Jack Phillips, the anti-gay baker at the center of the Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court case, was back in court this week, facing another complaint of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
USA Today reports: ‘Autumn Scardina, a transgender woman who is also a Denver attorney, said Phillips' bakery refused to make a cake for her in June 2017 to celebrate her transition from male to female. The request, which came weeks after the Supreme Court case involving Charlie Craig and David Mullins, was for a birthday cake colored pink on the inside and blue on the outside. Phillips' lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom say Colorado is engaged in “unconstitutional bullying,” The Gazette reports, and they are suing governor of Colorado John Hickenlooper's administration, the Division of Civil Rights and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.'
After the SCOTUS ruling in his favor Phillips and his lawyer, whose remarks were straight out of the fundamentalist playbook, tried to paint him as a kind-hearted non-bigot in an appearance on the TODAY show.
Said Phillips: “I was thrilled. SCOTUS has decided that we can try to enter the wedding business again, and I serve everybody. I don't create cakes for every occasion that people ask me to create…I don't discriminate against anybody…I serve everybody that comes in my shop…I told these two men who came in the store ‘I'll sell you cookies, brownies, birthday cakes…a wedding is an inherently religious event…and the cake is definitely a specific message.”
As a reminder, The Colorado Civil Rights Commission's decision noted evidence in the record that Phillips had expressed willingness to take a cake order for the “marriage” of two dogs, but not for the commitment ceremony of two women, and that he would not make a cake for a same-sex couple's wedding celebration “just as he would not be willing to make a pedophile cake.”
