In Masterpiece, gay couple wants to have their cake, and have you eat it

Phillips creates his art at the Masterpiece Cakeshop

The Masterpiece Cakeshop is a small bakery located in a shopping center in Lakewood, Colorado, just west of Denver. The proprietor is Jack Phillips, and he is not simply a baker. Phillips is an artist.

The business website proclaims that for your wedding, birthday, or special occasion, "Phillips creates a masterpiece. Custom designs are his specialty: If you can think it up, Jack can make it into a cake!"

For more than two decades, Phillips grew his business into an award winner, one of the most popular of its kind in the Denver area. But now, despite it being one of their most popular services, the shop is no longer accepting custom wedding cake requests.

Masterpiece and Phillips are embroiled in a highly controversial and public battle that has wound its way to the United States Supreme Court. There will be no wedding cakes, at least until the court makes their ruling.

It all began more than five years ago. In the summer of 2012, a gay couple was planning to get married. Charlie Craig and David Mullins, that couple, wanted their cake designed by Masterpiece. 

However, Phillips wouldn't do it, claiming that his religious beliefs kept him from creating designer cakes for same-sex celebrations. He would, however, sell the couple other baked goods. Craig and Mullins, with the ACLU of Colorado in their corner, decided to literally make a court case out of the refusal. 

According to a timeline of the events provided by Kaitlyn Schallhorn for Fox News, in May 2014: "The Colorado Civil Rights Commission decided at a public hearing that Masterpiece had violated Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act, or CADA. Phillips was ordered to change its company policies as well as offer “comprehensive staff training” to employees. The cake shop was also required to provide quarterly reports about how it handled prospective customers."

That ruling was just one in a series of court decisions in the five years since the original complaint. The current SCOTUS case of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission will finally settle that legal battle once and for all.

At issue is a clear attack on individual freedoms. Does the government have the right and ability to force a business owner to create a product that is against their legitimately held personal and/or professional beliefs?

The clear answer for anyone who cares about freedom would be: no, the government has no such right.

The couple wants you to believe that this is a case about gay rights. That is a farce. Phillips was not denying sales to Craig and Mullins. They were free to choose from any number of items available at the shop.

This is about freedom of expression for the artist. Do the research and take a look at Phillips' specialty work. That is exactly what he is, an artist. To force him to make a gay wedding cake against his legitimately held Christian religious beliefs would actually violate his own rights.

Michael Farriss leads the Alliance Defending Freedom, the organization representing Phillips and Masterpiece in this case. He recently stated the following in a Fox News piece:

"Since the dawn of the republic, our constitutional order has honored individual freedom of mind and accorded citizens the corresponding liberty to speak and refrain from speaking as their conscience directs. Yet this formerly prized feature of our legal system devoted to individual freedom now faces growing opposition."

That growing opposition largely comes from liberal progressives such as Craig and Mullins. There was a much more appropriate course for the couple. Simply take your business elsewhere. Then ensure that the gay community learned of the Phillips position at the Masterpiece Bakeshop. 

A&E Crucifies 'Duck Dynasty' Patriarch Phil Robertson

The reality series 'Duck Dynasty' about the Robertson family of Louisiana is easily the most-watched program on the A&E cable network.

The family became wealthy operating a duck-hunting product company, 'Duck Commander', and the show features the colorful bunch of long-bearded, no-filters Robertson men and the women who love them.

The patriarch of the clan is Phil Robertson, who began the business by making duck calls from area cedar trees in a family backyard shed for a quarter century. Two days ago, the show, network, and Phil Robertson began making headlines in the mainstream news.

Robertson was placed "on hiatus" indefinitely by A&E, which said in a statement that the network was "extremely disappointed" in remarks that he had made in an interview for 'GQ' magazine which were deemed offensive by the gay community. A&E further stated they "have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT (gay) community."

In the interview, Robertson is quoted as saying "Everything is blurred on what's right and what's wrong...Sin becomes fine art. Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there." He later says "It seems like, to me, a vagina - as a man - would be more desirable than a man's anus. That's just me."

AIDS: Serious Problem Requiring Serious Solution

In July of 2008, the World Health Organization in conjunction with the United Nations released a report which stated that approximately 33 million people worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS.

With a world population of over 6 billion people, that means the percentage of human beings with this illness is about .0055 of the total world population.

In other words, while we may be talking about a lot of people, we are not talking about a significant number. Better than 99% of the people on earth do not have this illness, and there is a reason for that.

The reason is that it is spread in its greatest numbers by far through irresponsible sexual practices, and the greatest number of those by far in the advanced world come through homosexual practices.

By far the highest numbers of AIDS cases in the world can be seen in sub-Saharan Africa, that area of Africa below the Sahara desert, where approximately 2/3 of all the cases on earth can be found. It is highly likely that this area of the world is where the AIDS virus first found its way into the human population.

There are serious problems in this part of the world largely attributable to poverty and a lack of education, which themselves are perpetuated by the autocratic and despotic governments.

At the individual and familial level the results are involving shortcomings in personal hygiene and the overall lack of cleanliness, combined with the social problems of acceptance of multiple sexual partners at any one time.

In short, AIDS came out of Africa and remains at its strongest there, and around the rest of the world it has spread largely due to irresponsible and deviant sexual practices. Anyone who tells you anything else is simply perpetrating a fraud on you.

California's Sane Marriage Proposal

"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept, and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh thereof; And the rib, which the Lord had taken from the man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man.

And Adam said 'This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of Man.' Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." - Genesis 2:21-24

Let's face it, no matter what the radicals, the profane, and the borderline insane will try to tell you, there are two sexes. They are male and female, just as Adam and Eve in the Genesis creation story.

The main differences are their physical and sexual characteristics. Man was created with a penis and sperm. Woman was created with a vagina and eggs. For anyone who thinks normally and rationally, the ramifications are obvious.

Genesis explains in clear terms how God created man, and then created woman for a purpose. That clear purpose is that the two different sexes will unite together as one. This is the origin of the concepts of marriage, the very concept of family itself.

Throughout the history of mankind it has always been understood that the natural order called on men and women to join, have children, nurture those children in family, and propagate their genes to help foster the growth of mankind.

There have always been those among us who were deviant, and rather than become attracted to those of the opposite sex, they were instead attracted to those of the same sex. But this was always, in every culture in man's history, considered a deviance, a negative to be avoided. It was considered an extremely unnatural act, the joining of two people of the same sex in a sexual union.

My Catholic Lament: Failure of My Faith

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office this week released the results of a lengthy, indepth investigation into previously alleged charges of sexual abuse by priests of the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

The grand jury findings proved to be shocking and abhorant, showing dozens of priests over a multi-decades span sexually molesting and abusing young children.

To further compound the scandalous findings, the Church leadership and their representatives appear to be trying more of the same recipe that has proven disastrous to the victims, and to the Church body: deny, deny, deny.

No, there is no denial that molestation and abuse has gone on, that would be ridiculous in light of the now incontrovertible proof.

The denial aspect comes into play when Church leaders, particularly Cardinal Justin Rigali, put out vehement defenses for Cardinals John Krol and Anthony Bevilacqua, his immediate predecessors.

In the grand jury findings, the two Cardinals are specifically singled out for a failure of leadership. They are accused of handling the problems as they surfaced over the years largely by sweeping them under the rug.

As the allegations would come to light and be found credible, priests were shuffled from parish-to-parish in a sort of shell game that did nothing to solve the problems, only serving to expose even more individuals to the predator priests practices.

It is long past the time for the Church to stop playing the same old game of denial, and instead it is overdue that the Church and it’s leaders take on the full measure of their responsibility for these grave sins against it’s own membership.