By Rick Plasterer, Juicy Ecumenism. (Photo: Toa Heftiba/Unsplash)
Although the legal conflict over the conscience objection of religious merchants to facilitating homosexual and transgender behavior might seem to have been resolved with the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018) and (especially with the) 303 Creative v. Elenis (2023) decisions, the conflict still continues, as it did with Jack Phillips for several years after the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision was rendered, only to be resolved last year.
The 303 Creative decision established, as a matter of free speech, that merchants cannot be required to provide products involving their own creative expression advancing ideas that they disagree with. Yet another long running case involves a California baker, Cathy Miller, owner/operator of Tastries Bakery in Bakerfield, California, and threatens to erode the force of the 303 Creative decision. Miller, like Jack Phillips, runs a bakery that employs her own artistic expression in making custom cakes for weddings. But she was sued in late 2017 when she declined to provide a custom-made cake for a same-sex wedding. Somewhat surprisingly for a case arising in California, she won several times in state courts, noting as other harassed religious merchants have, that she sells general off-the-shelf products to everyone, and has trained and employed LGBT identifying individuals. She will not provide products that contain marijuana (now legal in California), depict gory or pornographic images, or celebrate drug use, witchcraft, or violence. Nor will she provide products that express support for same-sex marriage.