Colorado Civil Rights Commission ville tvinge Jack Phillips til at levere kage til et homo-bryllup, eller skulle han tvinges til at stoppe som bager. Foto: Aaron P Bernstein/Reuters/Scanpix

En kristen bager i Colorado, USA, har fået Højesterets ord for, at han har ret til at nægte at bage kage til et homofilt bryllup af religiøse grunde.

Højesterets flertal var solide 7-2 i Jack Phillips favør.

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Colorado baker Jack Phillips, who was sanctioned for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.

For mange amerikanere er friheden til at følge sin samvittighed vigtig. De gør oprør, når myndighederne forsøger at diktere dem, hvad de skal mene.

En menneskerettighedsgruppe i delstaten ville pålægge Jack Philips at levere kagen, ellers måtte han stoppe med at bage overhovedet.

Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, was told by a Colorado Civil Rights Commission that he cannot refuse to bake cakes for events that violate his conscience, even though he had a long history of selling items in his cakeshop to anyone who walked through the door. Phillips, citing his Christian faith, said his conscience would not allow him to design cakes for events like divorce parties, lewd bachelor parties, or same-sex weddings.

Colorado ordered him to either make cakes for same-sex weddings or stop making cakes at all.

Men Højesteret havde en mere salomonisk holdning. Homofile har rettigheder, men det har også mennesker med et andet syn på f.eks. ægteskabet.

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that “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 and in some instances protected forms of expression.” Citing Obergefell v. Hodges, the justices wrote that the Commission’s treatment of Phillips’ case:

…showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs motivating his objection. As the record shows, some of the commissioners at the Commission’s formal, public hearings endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust. No commissioners objected to the comments. Nor were they mentioned in the later state-court ruling or disavowed in the briefs filed here. The comments thus cast doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the Commission’s adjudication of Phillips’ case.

Højesteret revser Civil Rights Commission for ikke at ville tillægge Phillips religiøse overbevisning nogen vægt eller gyldighed overhovedet. Han skulle åbenbart ikke have lov til at blande sit religiøse syn ind i sin forretningsvirksomhed.

Højesteret siger, at borgerretskommissionen udviste en fjendtlig holdning til hans kristne tro. Nogle sammenlignede det med forsvar for slaveri eller Holocaust. Ingen af de andre komitemedlemmer tog afstand fra disse synspunkter.

Højesteret mener derfor ikke, at kommissionen har været i stand til at give Phillips en fair behandling.

The high court said the Commission’s treatment of Phillips violated the First Amendment mandate not to base laws or regulations on hostility to religion. “The government, consistent with the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise, cannot impose regulations that are hostile to the religious beliefs of affected citizens and cannot act in a manner that passes judgment upon or presupposes the illegitimacy of religious beliefs and practices,” the justices wrote.

Det er en banebrydende dom. Som den homovenlige dele af samfundet tolker loven, er der ikke plads til dissenter. Du skal ikke bare tolerere, men aktivt samarbejde for de homofiles rettigheder på deres egne præmisser.

Det siger Højesteret nej til. Også mennesker med en anden overbevisning er berettiget til at have denne, også på deres egen arbejdsplads.

Dette er en dom i Trumps ånd. Dette er Trumps Amerika som taler. Individuel frihed og frihed til at tro står stærkt. At en myndighed skulle pålægge nogen noget, som strider mod deres samvittighed er uamerikansk.

Obama så anderledes på det. Han stod for en aktivistlinje også på det retslige område. Dette er en politisering af retsvæsenet, som mange amerikanere reagerer på.

BREAKING: Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Colorado Baker in Gay Wedding Cake Case