Why?Â
There’s an important detail conservatives have been spinning about the Masterpiece Cakeshop case the Supreme Court heard Tuesday morning. The religious right, she conservative websites, and Fox News are claiming – or at the very least strongly suggesting – Jack Phillips, the anti-gay Christian baker who owns the Colorado’s bakery, would have sold Charlie Craig and David Mullins a wedding cake, but refused once they asked him to decorate it a topper of two men.
“I guess he didn’t want to put the two male figures on the top of the cake,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham falsely said Monday night, speaking of Jack Phillips. “That’s where he drew the line, on the figures, which I found kind of interesting.”
Ingraham found it so interesting she didn’t even bother to check if it were true.
It’s not.
Upworthy senior writer Parker Molloy was among the first to look into this claim that’s been going around and, along with Vox Senior Political Reporter Jane Coaston, actually find out it is false, and how it started.
Alliance Defending Freedom, the anti-gay hate group that represents Phillips and a slew of other anti-gay wedding vendors, argued in its SCOTUS brief: “Evidence indicates that Craig and Mullins intended to ask Phillips to design them a ‘rainbow-layered wedding cake’ for them.â€
That “evidence” apparently came from a news article, and that’s been misread or falsified by some on the right.
It might be damaging to the same-sex couple’s legal case if it were admitted as a fact in the case, because it goes to the ADF’s claim that Phillips is an artist, and didn’t want to bake a cake that sent a message of support for same-sex marriage. But it matters not one bit, because Phillips had no idea what they wanted the cake to look like.
Molloy posts the text from an article and the ADF’s claim:
But Phillips, as soon as he was told the cake was for a same-sex couple, told them no, and the couple never got the chance to tell him how they wanted their wedding cake decorated.
So it’s clear that regardless of how the couple wanted their cake to look, Phillips made his decision based solely on the fact that they were a same-sex couple, not what was going to be on the cake.
“Craig and Mullins promptly left Masterpiece without discussing with Phillips any details of their wedding cake,” Coaston, citing Court documents, notes.
Pointing out two (misleading) articles from two right wing publications, National Review and Daily Wire, she adds, via Twitter:
Bottom line, at the very least in the court of public opinion, there’s a concerted effort – out of ignorance or intent – from the right to falsify the facts of the case, which does this deeply divided nation not an ounce of good.
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