The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with Phillips and dismissed the most recent attack against his faith. But David Closson, director for The Center for Biblical Worldview with the Family Research Council, predicts the anti-faith trend will only continue.
Phillips (right) became a national story in 2012 when he told a same-sex couple his Christian beliefs prevented him from baking their wedding cake. They filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Six years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Phillips didn't get a fair commission hearing back in 2012 because of religious hostility expressed by some of the committee members.
That controversial commission is a key player in the latest Phillips litigation. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 6-3 this week that plaintiff “Autumn” Scardina, a Denver attorney and a biological male who says he’s a woman, made a procedural error when he sued Phillips in state court rather than appealing Phillips’ legal settlement of his lawsuit against the commission.
Scardina called Phillips in 2017 demanding a “gender-transition” cake. Phillips refused and Scardina filed a complaint with the commission.
“Enough is enough,” Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Jake Warner told AFN this week. “Jack has been dragged through the courts for over a decade. It’s time to leave him alone.”
Closson, in an appearance on Washington Watch Thursday, said he agrees with Warner’s sentiment but doesn’t believe it’s about to happen.
“We celebrate the win," Closson told show host Jody Hice, "but what we need to realize [is] the very fact that this case existed shows that those of us with Christian beliefs on marriage and sexuality will increasingly continue to be in the crosshairs of activists who fundamentally disagree with us on these issues.”
Left not letting up against Phillips
Closson said Scardina represents “an aggressive push to try to continue to get Jack Phillips to capitulate.”
It wasn’t only about a gender-transition cake with Scardina. It was obvious harassment, according to Closson. “This activist lawyer also asked for a cake of Satan smoking marijuana, clearly trying to get Jack to say no and that because of his Christian beliefs he could not acquiesce to these requests,” he explained.
Closson noted that while the U.S. Supreme Court and the Colorado Supreme Court have delivered notable wins for Phillips, in neither case has the court ruled on the case’s merits.
“It’s a win as far as this lawsuit is no longer hanging over his head, and our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom are doing a great job," he offered. "But it was still close – and actually the [Colorado] Supreme Court, even in their majority opinion, went out of their way to say that the court expresses no opinion about the merits. So clearly I think it’s inviting further future litigation.”
The FRC center director urged his fellow Christians to keep their guard up for more attacks on their beliefs … particularly if Vice President Kamala Harris defeats former President Donald Trump in November.
“In the [roughly] four years now of the Biden-Harris administration, we have seen a continued onslaught for Christians and people of faith who have what you might call 'traditional' beliefs on marriage and on issues of sexuality," Closson shared. "Even on the issue of abortion, you saw the New York attorney general go after pregnancy resource centers. [She argued] they couldn’t talk about the abortion reversal pill.”
For years, Christians were protected by a “moral consensus” that God’s design and order are correct. That consensus, however, is becoming less in what Closson and others believe is a post-Christian era on the world’s timeline.
“My fear is that the moral consensus that had for so long held most Americans together … continues to fray, we’re increasingly going to see these attacks along the lines of gender orientation, sexual identity.” Especially, he added, if Republicans fail to win at least the White House or one legislative chamber.
Equality Act lingers in background for now
A Democratic sweep at any time would almost certainly usher in the Equality Act, legislation that elevates sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes – protected even when in direct conflict with religious liberty.
The Equality Act originated in 2019 and has been passed by two different U.S. Houses.
“You better believe that if Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the White House they would pass the Equality Act. It literally has a carve-out that says those contested categories would trump religious liberty claims as protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” Closson said.
Legal cases such as Phillips’ saga “are only going to continue, I fear,” he concluded.
