Jack Philips: The Crusade to Destroy Colorado Cakemaker

I’ve been writing about Colorado cakemaker Jack Phillips’s fight against cultural authoritarians for a long time. This past March, I noted that Phillips would probably be badgered into the grave. And this week, Denver district judge A. Bruce Jones again found that the state could compel speech, claiming that Phillips had acted unlawfully when refusing to create a cake that celebrated the alleged gender transition of a Colorado activist.

When Phillips declined to participate in the wedding of David Mullins and Charlie Craig back in the summer of 2012 — this was before Obergefell and before gay marriage was even legalized in Colorado — he made himself the target of harassment by activists and “civil-rights” commissions that set out to destroy his business over a thought crime; by courts that set out to corrode religious liberty and free-speech protections; and by media that either don’t understand or don’t value free expression anymore. (Just read this recent FiveThirtyEight piece, headlined, “Why The Supreme Court May Be Poised To Deliver The Religious Right A Big Victory,” to understand how outlets treat the First Amendment as some kind of special carve out for people of faith.)

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David Harsanyi

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner.

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I’ve been writing about Colorado cakemaker Jack Phillips’s fight against cultural authoritarians for a long time. This past March, I noted that Phillips would probably be badgered into the grave. And this week, Denver district judge A. Bruce Jones again found that the state could compel speech, claiming that Phillips had acted unlawfully when refusing to create a cake that celebrated the alleged gender transition of a Colorado activist.

When Phillips declined to participate in the wedding of David Mullins and Charlie Craig back in the summer of 2012 — this was before Obergefell and before gay marriage was even legalized in Colorado — he made himself the target of harassment by activists and “civil-rights” commissions that set out to destroy his business over a thought crime; by courts that set out to corrode religious liberty and free-speech protections; and by media that either don’t understand or don’t value free expression anymore. (Just read this recent FiveThirtyEight piece, headlined, “Why The Supreme Court May Be Poised To Deliver The Religious Right A Big Victory,” to understand how outlets treat the First Amendment as some kind of special carve out for people of faith.)