-day interactions we need to go about our lives. The same Colorado law that was meant to protect us extends to all of these situations; there is no special legal category of “Cake Law.” We became the public faces of our case not just for ourselves, but also for the countless people who had reached out and told us about the discrimination they also experienced at public accommodations.
Friday’s decision exempts religiously motivated discrimination from civil rights laws in the name of free speech and brings back the fear and feelings of alienation we lived fighting our case.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is behind the 303 Creative case, was behind our case, and has pushed many other cases that advance conservative Christian power and privilege at the expense of everyone else, especially LGBTQ+, women, and racial and religious minorities.
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ADF has been known to want to take this country back to “the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries.”
ADF manufactured the 303 Creative case as something of a legal do-over with one notable distinction: There are no pesky gay people involved who can personalize the harms of discrimination. And that’s purely by design, because there was no injury caused to anyone in this new, somewhat made-up case. It involves one business owner and her fear that “if” she were to design websites for engaged couples, then she “might” have to design one for a gay couple.
This case was entirely theoretical. As such, the only human presence in the case was the business owner, who was a client of the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Supreme Court promotes supremacy at the expense of equality
While our case became a major national news story, this one has quietly slipped under the radar. That’s by design as well. Given that 303 Creative was a direct follow-up to our case, the ADF learned its lesson that when LGBTQ+ people have a chance to share their humanity with the courts and the country, it becomes harder for them to paint a distorted, inaccurate and frightening picture of a predatory community trampling the rights of religious individuals.
Sadly, in this case, ADF’s new and improved strategy appears to have been successful. The court’s decision allows a business owner’s rights to trump the civil rights of less-favored minorities. The opinion promotes supremacy at the expense of equality.
It was never about a cake for us. It was always about standing up to homophobia. It was about equality. That’s what the Supreme Court is supposed to protect. That’s what the words carved into the building itself promise: “Equal Justice Under Law.”
We need to get back to that. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has repeatedly called for, and we desperately need, “a national recommitment to the separation of church and state.” We believe that’s right.
When one person’s claims of religious freedom can trump everyone else’s basic civil rights, we are no longer equal in the eyes of the law.
Our nation promises everyone the freedom to believe as they want, but our laws cannot allow anyone to use their religious beliefs to harm others. That’s what we have been fighting for, and that’s what every American should be fighting for.
Charlie Craig and David Mullins of Colorado were the plaintiffs in the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission case decided by the Supreme Court on June 4, 2018.
