Ingraham: Does ‘A Gay Baker Have to Make a Cake for a White Supremacist Organization?’
Today the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a pivotal case that could result in legalized discrimination and second-class citizen status for same-sex couples and LGBT people. The Court will review the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, in which an anti-gay Christian baker refused to sell a same-sex couple a wedding cake.Â
The importance of the case cannot be understated. It goes to the very essence of what we want American society to be.Â
The far Christian right, anti-gay hate groups, extremist pastors and politicians are raising holy hell to try to swing public opinion – and the John Roberts Supreme Court justices – to their side. They want special rights for cake bakers, wedding photographers and florists, makeup artists and beauticians, limo drivers, hotel owners, and anyone else who might own or work in a business that has anything to do with marriage – so they can refuse same-sex couples.
On Fox News Monday night, Laura Ingraham wasn’t hiding her anti-gay bias one bit. She pitted an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, the Anti-gay Christian legal group that is gobbling up as many anti-gay clients who work in the wedding industry as it can, and is representing Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, against Ian Millhiser of the Center for American Progress. Millhiser is also the Justice Editor at CAP’s ThinkProgress.
The chyron at the bottom read: “Battle for Free Speech,” just in case there was any question what side Fox News is on.
The ADF attorney framed his argument as bakers shouldn’t “be forced to celebrate” same-sex marriages. Of course, probably no couple wants the baker who made their wedding cake actually at the wedding, but this is the line the anti-gay religious right is using. Just how far does that argument extend?
Ingraham followed up by asking if an anti-gay baker has to sell a cake to a same-sex couple, does “a gay baker have to make a cake for a white supremacist organization?”
Ingraham has a law degree, so she should understand just how absurd and offensive her comparisons are, but she also has a strong history of being anti-gay. In 1997 she was accused by the editor of The Dartmouth Review of having “the most extreme antihomosexual views imaginable.” That same year she said she had changed.
Millhiser was forced to explain that white supremacist groups are not protected classes, and there are no laws making it illegal to discriminate against white supremacists or racists.
Ingraham then brought up the First Amendment, suggesting it would apply to protecting the “right” of white supremacists to buy cupcakes. It does not and Ingraham, as would any first-year law student, knows the First Amendment does not apply in that case.
But confusing the audience as to what the facts are is a prime Fox News tactic.
“The problem I think is it goes from tolerance to, ‘You must agree with what we’re doing,'” Ingraham said, which again is false. Bakers don’t have to agree with their clients on anything, except what the cake should look and taste like, and how much it costs.
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