The Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling continues to bear fruit. David French, writing at National Review Online, has provided several pieces that emphasize the upside of the decision, here, here, and here.
One important point that is a gift that should keep on giving is a quote from the Decision written by Justice Kennedy.
To describe a man’s faith as “one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use” is to disparage his religion in at least two distinct ways: by describing it as despicable, and also by characterizing it as merely rhetorical — something insubstantial and even insincere.
Write that down. Copy and paste it. Keep it handy.
New Hampshire has a Human Rights Commission, a Diversity and Inclusion Council, and a Republican governor who has bought into the narrative that he needs those Merit Badges to retain political power. Too many ‘Republicans’ in the legislature, as well as party leaders past and present, can’t wait to add virtue-signaling to their resume’s without any regard to the real world consequences. Which are?
The left’s Social Justice narrative turns on an institutional belief that Christians are bigots. That the secular state is superior. It is a foundation of progressive intellectual serfdom. But the court just handed them a significant defeat and French offers immediate evidence.
Wayne State is attempting to derecognize InterVarsity Christian Fellowship because IVCF requires that its leaders adhere to its statement of faith. In other words, a Christian group wants Christian leadership. The university says that’s impermissible discrimination, yet it allegedly allows exclusively male and female leadership for fraternities and sororities, exclusively female leadership for female athletic clubs, and exclusively African-American leaders for African-American clubs. For those keeping score at home, the university is permitting sex and race-based discrimination. In its reply brief, IVCF notes that Masterpiece is directly on-point:
Wayne State’s anti-religious value judgment is explicit. Wayne State insists on maintaining categorical exemptions for large, popular secular groups so that those groups can select both leaders and members based on sex. But Wayne State then insists that it cannot possibly allow religious groups to select religious leaders because, just maybe, one day a religious group (unlike InterVarsity) might “hold[] as an article of religious faith that their leaders must be . . . male.” Dkt. 21 at 23-24. To Wayne State, actual secular sex discrimination is good while hypothetical religious sex discrimination is evil. But to the Supreme Court, a “rationale for the difference in treatment of these two instances cannot be based on the government’s own assessment of offensiveness.” Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colo. Civil Rights Comm’n, No. 16 111, slip op. 16, 584 U.S. __ (June 4, 2018). Thus, Wayne State “cannot act in a manner that passes judgment upon or presupposes the illegitimacy of religious beliefs and practices.” Id. at 17.
Critics of Masterpiece say that the decision will enable anti-religious discrimination so long as it’s polite. Religious liberty litigators know that’s more easily said than done. Especially in university litigation, if you eliminate the college’s double standards they often have no standards at all. Indeed, the entire point of their so-called nondiscrimination regime is to discriminate against disfavored views. State censors can’t change their bigoted past, and it’s hard to clean up and conceal their true motives in the future — not without harming identity groups they support by imposing on them the same limits they seek for people of faith. For Christians in America’s deep-blue redoubts, legal equality is a dramatic improvement.
The state of affairs today is far and away superior to the one we had before Masterpiece Cake Shop. Sure, it could have been better. Or could it?
Kurt Schlichter thinks there’s Nothing Narrow About This Huge Win In The Culture War.
The opinion of Justice Kennedy, who I would love to see retire and spend more time with his family, nevertheless wrote a powerful rebuke to bigoted bureaucrats who never even bothered to hide their anti-religious zealotry when persecuting a guy for refusing to submit and acknowledge their supremacy. Their prejudice was stunning, not least for its shamelessness – these moral illiterates made no effort to hide their seething contempt for believers. And guess what? That’s not okay.
No, it’s not. So keep those words of Justice Kennedy handy because the left can’t help itself.
