Masterpiece Cakeshop Owner Jack Phillips finds himself in legal trouble once again after he refused to provide a trans-activist with a custom-made lawsuit from his cake shop located in Lakewood, Colorado.
“I’m so hurt,” cried Alexxa de Ville with an emotional strength seemingly strong enough to change fundamental principles of American law. “So many people got exactly what they wanted from that store — except for ME. It’s as if he hates me just because of WHO I AM!”
The new trouble with Masterpiece Cakes, Ltd. started when Mz. de Ville requested a custom three-tiered white cake depicting Satan licking a functional nine inch dildo. “Yeah, that was the second request I got like that,” confirmed Jack Phillips. “The other one came from a trans-woman and activist, too. I mean — geez — what are the odds?”
But despite refusing to bake a cake of exactly the same specifications for a different trans-activist customer, Mz. de Ville was denied the ability to appear before the Colorado Civil Rights Commission to paint Jack Phillips and like-minded Christians as hateful bigots who just want to cause trouble for innocent people.
“It was SO hurtful,” she stated. But Phillips’s reasons did nothing to blunt the pain.
“At the end of the day, I just wanted to bake a cake again,” said Phillips. “After the first Civil Rights Commission hearing that almost ruined my business and went all the way to the Supreme Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, most of my time has been spent standing up for basic free-exercise rights for all Americans.”
“And that’s okay I guess, but–” Phillips winced, but then continued “–I really like to bake cakes, too.”
When pressed on why he was treating this ridiculous request differently than other ridiculous requests, Jack Phillips explained:
“Yeah, the requests came pretty quick. On the very day the Supreme Court decided to hear our petition, somebody called asking me to make a cake with a pink inside and a blue outside to celebrate a gender transition from male to female. I also got a request a little later for a marijuana-themed cake. I had occasionally had to turn down cake ideas, but when the requests got more and more sexually explicit, I said to myself, ‘Great. Cakes for Trolls. Don’t they know I don’t do Halloween cakes?’ I pretty much gave up. I don’t really like the design, and it’s really gross. But I don’t really believe in continual lawsuits. I just like cakes, and I think this is my only chance from now on to bake them. So. . . I guess this is it.”
Phillips’ operation started small, but several years ago, it grew to become an established presence in the Colorado legal field. Lead Attorney Michael Farris of the Alliance Defending Freedom explains:
“When Mr. Phillips and his wife first started out, they didn’t have much — just a can-do attitude, that scrappy American spirit, and a dream. There was the occasional breach of contract, one slip-and-fall, and he randomly got audited once by the IRS, even though it didn’t amount to much. All of it was really small-time stuff. Hardly even a speeding ticket. He was not a large operation. But after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, that business really took off.”
“I knew Jack Phillips was an artist, but I just didn’t know how good he was,” said Farris, as he leaned, back, put his feet on his desk, and inter-locked his fingers behind his head. He continued: “I mean, we won at the Supreme Court 7-2 on Free Exercise. SEVEN TO TWO!!! I thought the Free Speech thing was our only hope, but we got Breyer and Kagan with us on a strong Free Exercise holding! This guy is a freaking-Van-Gogh!”
However, the future is unclear for Jack Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop as such artistry was wantonly withheld by the bigot baker who first burst onto the national legal scene with his landmark ruling.
“We’re dealing with yet another Colorado Civil Rights Commission suit that pretty much ignores what the Supreme Court just ruled.” said Farris, “And so the litigation strategy has obviously changed. It’s now getting to the point where you can just make stuff up.” He smiled and stared out into the distance before concluding, “It’s a really exciting time to be a lawyer in America.”
But the new Plaintiff does not share this optimism.
“Our judicial system is sacred, or at least quasi-sacred because nothing is sacred these days” explained Mz. Alexxa de Ville. “That’s why no one can deny my right to use a quasi-judicial body to force others into re-education programs to change their sacred beliefs or — at the very least — act in a way that goes against their sincerely held beliefs. And I sincerely believe that.”
“It’s a human rights violation! It’s an atrocity! It’s a genocide! It’s even worse than last time!” said the commissioner who previously compared Jack Phillips’s refusal to bake a cake to racial discrimination, slavery, and the holocaust. “It’s like… it’s like…” She thought for a minute before screaming to the heavens: “IT’S SO BAD I’VE RUN OUT OF OFFENSIVE HYPERBOLE!”
Mz. de Ville vows to fight on: “Since Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop have refused to allow us to go before the Colorado Civil Rights Commission to advocate for Trans-Justice, we have to sue him in a real court to have access to activist one.”
“The Colorado Civil Rights Commission is committed to Trans-Justice” said the commissioner. “And like most things with the ‘Trans-‘ prefix in front it, this Justice is going to be really different than the same word without the ‘Trans-‘ prefix in front of it.”
“I just want to bake cakes,” said Jack.
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***Dear Readers***
I’m not usually a sarcasm guy. Your regularly themed programming will resume. But sometimes, sarcasm is the only appropriate medium to show how absolutely bonkers our world has gotten.