Tag Archives: gay cake

After SCOTUS Ruling Tennessee Hardware Store Puts Up 'No Gays Allowed' Sign

After SCOTUS Ruling Tennessee Hardware Store That Put Up ‘No Gays Allowed’ Sign Feels Vindicated

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Following the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of a baker refusing to make wedding cakes for gay couple that was actually not about the cake or “religious freedom” an East Tennessee hardware store owner who two years ago decided to express his beliefs by putting up a sign reading “No Gays Allowed” now feels vindicated

The owner, Jeff Amyx, is both the owner of the hardware and roofing supplies store and a baptist minister who says love between LGBT people is against his religion

Amyx told WBIR he was, inspired by LGBT people’s willingness to stand up for what they believe in, deciding that as a Christian, he should do the same. And that he was celebrating a “win” after the Supreme Court narrowly ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The SCOTUS ruling said the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated Jack Phillips’ rights under the First Amendment, though Colorado law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

On Tuesday, Amyx removed the “No Gays allowed” sign he has hung on his door for the past 2 years and replaced it with a sign that says: “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who would violate our rights of freedom of speech & freedom of religion.”

“I was shocked. I was really shocked because of the track record of our Supreme Court,” Amyx said.  “Christianity is under attack. This is a great win but this is not the end, this is just the beginning,” he said. “Right now we’re seeing a ray of sunshine. This is ‘happy days’ for Christians all over America, but dark days will come.”

Extra Special Bonus!.  Amyx Hardware is now categorized as a “gay bar” on Google and the reviews are epic. (I SWEAR I DIDN’T DO IT!)

rump DOJ Files Supreme Court Brief Against Adoptions By LGBTs

Trump’s White House Applauds SCOTUS Ruling in Favor of Anti-Gay Baker

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Although the Supreme Court handed Jack Phillips and his Masterpiece Bakery a “narrow” win that applies only to his incident with Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission and doesn’t set up a sweeping rule enabling anti-LGBT discrimination, many anti-LGBT groups have hailed the decision as a major win for religious freedom and now so does Donald Trump’s White House.

White House Press Secretary Sarah “Smokey Eye” Huckabee Sanders hailed Tuesday as a win for religious freedom the narrow ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to serve a custom-made wedding cake to a same-sex couple.

“When it comes to the bakers, we were pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision,” Sanders said. “The First Amendment prohibits government discriminating against the basis of religious beliefs, and the Supreme Court rightly concluded that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission failed to show tolerance and respect for his religious beliefs.”

Sanders also alluded to support in the lawsuit for Masterpiece Cakeshop by the Trump administration. The U.S. Justice Department submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in favor of Colorado baker Jack Phillips and U.S. Solicitor General Neil Francisco argued before the Supreme Court on his behalf.

“In this case and others, the Department of Justice will continue to vigorously defend the free speech and religious freedom First Amendment rights,” Sanders said.

The Supreme Court’s vote was narrow not because of the number of justices for and against, but because of the slim precedent it sets.

The justices did not issue a definitive ruling on the circumstances under which people can seek exemptions from anti-discrimination laws based on their religious views. The decision also did not address important claims raised in the case including whether baking a cake is a kind of expressive act protected by the Constitution’s free speech guarantee. But simpler minds like those of many LGBT hate group leaders, their followers and it seems the White House itself is refusing to recognize that.

Two of the court’s four liberals, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, joined the five conservative justices in the ruling authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who also was the author of the landmark 2015 decision legalizing gay marriage nationwide.

“The commission’s hostility was inconsistent with the First Amendment’s guarantee that our laws be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion,” Kennedy wrote.

But Kennedy also stressed the importance of gay rights while noting that litigation on similar issues is likely to continue in lower courts.

“Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth,” Kennedy wrote.

“The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts, all in the context of recognizing that these disputes must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market,” Kennedy added.

Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Anti-Gay Baker. Reactions. and Read The FULL SCOTUS RULING

Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Anti-Gay Baker. Reactions. and Read The FULL SCOTUS RULING

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The Supreme Court on Monday ruled 7-2 in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple because it went against his religious beliefs.

The justices, in a decision signed by Justice Anthony Kennedy, said Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, did not violate the state’s anti-discrimination law.

The decision faulted the Colorado Civil Right Commission for violating the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution by making Phillips bake the cake even though he opposed doing so on religious grounds.

“The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views, in some instances protected forms of expression,” the majority opinion stated.

The ruling went on to blast comments made during the commission’s hearing that denigrated Phillips’ faith and included remarks that compared his belief in religious freedom to past instances when it was used to justify discrimination like slavery and the Holocaust.

“This sentiment is inappropriate for a commission charged with the solemn responsibility of fair and neutral enforcement of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law — a law that protects discrimination on the basis of religion as well as sexual orientation,” Kennedy said.

The ACLU, which represented Mullins and Craig, said the ruling actually affirms that businesses cannot discriminate.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights continues:

Today’s Supreme Court decision in Masterpiece Cakeshopis a narrow, fact-based decision that does not break any new constitutional ground or create any new exemptions to anti-discrimination laws. The Court reversed the state court decision only because it found that the record in this case indicated that the Colorado Commission’s deliberations were tainted by anti-religious hostility.

Of course extremist right wing hate groups and Christian Nationalist are calling this a victoy

This is a victory for Jack Phillips and our nation’s long cherished freedom of following one’s deeply held beliefs without fear of government punishment. The Supreme Court made clear that the government has no authority to discriminate against Jack Phillips because of his religious beliefs.

Misguided government officials singled out Jack’s religious beliefs for discriminatory treatment – but that isn’t freedom, it’s tyranny. It’s simply un-American to force people like Jack to compromise their religious beliefs just because they are disfavored by those who have used government entities like this Colorado government commission.

Thankfully, the Supreme Court’s ruling means Jack will remain free to live according to his beliefs whether he is at work, at home, or in his place of worship. As Americans, our consensus on religious freedom has historically recognized the God-given right of Americans to live all aspects of their lives according to their faith. This is no different today. – Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council hate group

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JUSTICE GINSBURG and JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR were the two dissenting Supreme Court judges..

Phillips’ refusal to serve Craig and Mullins: Phillips would not sell to Craig and Mullins, for no reason other than their sexual orientation, a cake of the kind he regularly sold to others. When a couple contacts a bakery for a wedding cake, the product they are seeking is a cake celebrating their wed­ding—not a cake celebrating heterosexual weddings or same-sex weddings—and that is the service Craig and Mullins were denied.

You can read the SUPREME COURTS FULL RULING BY CLICKING HERE 

 

Gay Men And Aging: Part Deux

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hot guy with a big cakeToday I turn 33 and as I did last year I wanted to again share my perspective on what you learn as you grow older as a gay man. So often in the gay world, aging is heralded as losing something very precious with a value so high we become consumed with holding onto our youth as fervently as possible. To some it becomes a full blown obsession and any reference to them approaching 30 or older sets off a manic frenzy of doubt and insecurities with an ever looming shroud of shame. At that pace some give our youth so much value sometimes more than it’s actually worth. 

Setting aside the assumption that once we come out we go through what’s often referred to as a “second puberty” retaining a certain look of vitality and strength the fear of growing older as a gay man is much more pronounced in our community than our straight counterparts. Maybe it comes from feeling like we wasted so much time in the closet that we have to make up for lost time. We often harbor on the illusion that our youth has the most value.

When in actuality it is the complete opposite. Aging is what gives life true value. Not only in the monetary wealth we acquire or the relationships we nurture but also in how we value ourselves. What have I seen over the past year is a testament to that.  We are so hell-bent on hanging onto a period of our lives when we are revered for our youth and vitality that we only focus on staying in one place for eternity. Aging is a beautiful thing.

Some may spend a lot of effort in justifying the cons of becoming older while their message unconsciously speaks about our waning years and how we should make the most effort in living life to the fullest. Others may lament on how it is harder for us to make connections as we approach middle age. But I feel the opposite is true. As you grow older you find relationships to be much more fulfilling because you are at a point in your life where you honestly know yourself and the kind of people you want to invest time and effort into building something worthwhile.

As a result we don’t grow from our experiences or come closer to the actualized person we were always meant to be. That means we forgo the potential to be a more profound, worthwhile human being. So we become stagnate and eventually lost. You can try as much as you’d like to hold on to the present and this perfect image but it won’t last. But you can hold onto the experiences and let them enrich your life as you grow older.

Trust me I’m not saying I want to look older (though I’d rock the hell out of a salt n pepper beard). No one does. But it’s okay to be older and wiser than the year before. You can look great and be older at the same time. We’re all vain.  And that’s okay to be a little vain. What I’m saying is that it’s okay to appreciate the experience of growing a little older. A little wiser. To have a little more wear on you than when you were a brand new gay ready to take on the world. You can hold on to wanting to make change in this world with each breath you take.

But if stop for a moment and reflect you’ll remember those times of first being out of the closet and after that feeling of euphoria washed over you like summer rain you soon realized you didn’t know the first thing in actually making those dreams come true. I lauded loudly about how aware I was about the world but I still needed to grow because I didn’t know it all or myself. I panicked because the answers weren’t as readily available to me as I had once presumed would be the case once I came out. All the time I spent contemplating coming out and how I would do it and how different the world would be meant I had not taken into consideration how different I would be.

While in my 20s I did my best to externally exude a stoic reverence about where I was at in my life. But on the inside I was always vacillating between confusion and doubt and insecurities about how I looked, how I talked (I have a thick southern drawl) and even while in school was completely unsure about who I was as a person. Basically I was a mess because I was unsure of what being gay meant to me. That may be true of everyone at that age but as always it’s a bit different for us. More intense because we are readjusting to the world being openly gay.

Despite the previous knowledge I had about what being gay was like, the do’s and don’ts, the endless time spent silently observing gay men and what I thought gay lifestyles were like, I hadn’t experienced life enough to know what the hell being gay meant for me. The constructs that I’d held onto for so long and feverishly doing everything in my power and beyond to hold on to my youth was somewhat crippling. Always making such an excruciating effort to not only to maintain the look of someone in their early twenties but also keep up with that mindset is stifling. So I stayed in one place and didn’t grow.

That was true for all areas of my life. I was too busy trying to replicate the best examples of being a well-rounded gay man that it caused me to be a shadow of a man rather than just standing in the light and allowing myself to learn and discover my identity. Growth requires light and you can’t do that by always standing in the shadows of others or holding onto one specific place in time. While it is vital to have something or someone that inspires you at some point you have to be your own inspiration. After all, that’s how the people we most admire are on top is because they were willing to climb. They had some assistance and pushes in the right direction but ultimately they crafted themselves into those great figures by having the courage to find out who they were. And we all must do the same.

Again I forgot that lesson of appreciating the moment and moving onto the future because as a black man I had to do the same thing. You have to reconcile so much in life that you even have to account for how your race affects who you are, especially when everyone is always made aware of it. I had to decide if I would succumb to the weight of the stereotypes placed on me or refuse to be defined by them. Or choose to be obsessed with how much they impacted my life and defying them. My experiences as a gay man and the notion of vanity and youth reflect the same philosophies. And I finally got it and decided not be imprisoned by retaining youth I was free. I let myself be.

You may think that others won’t value the more seasoned you but I can honestly say that guys are more interested and drawn to the 33 year old me who’s tall, a bit lanky and truly knows who he is than the 25 year old me with a twelve pack abs and had absolutely no idea who he was. Maybe it is a thing of confidence. But really it’s about experience and allowing me to grow. And knowing that above all my faults and imperfections that I wholeheartedly love who I am, at any age.

Of course we don’t want to appear older. Nor do we want aging to slow us down. But this ravenous, all-consuming obsession we have with retaining our youth in this community is suffocating.

As with everything, this too is a balancing act. Be active in keeping both your mind and body healthy. It is perfectly okay to want to look good. You should always hold onto your youthful spirit and hunger for life. Just don’t become consumed with staying in one place in this life or you will miss out on the rest of the world. You’ll miss the person you always dreamed of being.

And you’ll miss out on birthday cake so no one wants that.