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Showing posts with the label SCOTUS

U.S. Supreme Court ruling against Masterpiece Cakes would’ve signaled end of religious liberty

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The reactions to Monday’s Supreme Court decision for Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshops have been coming fast and furious from both sides of the political spectrum. The consensus developing on the Right seems to be a suspicious celebration—the Court, after all, did not protect all religious liberty but specifically ruled that this particular Colorado baker had been the victim of anti-religious discrimination.  Thus, the precedent did not go nearly as far as most of us had hoped, and LGBT activists are surely gearing up to fight another day. Perhaps an elderly florist will make a better target. That being said, I do think that those who are determined to find a black cloud on every silver lining are also underestimating the significance of this ruling. For starters, it must be noted that Christians   needed to win this one . The ruling might not have been everything we hoped for, but a loss would have signalled the end of religious liberty in the United States, and a

Homosexual Marriage Vs Free Speech

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There’s been a battle online over whether or not to call Monday’s  Supreme Court decision  on a Christian baker “narrow.” The vote was 7-2, which isn’t narrow. But the scope of the ruling was. It seemed to say that in this particular case, the Colorado human rights commissars showed explicit, anti-religious bias. That tainted their case that a vital public interest was served by punishing this Christian wedding cake baker. (He would sell cakes to everyone, but wouldn’t design a specific, gay-wedding cake.) But bureaucrats with a little more tact would likely get away with closing down Christian businesses. At least under the Court as it stands today. SCOTUSblog explains  the decision as follows: [T]he justices today handed Phillips a victory, even if not necessarily the ruling that he and his supporters had hoped for. Kennedy, the author of some of the court’s most important gay-rights rulings, began by explaining that the case involved a conflict between two important p