The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 43 - The Truth About The Masterpiece Cakeshop Case

Episode Date: June 5, 2018

The Left is lying about the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. The Christian baker never "refused service" to gay people. He never discriminated against gay people. He never told gay people that they couldn't buy a cake. These are all lies. Let's discuss the actual truth of this case. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm sure yesterday you heard that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jack Phillips, the Christian Baker at Masterpiece Cake Shop in Colorado, who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding. They ruled in favor of him. It was a big victory for him, Jack Phillips, specifically, personally, which is great because he's a good and decent man. He was being persecuted by this government agency that the Supreme Court determined the government agency being the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Supreme Court determined that they were just openly hostile and prejudiced against Jack Phillips. And so that's essentially what the Supreme Court decided, that he personally was being victimized by this government agency that could not disguise its contempt for Phillips and his religious beliefs. As far as the broader questions of the First Amendment and religious liberty, they sort of left that alone and didn't touch it. So I don't think we get the big victory for religious liberty that we wanted, although we could still celebrate that this man who had been unfairly targeted has been vindicated.

And this government agency has been rebuked by the Supreme Court and humiliated and embarrassed. So that's good, that's justice. And we can also celebrate the fact that the other set of bullies in this case, that being the gay couple themselves, they also lost and have now been humiliated in front of the world, which is what they richly deserve. Because they really, their behavior in this case has been just utterly despicable, just awful. And let's start with the fact that the gay couple very clearly targeted Jack Phillips because of his religious beliefs. I simply don't believe that in a state, in one of the most gay friendly, most liberal states in the union, where there are hundreds of bakeries and other stores to choose from, or you might find a wedding cake, I don't believe that they just so happy. coincidentally to walk in the door of the one bakery in the whole state run by a guy who was so orthodox and conservative in his Christian faith that he won't even make Halloween

cakes. I don't believe that's a coincidence. And if I were inclined to believe that it is a coincidence, it would become clear that it's not coincidental when you look at how they reacted, what their response was when Jack Phillips explained that he could not make them a customized gay wedding cake. After being told that, they could have responded a number of different ways. They could have said, okay, you won't make a customized cake. I understand that. I respect your beliefs. So instead, we'll just buy a regular wedding cake and we'll customize it or sell or we'll get someone else to decorate it, whatever. They could have done that. Or they could have done, what would probably be the most logical thing to do. And that is to just leave the store

and go somewhere else. Go anywhere else. And if they really feel personally offended, then they'd be perfectly free to tell their friends that Jack Phillips at Masterpiece Cake Shop won't make gay weddings because he disapproves of gay marriage. And, you know, they'd be perfectly free to do that. That would also be reasonable. But they didn't choose either of those options. Either a decent, reasonable person would choose either option. But these are indecent people. These are bullies. And so they went with option three, and that is they responded to Jack Phillips not making a cake. They responded to that by embarking on a five-year mission to ruin his business, destroy him personally, and impoverish his family. That's how they responded. He said,

oh, I'm sorry, I can't make that cake. They said, okay, I'm going to ruin your life. And they lost. and that's a that's a great thing. But we have to be prepared for the fact that the fascist bullies on the left and in the gay lobby, they're going to come back and try it again. They might not try it again with Jack Phillips after they just lost that. But I think, in fact, they're going to double their efforts now to punish Christian business owners for being Christian. And you're going to find even more Christian business owners targeted. First, because of retribution.

and the gay lobby is very vengeful, very spiteful, hateful, and vengeful. And on the rare occasion that they suffer a loss, they're going to make you pay for it. That's very clear. So that's what's going to happen here out of vengeance. And also because they want the Supreme Court to basically overturn the First Amendment. That's the result they were looking for. They wanted the Supreme Court to come out and say to Christian business owners, you do not have the right to decide how you do business and who you do business with.

You don't have the right to decide that you don't want to participate in or promote or celebrate an event that you find morally problematic. So they were looking for the overturning of the First Amendment, and they're going to keep going at it until they achieve that, that result. So I think that means that we can't just, you know, rest on our laurels here and kick back and say, well, this is over, it's done, because it's not. And that's why I think it's important to make very clear what exactly, as Christians and conservatives, as constitutionalists, as people who believe in freedom, we need to make clear what our point is exactly when it comes to these kinds of cases. And so that's why we have to stipulate, because there seems to be a lot of confusion

in this regard. This is not a question of whether or not a business owner has the right to refuse service to anybody. That's not the question in this case. Now, personally, I happen to believe that a business owner should have that right to refuse service to anyone. I think that's the simplest answer. You're a business owner. You own the building. You own the business. It's your labor. It's your product. It's your service. You get to decide who can take part in this, who can purchase it and who can't. And you should be able to refuse service to anyone, even for awful and racist reasons. That's how it should be. Now, that's not how the laws in our country are actually written right now. As the laws are currently written, you don't have the right to refuse service to anyone,

and you don't have the right to discriminate based on who somebody is, even if I think that you should have that right. Now, and I know, of course, what people will say is, well, what if a business owner refuses service to somebody because they're black? Now, I think that would be morally wrong for a business owner to do that. It would also be financially suicidal,

but yes, I think you should have that right. And if the government were to come out tomorrow and declare to all business owners, hey, you guys could do what you want, refuse service to anybody. If they were to say that, I don't think you're going to have hundreds of businesses who say, oh, finally, now we can discriminate against black people like we've always wanted to do. No, I don't think that's going to happen. I mean, and if you did have like two or three businesses in the entire country that said, okay, we're going to be segregated based on race now. Fine. Let them come out and announce that policy

and their businesses will be, they'll be out of business by the next day. I mean, I give them about a 24-hour lifespan because they're going to lose all, only the most dedicated and hardcore racist would still patronize a business like that. And there just aren't enough people like that to keep a business going. So yeah, you know what? This is how I feel about it. If there is, in my local community, if there's a business owner out there who is so brimming with racism that he would deny service to black people if given the ability to do so, I say, yes, let him come out and announce himself, let him expose himself so that I can stop giving him my money. If like a coffee shop down the street is run by a despicable, horrible racist, I'd prefer it if he announced it to everyone so that I can stop going. there and giving him my money. Anyway, these are all interesting questions, but they're actually irrelevant to the Masterpiece Cake Shop case or to any of these Christian business owner cases

when it comes to gay weddings and so forth. They're actually completely irrelevant. Because the question is not, it's not a question of can a business owner refuse service to someone based on who they are. The question is, can a business owner refuse to participate in or promote or celebrate an event that they think is morally wrong? So Jack Phillips, he did not refuse service to gay people. He refused service to a gay wedding. Mullins and Craig, the gay couple, they could have bought anything in the store. They could have bought 50, they could have, they could have bought 50 wedding cakes if they wanted to. They could have bought every cupcake and brownie and cookie in the store if they wanted to. He did not say to them, oh, get out of here. We don't serve your kind. They could have

bought anything. He did not refuse service to them based on who they were. That's not what happened. He simply said, I cannot participate in this particular event. Now, if you want to buy a cake that You're going to just go home and eat yourself, or you want to buy a birthday cake, you want to buy a cake for anything, whatever you want. You can have it. I just cannot make a special,

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It's relevant to note that Jack Phillips, in the past, had many times in the past, refused to make customized cakes for events that he thought were morally problematic. He refused to make Halloween cakes, as I mentioned. He refused to make lewd bachelor party cakes. Now, this is an important point. He refused to make cakes for divorce parties. Now, we happen to live in a society, unfortunately, where divorce parties are a thing, where a couple gets divorced and sometimes they'll throw a party, kind of like a, they'll

throw an anti-wedding reception or an unwedding reception or something. something where they'll go out and they'll get a wedding-style cake, but they'll customize it and decorate it specially for divorce, and then they'll celebrate their divorce. Now, it just so happens that a few years ago, a guy went in to Masterpiece Cake Shop and he asked for a, for a divorce party cake. He wanted a wedding cake that was split in half and decorated specially for divorce. And Jack Phillips refused him. Jack Phillips said, I can't, I can't make that cake. Now, does that mean that Phillips was refusing to serve a divorced person? Or was he refusing to make something for a divorce party? The distinction here is very clear. He'll serve

anyone who's divorced. He'll serve any gay person. He just can't make a cake for this specific event. Why is that? Because when you're a master baker like Jack Phillips, when you're a brilliant baker, when you, when this is your craft, this is what you do for a living, then for you, cake is a work of art. Now, you and I, when we make a cake from like a mix, from a box or something that we bought from the grocery store, that's not a work of art for us. But for Jack Phillips, it's a work of art, it's art. And so for him to make a piece of art that is specially designed to sell,

a certain kind of occasion, well, in his mind, he can't do that and use his creative powers to make this thing to celebrate an occasion if he thinks that the occasion itself is morally disordered. And that makes a lot of sense. Of course he needs to have that right as a business own. Now we can ask the question. Was he right for refusing to make this cake? I think he was. but who cares what I think? Who cares what you think? This is his labor. This is his creative energy. He should have the right to decide how he expends it and to what end. So the precedent that the court could set, but didn't, but the precedent they could have set, I think is really clear. And it's a precedent that would give rights and freedoms to guys like Jack Phillips, but would not

allow a business owner to refuse service to someone based on their race. You know, it is possible to draw a line there of distinction. Even though I happen to think that the easiest and simplest and most correct thing is just to give business owners the right to refuse service to anyone, that we don't even really need to go that far. What the Supreme Court could say is you can refuse to participate in or promote or celebrate or provide a good or service to an event or activity that contradicts your moral or religious beliefs. So a black person who just wants to go in and buy a cake to refuse service to him, that doesn't qualify.

That doesn't fall under the parameters here. And that also doesn't really fall under the parameters of the First Amendment. And if a gay person walked in the store wanted to buy something. and you said, no, I'm not going to serve you because you're gay, and I hate gay people. That doesn't fall under the credits, and that also isn't really covered by the First Amendment. But if a person comes in, no matter who they are, and they say, hey, I've got this event coming up, and I want to celebrate the event, and I want you to make something special for that event, well, then a business owner has the right to decide whether or not,

that's the kind of event they want to be involved in, whether it's the kind of event that they want to dedicate their labor and their creative energies to celebrate. So as this controversy continues, and we see more and more cases like this, it's really important for those of us who understand what these cases are really about. It's very important for us to correct people.

Anytime you hear someone say, oh, they just want to refuse service to gay people, wrong. That is completely false. That is not what this is about. We are simply saying that a business owner has the right to discriminate against certain events, not people, events, occasions, activities. And I think on some level, we all must agree with that. Now, you might not think that a gay wedding should be one of those occasions. But I'm short, just to use a classic example that people like to use, I'm sure you would agree that if you had a black business owner,

or really any kind of business owner, of any race, and somebody walks in from the clan and says, we're throwing a big bash for the 70th anniversary of our clan chapter, and we want you to make a special cake for that occasion. The business owner should have the right to say, no, I'm not going to make a cake for that. because I happen to think that that event is morally wrong and terrible, and I don't want to be involved in it in any way, shape, or form.

So we all believe that there are lines that are drawn, which means that we have to give business owners the power and the right and the ability to make these determinations. That's all. Very simple distinction here, and I don't know why people struggle to understand it. Although I think maybe people don't struggle to understand it, they just pretend that they don't understand it.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Godspeed, everybody.