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Shortcuts & Delusions: Colorado & Petty Disagreements

Dillon Eliassen
colorado

This past Tuesday, SCOTUS heard the “Colorado baker case.” If you’re not aware, the case stems from when a gay couple, David Mullins & Charlie Craig, entered Jack Phillips’ bakery Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood and asked him to bake a cake for their wedding, to which Phillips replied, “I ain’t baking no cake for no fags. Get out of my bakery, you fags. GOD HATES FAGS!” Mullins & Craig then minced out of the bakery while gasping and lisping, “Oh my Gaaaawwd. What. A. Jerk,” and “This guy is so not fierce.”

OK, none of them said anything like that. But Mullins & Craig sued Phillips for discrimination, and now SCOTUS has to rule in favor of one of the two parties because Mullins, Craig and Phillips are children who can not solve a petty disagreement. If I was a Justice, I would cast a vote for neither side, and write a dissenting opinion that reads, in its entirety, “The plaintiffs and defendant need to go sit in their respective corners for ‘time-out’ and then go to bed without dinner until they can learn how to get along.”

Lakewood is the fifth most populous city in Colorado, located just west of Denver. If you Google “Wedding cake bakeries in Lakewood, Colorado,” 10 other bakeries pop up that make wedding cakes Mullins & Craig could have gone to after being turned away by Phillips. Rather than say to Phillips, “OK, fuck you, we’ll take our money somewhere else,” they are literally making a federal case about it.

And what sin exactly would Phillips commit if he were to bake a cake for Mullins & Craig? It’s been a while since I’ve been to CCD, but I recall Jesus saying “Hate the sin, love the sinner,” not “Don’t sell anything to a sinner.” If Phillips feels the heat of fire and brimstone for making a cake for a gay wedding, he can always go to confessional, right? And hopefully the priest would say, “Really? That’s what you’re confessing? Take a walk, dummy, confessional is for serious business.”

The hyperbole on display by plaintiffs, defendant, and media commenters, whether they are of the journalist or social variety, is embarrassing. Mullins and Craig are not suffering discrimination and treatment on par with blacks in the South during Jim Crow, and Phillips could bake a thousand cakes for gay weddings and he wouldn’t be any less pious, devout or free in his expression of religious beliefs.

The issue of gay marriage is a civil and legal one, not a religious one. Gays’ Constitutional right to marriage is one of legal recognition. No church, synagogue, temple, mosque, mandir, gurudwara, etc. is being forced to perform the ceremony, and no parishioners are being forced to attend and recognize it.

Phillips is conflating baking a cake for Mullins & Craig with taking part in a gay wedding, or endorsing it. In reality, he’d just make money on a cake. I very much doubt Mullins & Craig asked him to depict a scene of sodomy or offensive language. The baker should have just been a baker and taken their order; instead he made a mountain out of a mole hill, and in response, Mullins & Craig did the same.

If I had to bet on the outcome, based on Kennedy being the deciding vote, I’d bet Mullins & Craig win. But rest assured, the majority opinion will cite some convoluted reason for it, like the Third Amendment or Dred Scott. SCOTUS seems to take great pains to arrive at decisions as though legal theory and the Constitution combine to form a Rube Goldberg Machine.

This case isn’t about cakes, discrimination or Constitutional rights. That’s a facade to make it seem more important for society than it really is. This case is about two sides being so self-righteous and certain in their positions that they are unable to consider the mere possibility that there is some space for reasonable compromise or for one side to just let it go. Sometimes you should just drop it, and sometimes you should just give in. Sometimes you are told no, and you just have to accept it, or you have to do something that you just don’t want to do.

Whatever happened to basic common decency? Answer: it’s been supplanted by grievance culture, and both the mainstream Left and Right indulge in it to an unhealthy extent. As George Costanza said, “You know, we’re living in a society! We’re supposed to act in a civilized way!”

 

And that’s the way it is, as far as you know.

 

Image: The Denver Post

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Dillon Eliassen

Dillon Eliassen is a former Managing Editor of Being Libertarian. Dillon works in the sales department of a privately owned small company. He holds a BA in Journalism & Creative Writing from Lyndon State College. He is the author of The Apathetic, available at Amazon.com. He is a self-described Thoreauvian Minarchist.
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