God told me I couldn't bake you a cake

Suffer (bring) the children to me.

Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Those are some of the platitudes in the Bible with regard as to how to treat other people. But apparently not from the Bible that Cathy Miller of Bakersfield (CA) or her ilk read.

For you see, Ms. Miller is just the latest person to claim that her religious beliefs allow her to discriminate against those she just doesn't like. Amazing how we keep running into these folks.

Ms. Miller owns Tastrie's Bakery. A same sex couple came to her shop and asked her to make a cake for their wedding. Being more intent on discriminating against the couple than in making money, Ms. Miller refused. She said that her religious beliefs made it impossible for her to bake a cake for a lesbian couple.

The couple then filed suit against Ms. Miller, arguing that her refusal to make them a wedding cake was a violation of the state's civil rights statute. Ms. Miller, on the other hand, argued that making a cake was an artistic expression protected under the First Amendment which meant she could choose the customers for whom she was willing to bake a cake.

Kern County Superior Court Judge David Lampe ruled in Ms. Miller's favor stating that designing a cake was different than baking a cake as it was an act of artistic expression. He did caution Ms. Miller that she could not refuse to sell a wedding cake to a same sex couple.

But here's the problem. Whether a baker designs a cake specifically for someone or just bakes a cake to put in the display case is a distinction without much meaning. Baking a cake is baking a cake. You throw some ingredients into a bowl, you mix them up and you throw it in the oven. When it's done you take it out and ice it. It appears that the only difference would be whether the baker baked the cake before or after the couple ordered it.

What Ms. Miller did is no different that what white business owners did during Jim Crow and what bankers did for years afterward. She is refusing service because she doesn't like a customer because of her sexual orientation. That is no different than refusing service because a person is black or catholic or a woman.

The fact that she relies on her religious beliefs to just discrimination tells you everything you need to know about religion. The fact that a judge ruled that it was okay for her to discriminate so long as she waved a bible in the air tells you all you need to know about the pernicious effect of religion on civil society.

Let them eat cake

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the case about the baker who refused, on religious grounds, to bake a wedding cake for a same sex couple.

Amy Howe over at SCOTUSblog did an excellent analysis of yesterday's questioning from the Supremes. She believes the court will split (again) 5-4 in favor of the baker but wonders just how narrowly they will craft the opinion. She based her analysis on the change in tone of Justice Kennedy's questions from start to finish.

First, I must point out, once again, that religious belief is still the most popular justification for discrimination. Now I could go on and on quoting portions of the Bible in which Jesus preaches a message of equality and love and brotherhood. But I'm not.

Jack Phillips likes to call himself a christian. But he believes that the holy word gives him the right to discriminate against those whom he doesn't like. The latter day charlatans who preach that homosexuality is a sin worse than any other act like they are quoting the word of god when they launch into their hateful spiel. The only problem is the book they are quoting from has been translated countless times from multiple languages. There's no guarantee that the words they are quoting in 2017 are the same words written in the original texts.

But we digress.

The issue is whether a privately run business has the right to decide whom they wish to provide with services. This is different from the argument in the 1960's that private buses, trains, hotels and restaurants were public carriers. Mr. Phillips claims that forcing him to make a cake for a same sex wedding would somehow violate his right to free speech. I'm not really buying that one because food is not speech. Food is food and food is for eating.

Does requiring him to bake the cake violate his right to freedom of religion? As far as I can tell, no one is telling him what to believe or how to do it. However, would requiring him to bake the cake trample upon his right to the free exercise of his religion? That is a much closer question, I think.

What does it mean to exercise one's religion? Baking and selling cakes is a commercial enterprise, not a religious one. Maybe he says he's spreading the word of god by baking cakes - but is that exercising one's religion?

And what if in exercising that religion a person, or entity, intentionally discriminates against another based upon that person's race, sex, ethnicity, national origin or sexual orientation?

And, as an aside, at what point do we finally acknowledge that religion serves more to divide us than to unite us? White protestant churches were very prominent in the fight to preserve Jim Crow segregation in the South. All of the major protestant denominations split in the 19th century over the question of slavery.

Back in college I took a class on sociology and religion and our professor played for us a recording of an Emo Philips routine that I have looked for off and on for years -- and finally found it.



There are some serious issues that need to be addressed in this case. The Court must decide how much discrimination in private commercial enterprises is acceptable. If the Court decides it is acceptable then the Court must decide whether the enterprise wishing to discriminate must give a reason for its choice. If so, the Court must decide where to draw the line for a legally valid rationale for discrimination. Finally, the Court must decide which groups can be discriminated against for which reasons. It remains to be seen whether the Court will develop a balancing test to determine how large a community has to be in order to permit discrimination.

Regardless of the decision, the law of the land will most likely be determined by the vote of one justice - Anthony Kennedy. Not quite what the Founding Fathers had in mind, I daresay.

Exposing religion for what it is

Some time ago I wrote in this very space that the Supreme Court had no choice but to recognize same-sex marriage across the nation. Once the first state recognized it, the Equal Protection Clause left no wiggle room.

Not ones to let something as fundamental as the law get in the way, our wingnut governor, Greg Abbott, and wingnut attorney general, Ken Paxton, have announced that they think the Supreme Court got it all wrong. According to these two paragons of ignorance, the Court's decision infringes upon the religious freedom of all the hate-spewing, right-wing, bible-thumpers who are desperately holding on to an image of America that never really existed.

And I, for one, am glad they are all trumpeting the religious freedom angle because this argument shows, once and for all, what religion is really all about.

Gov. Abbott (who sometimes makes Rick Perry look like a scholar and a statesman) sent out letters to the heads of state agencies hours after the Supremes ruled, that it's okay to withhold benefits from same-sex couples if such an arrangement offends the religious sensibilities of the agency heads. What? Has Greg Abbott never read the Fourteenth Amendment? Has he never heard of Loving v. Virginia?

Just what part of every citizen being guaranteed equal rights under the law does he not understand?

Religion has been used throughout history to justify oppression and repression. It has been used to justify the stealing of natural resources. It has been used to justify slavery and Jim Crow. Invoking it to defend discrimination in the choice of marriage partners is the latest use of the "opiate of the masses" to justify the second class treatment of a group of people. So far as I know, the only purpose of religion is to indoctrinate the masses into believing that their state of repression is willed by god and that they will get their equality once they are dead.

And to think that millions of people have fallen for that. Just think about it. When you're dead, you're fucking dead and it doesn't matter whether there's equality or not.

At some point Abbott and his minions will get slapped down and the State of Texas will be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern era. Until then I can sit back and enjoy watching the curtain getting pulled back on religion and exposing it as the con that it is.

Trying to revive the spirit of George Wallace

The states of Texas and Mississippi have decided that the 14th Amendment just doesn't apply to them when it comes to recognizing same-sex marriage. Despite a Pentagon directive that the National Guard units in the states extend benefits to same-sex spouses in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in the DOMA case, someone in Texas decided to ignore it.

Officials cited the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman found in the Texas Constitution as justification for denying equal protection to the spouses of same-sex marriages. Maj. John Nichols did tell those affected by the decision that they could apply for benefits at federal installations and that the Texas National Guard would not deny them benefits.

This is precisely the issue I wrote about some time back regarding the inevitability of the legalization of same-sex marriage. These acts of defiance by Texas and Mississippi bring into question whether same-sex spouses are being treated the same as traditional spouses.

Forcing same-sex couples to apply for benefits at a federal installation discriminates against same-sex couples as they are being required to do more to obtain the benefits they are legally entitled to receive. All that remains is for one couple to refuse to bow down and then walk over to the courthouse to file suit alleging that their civil rights were violated.

From the Dallas Morning News:

Pentagon officials said Texas appeared to be the only state with a total ban on processing applications from gay and lesbian couples. Spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen said federal officials will process all applications from same-sex couples with a marriage certificate from a state where it is legal. 

Alicia Butler said she was turned away from the Texas Military Forces headquarters in Austin early Tuesday and advised to get her ID card at Fort Hood, an Army post 90 miles away. She married her spouse - an Iraq war veteran - in California in 2009, and they have a 5-month-old child. 

"It's so petty. It's not like it's going to stop us from registering or stop us from marrying. It's a pointed way of saying, 'We don't like you," Butler said. 

She said she was concerned the state would withhold survivor benefits if something happened to her wife while she was activated on state duty rather than on federal deployment.

It is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause for a state to recognize the out-of-state marriages of some of their residents while not recognizing those of others - particularly since the only reason is the sexual orientation of those involved.

The leaders of both Texas and Mississippi should be ashamed of themselves. Being seen as supportive of same-sex marriage may not be a vote-getter in either state, but guaranteeing equal protection under the law to the citizenry should trump base politics. Of course we all know that the State of Mississippi has a pretty abysmal record when it comes to equal rights. We also know that the establishment (white) churches played a large role in defending segregation in the 1960's. The circle of good ol' boys who have run Mississippi for generations is slowly, but surely, coming to an end and they are doing everything they can to cling to power for as long as possible.

The right wing in this country (and others) have long used religion as their justification for fighting the extension of equal rights to the populace. That great opiate of the masses has been very effective in keeping the oppressors in power.

These western fundamentalists are every bit as wrong as their Islamic fundamentalist cousins in, and around, the Middle East. I find it very amusing to listen to the wingnuts express their hatred for those who would advocate theocracy in other parts of the world while they do their best to build a theocracy at home.

Opposition to same-sex marriage may very well be moot

North Carolina just became the 12th state to outlaw same-sex marriage. At the same time the referendum last Tuesday night provided President Obama the impetus to come out of the closet in support of same-sex marriage.

With Mitt Romney having wrapped up the Republican nomination you could expect President Obama to move toward the center so as not to alienate the fence-sitters in November. But he didn't. He took a chance to set some distance between he and his competitor for the White House.

The only thing is that marriage is a matter for the states to handle. You know, that whole federalism thing. Besides, whether a presidential candidate is for it or against it, or whether a state spends a lot of money to hold a referendum to ban same-sex marriage, doesn't really matter in the end.

There are currently six states that recognize same-sex marriage. Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont all permit same-sex couples to get married.Why is that important, you might ask? Because of the Full Faith and Credit Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

My wife and I were married here in the Lone Star State. We can move to any other state in the United States and we're still married because each state is obligated to recognize a marriage from another state. If you stop and think about it, it makes sense.

And for that very reason, whether North Carolina, or any other state, wants to ban same-sex marriage, may not matter one little whit. If North Carolina is obligated to recognize the marriage of a heterosexual couple from, say, Texas, to deny recognition of a same-sex marriage from Vermont would seem to be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

Of course the impetus behind same-sex marriage isn't to have a fancy wedding and wear wedding bands. The real reasons behind the push for same-sex marriage are inheritance rights and access to health benefits. As to inheritance rights, the goal can be accomplished just as easily by holding property as joint owners with survivorship provisions and by making out a will leaving one's share of commonly held property to one's partner.

Now, while the idea of same-sex marriage has great appeal to some - just remember, where there's marriage, there's divorce.