Democrats in Minnesota and nationwide are switching into enforcement mode. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The legal persecution of Jack Phillips continues…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nPhillips\u2019s public expression of his faith had placed a target on his back, and the narrow Supreme Court ruling in his favor had the two-pronged effect of further inflaming activists while simultaneously depriving the baker of decisive, precedent-setting protections against their agitations. In 2017, \u201cthe very day the Supreme Court agreed to hear Phillips\u2019s case, Autumn Scardina, a transgender activist in Denver, called Masterpiece Cakeshop and requested a custom cake with a blue exterior and a pink interior to symbolize a gender transition,\u201d David Harsanyi wrote<\/a>. Scardina was allegedly a member of the Church of Satan<\/a>, and court documents alleged the activist had also sought Phillips\u2019s services for charming depictions such as a cake celebrating Satan\u2019s birthday, which would feature \u201ca large figure of Satan, licking a 9\u2033 black Dildo,\u201d with the requirement that the dildo must necessarily be \u201can actual working model that can be turned on before we unveil the cake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Phillips, of course, politely declined Scardina\u2019s requests. Scardina, of course, proceeded to file a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The commission, of course, ruled against Phillips. In August 2018, two months after his initial Masterpiece Cakeshop<\/em> victory, Phillips was back in court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week, a panel for the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld<\/a> an earlier court decision requiring Phillips to bake Scardina\u2019s transgender cake. No surprise there \u2014 the same court had also upheld the state\u2019s original injunction demanding that Phillips bake the same-sex wedding cake. What should be abundantly clear at this point is that \u201ccivil rights,\u201d in this context, are more about power \u2014 wielded against disfavored groups, and in favor of privileged ones \u2014 than any neutral conception of legal protection. Even as it ruled against Phillips, the Commission upheld the right of bakers to refuse to make a Bible-shaped cake inscribed with the message: \u201cHomosexuality is a detestable sin. Leviticus 18:2.\u201d This double standard is a feature, not a bug, of how these bureaucracies function. As NR\u2019s editors noted<\/a> today, the practical effect of the Left\u2019s weaponization of anti-discrimination laws \u201cis to demand that the faithful kneel before favored identity groups.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
…and is so hamfistedly symbolic that a sophomore-year English prof would send it back for rewrite if it were fiction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The process is the punishment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, the MNDFL does its darnedest to make it difficult, even impossible, to run as a Republican. I’ve heard more than one GOP legislator who’d been pondering running for higher office without having spent their teens and twenties as cloistered monks say they were going to demur on running , because the DFL’s opposition research crowd would make not only their lives, but their family’s, a living hell. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
WIth that in mind?<\/p>\n\n\n\n