Masterpiece Cakeshop Archives - American Atheists https://www.atheists.org/tag/masterpiece-cakeshop/ Protecting the absolute separation of religion from government. Mon, 25 Jun 2018 17:03:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.2 125490277 The Masterpiece Cakeshop Decision Was a Strike Against Religious Equality and Free Speech https://www.atheists.org/2018/06/the-masterpiece-cakeshop-decision-was-a-strike-against-religious-equality-and-free-speech/ Mon, 25 Jun 2018 16:54:18 +0000 https://www.atheists.org/?p=7663 Since its issuance on June 4, there has been much focus on the scope and meaning of the Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. While we won’t exhaustively discuss the details of the case or the court’s decision (you can get that here), we’d like to examine a few parts of the decision of particular relevance to atheists and nonbelievers. This case, despite it having an LGBTQ framing in the media and involving LGBTQ people as parties, is not simply an LGBTQ issue, but an atheist issue at its core. It is about our freedom to tell the truth about religion. The decision was a disappointment for civil rights advocates, who sought a simple recognition that freedom of speech does not allow a business to discriminate against its customers, a proposition supported by decades of legal precedent. Instead, the court ruled in favor of the baker who engaged in discrimination against Davids Mullins and Charlie Craig on the narrow grounds that the baker faced anti-religious animus in the consideration of the case by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The Supreme Court ruled this way to avoid the case’s harder questions regarding discrimination against LGBTQ people. And now, with the Court sending the Arlene’s Flowers case back to the Washington State courts for further review, the Christian supremacists behind the Masterpiece Cakeshop case are already drawing battle lines around the “anti-religious animus” issue. Now, lawyers at ADF are elaborating on this same point, saying AG Ferguson "demeaned her faith. He has compared her religious beliefs about marriage—which the Supreme Court said are ‘decent and honorable’—to racial discrimination." There's more here: pic.twitter.com/FJJytKRB3R — Dominic Holden (@dominicholden) June 5, 2018 In the Masterpiece decision, while the court did not overturn civil rights protections for LGBTQ people, nor create broad exemptions from public accommodation laws on the basis of religion, religious extremists will certainly portray this decision as if it did. For example, Ralph Reed—best known as the founding executive director of the Christian Coalition—declared that the court “has reaffirmed that the Constitution protects freedom of speech, including speech of a religious content, and the state cannot compel speech against the will of the individual.” This is plainly false—the court’s decision did not involve compelled speech. Presumably, Christian nationalists like Reed think that if they lie often enough, and with enough volume, their hateful rhetoric will shape the legal debate. American Atheists will work with other civil rights organizations to counter this narrative and to assure the public that nondiscrimination laws, including those protecting LGBTQ people, atheists and religious minorities, racial minorities, and others, are still in place and effective. But let us return to the idea of animus, which is where the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision takes on an even greater importance for atheists and nonbelievers. The Supreme Court ruled that the baker faced inappropriate religious animus (or bias) based primarily on a statement made by one of the Colorado Civil Rights Commissioners. So, let’s examine what the commissioner actually said—here is the quote in its entirety (note that the last sentence was removed by the Supreme Court): “I would also like to reiterate what we […]

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