Treatment of Jack Phillips: Cruelty Is the Point

The least surprising revelation this side of the millennium — albeit one we felt important to observe, for the record — is that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission is neither civil nor particularly interested in rights, at least as “rights” were conceived of by James Madison and his counterparts. The case of Jack Phillips is an instructive example.

In 2012, Phillips, a Christian baker based out of Lakewood, Colo., declined to provide a custom-designed cake celebrating a same-sex wedding. His reasoning — that he still hewed to the basic view of marriage professed by most of humanity for most of civilization’s history — was reflected by Colorado law at the time, which still prohibited same-sex marriage. The gay couple soliciting Phillips’s services, David Mullins and Charlie Craig, planned to lawfully marry in Massachusetts. But they were unimpressed by Phillips’s religious objections. “Our story is about us being turned away and discriminated against by a public business,” Mullins told the New York Times.

About the Author

Nate Hochman

Nate Hochman was a staff writer at National Review.

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The least surprising revelation this side of the millennium — albeit one we felt important to observe, for the record — is that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission is neither civil nor particularly interested in rights, at least as “rights” were conceived of by James Madison and his counterparts. The case of Jack Phillips is an instructive example.

In 2012, Phillips, a Christian baker based out of Lakewood, Colo., declined to provide a custom-designed cake celebrating a same-sex wedding. His reasoning — that he still hewed to the basic view of marriage professed by most of humanity for most of civilization’s history — was reflected by Colorado law at the time, which still prohibited same-sex marriage. The gay couple soliciting Phillips’s services, David Mullins and Charlie Craig, planned to lawfully marry in Massachusetts. But they were unimpressed by Phillips’s religious objections. “Our story is about us being turned away and discriminated against by a public business,” Mullins told the New York Times.