A second look at the Masterpiece decision...

So I reread most of the decision last night, read several different legal takes on the 7-2 ruling, and have settled into a somewhat similar, but yet not "exactly" the same take as I had yesterday.

The key piece in all of this just might be when the court brings up the fact that the Colorado administrative agency had previously backed the rights of three different bakers who refused to bake cakes that were claimed to be "anti-gay". In these cases the patrons all requested that some form of scripture be written on the cake, and that the scripture was deemed to be offensive to the bakers.

So in essence, the Colorado agency created a double standard, where bakers could refuse to bake a religious cake because the scripture was offensive to them, but that religious bakers would be forced to bake cakes that was offensive to their religious beliefs. This is where it should become reasonably easy to see why seven Justices were able to craft together agreement on this one.

A principled rationale for the difference in treatment of these two instances cannot be based on the government’s own assessment of offensiveness. Just as “no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion,” West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 642 (1943), it is not, as the Court has repeatedly held, the role of the State or its officials to prescribe what shall be offensive. . . . The Colorado court’s attempt to account for the difference in treatment elevates one view of what is offensive over another and itself sends a signal of official disapproval of Phillips’ religious beliefs.

So contrary to the arguments being made that main objection of the court was that they were offended by the overt treatment of Phillip's religious views throughout the procedure, it would appear that they believe that the ruling itself (considered with these other rulings) provided the evidence of "official disapproval" of Phillips' religious beliefs. This is a much stronger legal argument (and legal precedent) than what is being suggested. On the heels of that passage, this second passage seems to make more sense.

"The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts, all in the context of recognizing that these disputes must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market."

At the end of the day, what the court is saying is simple. You must treat religious rights with the same respect as gay rights. This was quite obviously "not" the case in Colorado, nor is it the case with a growing number of Judges. More to the point, it may well be an extremely bitter pill for many of these lower courts and agencies to swallow moving forward.

In the Colorado case, the remedy is simple. Either you rule that everyone has the right to be offended and refuse to offer their services in these circumstances, or you force everyone to provide their services to everyone. So if you want to demand that the Christian has to bake the same sex wedding cake then you must also demand that the gay baker must bake the cake with scripture he finds offensive, and that the Jewish baker must bake the cake with the swastika decoration, and so on and so forth.

But what judges are not allowed to do it turn their courts into social justice arenas, where they alone get to decide what is and isn't offensive. They must now respect that "sincere religious beliefs" are entitled to the same respect that they might want to give "gay rights". They can no longer simply choose to discount the former in deference to the latter.

So while it may not be the exact ruling that your religious freedom activists were looking for, nor the exact ruling that your gay rights activists were hoping for... I think it was exactly the sort of ruling that we probably needed at this time. A ruling that works towards putting an end to this sort of legal and political "hypocrisy" that seems to running completely out of control.