XPost: alt.politics.homosexuality, alt.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: misc.legal   
   From: ban.all.faggots@barackobama.com   
      
   A state appeals court in Colorado ruled Thursday that a baker   
   could not cite religious beliefs in refusing to make wedding   
   cakes for same-sex couples.   
      
   The decision is the latest in a series of similar rulings across   
   the country that have been cheered by civil rights groups but   
   attacked by conservative Christians as assaults on religious   
   liberty.   
      
   Whether photographers, florists, bakers and other vendors who   
   are Christians should have a right to refuse services for same-   
   sex marriages has emerged as a major cultural and legal battle,   
   one that has intensified since the Supreme Court decision in   
   June establishing same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.   
      
   In the Colorado case, “the court squarely said that this is   
   discrimination based on sexual orientation and it’s not to be   
   tolerated, even if it’s motivated by faith,” said Louise   
   Melling, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties   
   Union, which represented the gay couple. “Religious liberty   
   gives you the right to your beliefs but not the right to harm   
   others.”   
      
   But lawyers for the cake shop said the appeals panel “got it   
   wrong” and that they would probably appeal to Colorado’s Supreme   
   Court.   
      
   “Our client did not engage in sexual-orientation   
   discrimination,” said Jeremy Tedesco, a senior lawyer with   
   Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian legal group based in   
   Arizona. He argued that an objection to same-sex marriage was   
   not the same as discriminating against a gay person and noted   
   that the baker, Jack Phillips, of Masterpiece Cakeshop in   
   Lakewood, Colo., also refused to make cakes celebrating   
   Halloween because he associates the holiday with Satan.   
      
   “Cake decorating is his medium for creating art and they are   
   compelling him to engage in artistic expression that violates   
   his beliefs,” Mr. Tedesco said, resulting in a trampling of his   
   First Amendment rights to freedom of expression and religion.   
      
   But a unanimous three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of   
   Appeals, in upholding the decision of the state Commission on   
   Human Rights, rejected the argument that selling a cake to a gay   
   couple was so great an infringement on Mr. Phillip’s beliefs   
   that it trumped the anti-discrimination law.   
      
   No reasonable observer, the decision said, “would interpret   
   Masterpiece’s providing a wedding cake for a same-sex couple as   
   an endorsement of same-sex marriage, rather than a reflection of   
   its desire to conduct business in accordance with Colorado’s   
   public accommodations law.”   
      
   In July of 2012, a gay couple asked Masterpiece to create a   
   wedding cake for a celebration of their marriage. Mr. Phillips   
   told them that he could not design and bake a cake for them   
   because it would violate his Christian convictions.   
      
   The couple, Charlie Craig and David Mullins, filed a complaint   
   under Colorado law, which bars discrimination in public   
   accommodations based on sexual orientation. An administrative   
   law judge and then the Colorado Civil Rights Commission both   
   ruled that the cake shop had engaged in illegal discrimination.   
      
   Neither the law nor Thursday’s ruling prevents Mr. Phillips’   
   shop “from expressing its views on same-sex marriage — including   
   its religious opposition to it — and the bakery remains free to   
   dissociate itself from its customers’ viewpoints,” the appeals   
   court stated.   
      
   In a case involving similar arguments over artistic expression,   
   the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that a photographer   
   who refused to photograph a same-sex wedding had violated an   
   anti-discrimination law.   
      
   http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/us/colorado-court-rules-   
   against-baker-who-refused-to-serve-same-sex-couples.html?_r=0   
      
   --   
   Homophobe - A made up gay word to help gay sexual degenerates   
   feel better about themselves and their unnatural desire to   
   consume their own faeces from another man's penis.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)