UNDERSIDE OF TRANS VISIBILITY DAY
March 31 is Trans Visibility Day, a day when trans people seek greater recognition. There is an underside, however, to this day, one that brings to mind the increasing intolerance exhibited by trans activists.
The espoused goal of the LGBTQ community is tolerance. Tolerance means “to put up with.” That may have been the initial goal, but after having achieved it, they upped the ante, seeking affirmation. Are they entitled to tolerance? Yes. But they are not entitled to affirmation—we are not obliged to affirm behavior we find offensive.
LGBTQ activists, seeking affirmation, have become among the most intolerant people in the nation. It is worth noting how vicious these zealots are in their quest for affirmation. The case in point is what they did to Jack Phillips.
Jack Phillips is a devout evangelical and the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Denver, Colorado. On July 19, 2012, Charlie Craig and David Mullins asked Phillips if he would make a cake to celebrate their “wedding.” He denied their request, saying he does not make cakes for same-sex weddings.
It should be noted that Phillips never refused to sell cakes to anyone, including gays. But for him to custom-make a cake for two men who say they want to marry is to make him complicit in that effort. That’s a bridge too far. He is under no obligation to sanction behavior he finds objectionable, however tacit his role may be. This takes on added significance when his reasoning is grounded in his religion.
Craig and Mullins could have shopped around to find a baker who would honor their request. Indeed, at that time same-sex marriage was not legal in Colorado. Surely they could have found a baker in Massachusetts, where they planned to go for their “wedding,” but their real interest was not in buying the cake. They wanted to force Phillips to violate his religious convictions. In short, they wanted to punish him.
The two men filed a complaint against Phillips with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (CCRC), just ahead of their “wedding” in September. At the end of 2013, an administrative judge ordered Phillips to make the requested cake, despite his religious beliefs, or face fines. He did not budge.
On May 30, 2014, the CCRC agreed with this finding, saying Phillips discriminated against the men. Two months later, Commissioner Diann Rice went on a Christian-bashing tirade. “Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust….And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to—to use their religion to hurt others.” She was supported by some of her colleagues.
Rice’s bigoted attack would come back to haunt her. When the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its decision in 2018 in favor of Phillips, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the opinion, took note of what Rice, and her colleagues, said. “At several times during its meeting, commissioners endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, implying that religious beliefs and persons are less than fully welcome in Colorado’s business community.”
In the four years between the CCRC’s ruling in 2014 and the high court decision in 2018, the Phillips case bounced around the courts. The most dramatic moment came in June 2017 on the day the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. On that same day, Autumn Scardina, a man who falsely claims he is a woman, asked Phillips to create a cake designed pink on the inside and blue on the outside to celebrate his supposed transition from male to female. The request was denied, which is exactly what Scardina expected and desired.
This was another clear case of intolerance. To prove how utterly tyrannical this transgender activist is, he admitted that his goal was to “correct the errors of [Phillip’s] thinking.” This is thought control, the kind of practice perfected by the genocidal maniac, Mao Zedong.
In June 2019, Scardina filed a civil lawsuit against Phillips. Two years later, a district court ruled Phillips can be punished for declining to create the cake. But in 2024, the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed the case, bringing an end to these harassment lawsuits.
In 2021, the Alliance Defending Freedom, which courageously and successfully defended Phillips, said, “Radical activists and government officials are targeting artists like Jack because they won’t promote messages on marriage and sexuality that violate their core convictions. This case and others…represents a disturbing trend: the weaponization of our justice system to ruin those with whom the activists disagree. The harassment of people like Jack…has been occurring for nearly a decade and must stop.”
These LGBTQ zealots disdain tolerance: their goal is to shove their radical agenda down the throats of Americans, forcing everyone to bow to their demands. They are a threat to religious liberty and to democracy, in general. So, too, are organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and the ACLU which support these efforts.
No one should have to endure the kind of mean-spirited campaign that Jack Phillips was subjected to. Radical gay and transgender activists have no moral mantle to rest on—their vengeance and spite have overcome them.