A judge has ordered that Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood stop discriminating against gay couples seeking wedding cakes. The judge's ruling (on view below) is in response to a complaint filed by same-sex couple Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig, who said that Masterpiece owner Jack Phillips refused to bake them a wedding cake last year.
Phillips admitted as much to the judge. According the ruling, Phillips is a Christian who believes that baking a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage would "be displeasing God."
See also: Masterpiece Cakeshop: Will shop make cake for dog wedding but not gay wedding?
"Phillips believes that the Bible is the inspired word of God," the ruling by Judge Robert Spencer says. "That its accounts are literally true and that its commands are binding on him. Phillips believes that God created Adam and Eve, and that God's intention for marriage is the union of one man and one woman."
Colorado state law, however, prohibits "a place of public accommodation" -- which includes cake cops, Spencer says in the ruling -- from discriminating against a person based on his or her sexual orientation. Spencer didn't buy Phillips's argument that he's not opposed to gay people, just gay weddings.
"The salient feature distinguishing same-sex weddings from heterosexual ones is the sexual orientation of its participants," Spencer writes. "Only same-sex couples engage in same-sex weddings. Therefore, it makes little sense to argue that refusal to provide a cake to a same-sex couple for use at their wedding is not 'because of' their sexual orientation."
Read the entire ruling below.
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