A Christian baker who declined to make a cake for a same-sex wedding is speaking out just weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court is slated to issue a ruling on his controversial case — a decision that will surely be a landmark ruling in the ongoing battle over the confines and scope of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
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As Faithwire previously reported, the legal battle surrounds Phillips’ 2012 refusal to make a gay wedding cake. Phillips, much like Oregon bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein and numerous other wedding venders across the U.S., has since found himself in the crosshairs of the government as well as LGBTQ activists, yet he has refused to back down from his stance that his Christian faith precludes him from serving gay marriage ceremonies.
“I serve everybody. I just don’t make cakes for every event,” Phillips told The Daily Signal in a recent interview. “It’s never the people; it’s always the event that I look at.”
During the interview, Phillips also reacted to an element of his legal battle that caught quite a bit of attention back in 2014: Colorado Civil Rights Commissioner Diann Rice’s statements at the time that some critics saw as a comparison between Phillips’ arguments against making the cake and peoples’ past excuses for slavery and the Holocaust.
“I would also like to reiterate what we said in … the last meeting [concerning Jack Phillips]. Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust,” Rice reportedly said. “I mean, we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use – to use their religion to hurt others.”
Phillips offered up a reaction to these remarks, telling The Daily Signal that he found the comments personally offensive, considering that his father fought in World War II and had personally witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust.
“I dont have the vocabulary for it, but for someone to compare trying to live by your faith to a person who brought on the Holocaust or to slave owners, is just — it’s insulting. It’s ridiculous,” he said. “I don’t have words for it, but it’s wrong.”
Phillips said that his situation has nothing at all to do with Nazis nor racism and that his goal is to love others and to run his bakery in accordance with his faith.
The baker has continued to staunchly defend himself despite receiving attacks and threats. Phillips even appeared on “The View” earlier this summer where he calmly made his case before the show’s hosts. In a cordial yet pointed discussion, Phillips made it clear that he serves everyone, but said he simply doesn’t make cakes for gay weddings or other events or themes he objects to.
“It’s a difficult thing to be in my position and know that somebody’s requesting me to do something that I can’t in good conscience do,” he said. “I believe that the Bible clearly teaches that marriage is between one man and one woman.”