The 12-year lawfare campaign against Colorado baker Jack Phillips came to an end on Tuesday, at least for now, as the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit against him that had sought to force him to bake a cake celebrating a gender transition.
For Phillips and those who have supported his right to free expression and exercise of his religious beliefs, the news of the dismissal was welcome. But Phillips’s Tuesday victory in the courtroom is hardly one that the nation and Colorado should be proud of.
Make no mistake about it: This mild-mannered cake artist was the victim of a horrific persecution that forced him to defend his livelihood all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And who then, when the court ruled in his favor in 2018, was forced back into a courtroom again for the latest lawsuit that took another six years to resolve.
Phillips’s victory, while a necessary rebuke of the lawfare campaign against him, is a pyrrhic one. He has spent the last 12 years defending himself against individuals and a political movement that sought to ruin his livelihood. A nation and a state that forces the owner of a small cake shop to defend his fundamental rights to exercise his faith and his beliefs in a courtroom for more than a decade is not a nation that values those fundamental rights.
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It is easy to point at the result of both cases and say, “Well, Phillips won. The system worked as it was supposed to.” But this ignores the fact that for 12 years, he was forced to defend his livelihood in a courtroom, not knowing if the next day would bring a court order demanding he violate his principles or have his business shuttered. The process was a punishment in its own right, as was the storm of negative publicity that the legacy media directed at him, suggesting he was somehow a bigot who hated gay and transgender people.
As long as there are people, organizations, and government entities willing to harass people publicly and privately for their religious beliefs, Phillips and others like him will be forced to defend their livelihoods in court. And one day, the makeup of these courts could be different, and someone like Phillips who stood up for his beliefs will lose everything. That is the cost of a culture that does not value a free conscience and demands conformity from all, and it makes Phillips’s victory a pyrrhic one.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
