Are LGBT people regular victims of discrimination, or are they a well-funded political force bent on persecuting Christians? Those are the competing ideas at work in a host of briefs filed in a blockbuster case the Supreme Court will hear Tuesday that has huge implications for the future of civil rights protections.
The case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, pits a Colorado baker, Jack Phillips, against Charlie Craig and David Mullins, a gay couple who asked Phillips to make them a wedding cake. Phillips refused, on the grounds that same-sex marriage violated his deeply held religious beliefs. In 2013, Mullins and Craig filed a complaint with the state government, alleging that Phillips had violated Colorado’s anti-discrimination statute. After an investigation and hearings, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled in their favor. The state court of appeals upheld the decision, and the Colorado Supreme Court declined to review that decision, setting the stage for Phillips’ petition to the US Supreme Court.
Civil rights groups say that if the high court rules in Phillips’ favor, it will open the floodgates to a rash of discrimination against LBGT people, as well as women and people of color, under the guise of religious freedom. Phillips’ lawyers counter that these fears are overblown and that it’s rare for LBGT people to be denied service, particularly for religious reasons. In a brief to the court, they cite a law review articleasserting that “hardly any of these cases have occurred: a handful in a country of 300 million people.”
[For more on this story by STEPHANIE MENCIMER, go to http://www.motherjones.com/pol...00-counterarguments/]
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