Charles P. Pierce: What the Supreme Court Wedding Cake Case Is Really About

[babylonsister]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14106586/supreme-court-wedding-cake/

What the Supreme Court Wedding Cake Case Is Really About

Its implications could be vast and sweeping.
By Charles P. Pierce
Dec 5, 2017

snip//

First, Kagan played wedding planner, much to the detriment of Waggoner’s argument. Taking a cue from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, sitting one Alito distant to Kagan’s left, Kagan decided to explore the possible free-speech aspects of the jeweler, the tailor, the hairstylist, and, especially, the make-up artist.

“What about the make-up artist?” Kagan asked. “I mean, it says right there, ‘make-up artist.’”

“Food is speech, but makeup isn’t?”

Then, Justice Elena Sotomayor asked her, quite seriously, “When have we ever given protection to food. The primary purpose of food is to be eaten. How is this your client’s expression? The primary purpose of food is to be eaten.”

Waggoner replied, “Not all cake can be considered speech. In the context of this case, he is an artist, painting on a blank canvas.” Sotomayor was having none of that.

“We have people called ‘sandwich artists.’’ she asked. “Would you call their sandwiches expressive and protected speech?”

(It should be noted for the benefit of future legal scholars that, later in the arguments, there was a spirited colloquy held on the basis of the notion that most wedding cakes are inedible anyway, and that, therefore, Phillips’s cakes were more art than food. This is something that I did not make up.)

But that was not the serious business behind this case. Waggoner works for an outfit called the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal mill that specializes in culture war litigation. Waggoner is a product of the conservative Christian educational establishment. She went to a Christian academy, a college affiliated with the Assemblies of God, and then she went to law school at Regent University, which you may recall as the production facility for the Bush Justice Department when it systematically purged inconvenient U.S. Attorneys.

This is about undercutting the freedoms established by the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage in as many arenas as they can, including public accommodations. It is a strategy not dissimilar to the one pursued by the anti-choice movement, which gave up trying to get abortion banned at the federal level, but which used every tool in the shed to make it virtually impossible to get an abortion in the real world. This campaign was very much a factor in why the Congress kept Scalia’s seat open, denying President Obama’s nominee even the decency of a hearing, so that it could drop in Gorsuch, a reliable culture-war vote.

snip//

Make no mistake. This case is about whether or not public accommodations laws apply to gay Americans the way they apply to African-Americans or religious minorities. In fact, the deepest motivation behind this case may be whether or not public accommodations laws are valid at all—or, as Roberts ruled when he cut the guts out of the Voting Rights Act, whether or not public accommodations laws have served their purpose but are now obsolete here in the Day of Jubilee.

That’s a helluva long game, but it’s far from out of the question. Justice Stephen Breyer saw it clearly when he told the lawyers for Phillips on Tuesday that he wanted to make sure the decision in this case didn’t destroy civil rights legislation back to “the Year Two,” and later when he predicted that, if the Court held for the cake shop, it would result in “chaos” in public accommodations statutes across the country. He said it like that would be a bad thing.

[Angry Dragon]

1. get yourself a religion and you can hate all you want

[msongs]

2. possible good news tho: "we don't serve christians here" or "no mormons allowed" etc

[Irish_Dem]

3. Yes, "We don't serve GOP crime family members here" or "we don't serve Russian traitors"...

[Irish_Dem]

4. If you are running a business, I don't understand why you would want to restrict your customer base.

While refusing to serve certain groups is totally wrong on a moral basis, seems like a stupid business decision.

[dchill]

5. Uh, because you're a bigoted idiot?

(Not YOU, of course.)

[Irish_Dem]

12. They have to be idiots. And I hope they go out of business. nt

[forgotmylogin]

7. In this case, I believe the intention was to make a point

and challenge legal precedent. The 33% doesn't want to associate with [insert any marginalized group here].

I believe they think it brands them and therefore disqualifies them from heaven. It is a form of elitism, and Fundamental Religion is always at the root.

They like the Bible pages that they can interpret as "god hates fags" and not so much the "love thy neighbor" and "do unto others" ones.

(Personal note: I have nothing against God; we're cool with each other.)

[Susan Calvin]

9. "The 33%"!

I like it.

[forgotmylogin]

10. It's always around that number.

And you know exactly what I meant!

[erronis]

11. Love your personal note. For me, God is useful sometimes just like I may be to her. Depends.

[babylonsister]

8. This is why-trying to keep us all down on the farm, no progress.

No deal.

Waggoner works for an outfit called the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal mill that specializes in culture war litigation. Waggoner is a product of the conservative Christian educational establishment. She went to a Christian academy, a college affiliated with the Assemblies of God, and then she went to law school at Regent University, which you may recall as the production facility for the Bush Justice Department when it systematically purged inconvenient U.S. Attorneys.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. Religious freedom was the excuse used for segregation and slavery. . . . nt

[not fooled]

13. And...

cater to the religious extremists and they'll support your tax cuts!

[Initech]

14. It's about telling the LGBT community to go fuck themselves.

And establishing a Christian theocracy. Fuck that, I want no part of their religion.

[rickford66]

15. The baker can practice his religion by not marrying another guy.

[BigmanPigman]

16. Another case of religion being used to excuse their racist, bigoted

pea sized brains and 1850 attitude. Another reason that I am a proud Atheist and not a hypocritical, hate filled "God fearing Christian".