Colorado: Who’s Sorry Now?

The feature that arrests us in the Supreme Court’s vindication of the Christian web-site designer is that the case arose from Colorado. That is the state that tried to put a Christian wedding cake maker out of business because he didn’t want to make a cake celebrating a gay marriage. Colorado lost, at that time, on narrow grounds — members of its Civil Rights Commission themselves had exhibited hostility toward religious Christians.Justice Anthony Kennedy, who in 20218 wrote the majority opinion, made quite an issue of this. “We can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination,” Justice Kennedy quoted one commissioner as saying. The commissioner had added: “And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to — to use their religion to hurt others.” That shocked the high court.At the time, we issued an editorial asking whether Colorado would apologize, and not only to the Christians whom members of its Civil Rights Commission had insulted. It was amazing to us that Colorado went all the way to the Supreme Court only for it to be discovered that the Civil Rights Commission was the bigoted party. If we’d done that with public funds, we’d have handed in our resignation.We don’t mind saying that the Supreme Court’s decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop was disappointing to us. We liked the way Justice Kennedy marked the hostility at the Civil Rights Commission. We, though, were in favor of a full and unambiguous ruling in favor of the rights of the baker, Jack Phillips, who, his website suggests, is now in his third lawsuit attempting to secure his First Amendment Free Exercise rights.Which brings us back to the case decided today, 303 Creative v. Elenis. The case involves a website designer, Lorie Smith, rather than a baker, but the broad principles are similar. Ms. Smith feared the prospect that the state would use its anti-discrimination law against her because, while she would “gladly create” websites for “clients of any sexual orientation,” she would not produce content that contradicts “biblical truth.” Given the plain language of the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment, we’ve long thought that statute would have to give way. Or, as we’ve put it, the fact that one fears God must never be cause to fear one’s government. The intransigence of Colorado in both cases is remarkable, even tragic. We hope that someday the Centennial State will accept this ruling and wonder, Whatever were we thinking?

Colorado: Who’s Sorry Now?

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