Trump's Justice Dept. Defending Anti Gay Baker in Court~Another Let Down for the LGBT Community

Focus Features’ historical drama about an interracial couple that found themselves at the center of a Supreme Court case, “Loving,” was recently No. 1 at the indie box office.

"A couple walks in a bakery. They are getting married and want something special, they heard this particular bakery is pretty good. The baker takes a look at them, put his order pad down and says "I can not bake you a cake!" The puzzled couple are perplexed and asked him,  why not? 

He looks at them with contempt and says "I don't bake, I don't do work for a biracial couple. It offends me and my beliefs of separation of the races. I followed the book of ________ and it forbids me to do work for some one who has broken their ethnicity and mixed their genes by getting married"

If this were to happen there is no question that the baker might even be arrested depending on what locality. What would be the difference between a biracial couple getting married and a gay couple? 40 Yrs ago in many parts of the South helping a biracial couple in their wedding would be one of the worse things a white baker could do, (He would have his business burnt to the ground).

Not today because the Supreme Court reversed itself and saw it as pure, simple discrimination by using faith or religion to do something that was wrong and illegal.

This is as simple as two same sex partners getting married or joining the service. It was going to be gloom and doom they said (Queen of the South as I call him Sen. Linsey Grahm said it more than once on ending DADT) but it's been years on both occurrences and straights still get married without a thought of how a gay couple's marriage might affect them and in the military gay service members have excelled themselves. Have not rape one single soldier, the same cannot be said of straight Marines and Navy Personnel as cases brought forward by enlisted and commission female soldiers have said in sworn testimony.

You would think the same would be true for refusing a gay couple service in a public, licensed establishment. But these people have not given up. May be it would take them to pass on and be replaced by newer generations and then everybody would ask, two water fountains one for whites and one for blacks or worse yet one saying for whites only and no water fountain for blacks n the vicinity? No cake for a couple getting married?? How low?~~~~~~~

NPR.org:

On the campaign trail last year, after a tragic attack on an Orlando nightclub left 49 people dead, Donald Trump went out of his way to thank the LGBT community, vowing to protect them from violence and tweeting, "I will fight for you."

Years earlier, in an interview with a magazine that reaches a large gay audience, Trump told The Advocate that he supported gay people serving in the military.

If he were in charge, Trump said in 2000, "sexual orientation would be meaningless. I'm looking for brains and experience. If the best person for the job happens to be gay, I would certainly appoint them."

Advocates for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are pointing to those remarks again this week after the Trump administration filed court papers siding with a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding celebration because he said it would violate his religious beliefs. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case this fall.

 

High Court To Hear Case Of Cake Shop That Refused To Bake For Same-Sex Wedding

"The Justice Department has already made its hostility to the rights of LGBT people and so many others crystal clear," said Louise Melling, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union. "But this brief was shocking, even for this administration. What the Trump administration is advocating for is nothing short of a constitutional right to discriminate."

To the Justice Department, however, the case known as Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission turns on its analysis of the First Amendment, and the cake-maker's rights prevail.

"The government may not enact content-based laws commanding a speaker to engage in a protected expression: An artist cannot be forced to paint, a musician cannot be forced to play, and a poet cannot be forced to write," acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall wrote in his court filing.

Public accommodations laws that bar discrimination by many businesses in Colorado and elsewhere serve an important purpose, but they, "like other laws, must yield to the individual freedoms that the First Amendment guarantees," according to a statement from Justice Department spokeswoman Lauren Ehrsam. "That includes the freedom not to create an expression for ceremonies that violate one's religious beliefs." 

Top Lawyer For Civil Rights At Justice Department Leaving After Roughly 6 Months

That point of view is backed by more than 80 congressional Republicans, who are filing their own brief with the Supreme Court. One of them, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, appeared at a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday with the owner of the Colorado cake shop, Jack Phillips.

But for LGBT advocates, the Justice Department's stance in a dispute where gay rights clash with religious liberty marks the latest in a series of disappointments. 

In July, the president abruptly announced via Twitter that he wanted to bar transgender people from serving in the military, the apparently surprising top brass at the Pentagon. That same month, the Justice Department signed a court brief arguing that current anti-discrimination laws do not protect people on the basis of their sexual orientation in the workplace. In February, his administration revoked Obama-era guidance for schools on bathroom and locker room access for transgender students. 

No One in National government is more homophobic and actively anti gay that vice president Trump elected, Mike Pence

"The brief filed yesterday is just the latest example of how Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Jeff Sessions have placed a target on the backs of LGBT people in order to score political points with a shrinking base of supporters, and, for Pence and Sessions in particular, to impose their religious views on the rest of the country," McGowan said.