Not that this should come as any big surprise, but Christian baker Jack Phillips once again finds himself under siege by the woke mafia.
The latest round in the relentless attack on this man comes from the transgender mob. In this case, a man pretending to be a woman by the name of Autumn Scardina filed a complete against Phillips after Phillips refused to bake him a cake celebrating his “transition” from male to female. Phillips initially agreed to bake the cake, which was to be pink with blue icing. But when Scardina told him the purpose of the cake was to celebrate his transition from man to woman, Phillips then refused on the ground that he did not believe someone could change genders and would not celebrate “somebody who thinks that they can.”
You may recall that Phillips won his 2018 case in the Supreme Court over an earlier legal attack on him for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. In that case, his lawyers argued successfully that forcing Phillips to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, which Phillips opposed – correctly – on the ground that same-sex weddings were a violation of his religious beliefs, represented a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech.
According to Phillips, he is “an artist who uses cakes as ‘canvas’ to express ideas and celebrate events.” The argument seems to be that by forcing him to bake a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding or a gender transition, he is being forced to say something that he does not want to say, and that violates his conscience as a Christian.
As a Christian, I have a lot of sympathy for Jack Phillips. It is an outrage that this man has been harassed for the past decade simply for wanting to live his professional life in accord with his Christian conscience. I also understand why his lawyers have advised him to argue his case on First Amendment grounds. His legal team probably considered it the clearest path to victory. And they were right, at least up to a point. Phillips did win his 2018 case before the Supreme Court.
But now he’s back in legal hot water again, and part of the problem is that his legal advisors did not attack the fundamental issue in his original case. Phillips had the right to refuse to bake the same-sex wedding cake. But the ground of his rightful refusal was not the First Amendment, but rather his rights as a private property owner.
Lux Lucet 
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