Today in tragic victims of cake-blocking...

Above: America under the Obama
administration. What? Naive? Maybe...

Hey, remember how over the past eight years or so we, as a country, made some much needed social progress? It was slow and sometimes looked rather hopeless, but on balance we were really heading in the right direction. LGBTQ issues came to the forefront of national discourse, marriage equality became a reality and sexual orientation and gender identity started getting written into anti-discrimination policies. It was almost like America was finally coming around. Things, it seemed were changing for the better. Neat, right?

...but now literal Nazis are marching
in our streets. So by comparison,
magic unicorns seem pretty apt.

Yes. Not so neat was last year's electoral clusterfuck when a ridiculous combination of a divided Democratic party, Russian election interference and white people feeling under appreciated left us with an unqualified gameshow host of a President who, despite not actually winning the majority of votes, took his questionable electoral victory and widespread unpopularity and decided he had some kind of mandate to unravel whatever forward progress the previous administration made. You know, out of spite.

Which brings us to this. The goddamn cake thing. As you may recall, over the last few years a number of bakeries have run afoul of America's oppressive anti-discrimination laws which demand that god-fearing Christian bakers renounce their god and risk eternal damnation by making wedding cakes for sodomites.

Pictured: the fires of hell that await Christian
business owners who serve gay clients. 

You can taste the moral indignation in
every bite. Unless you're gay of course.

One such baker, Jack Phillips, was asked to do that back in 2012 and despite lower-court rulings that he simply grow up and not discriminate against his customers, has been insisting that in having to serve same-sex couples like they were real people violates his religious liberty. Well now his case has made it to the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice, now under the direction of the former host of The Apprentice, has filed a friend of the court brief-yes that's what they call it when the administration wants to gently suggest to the Court how they should do their job. I think it's sort of the legal equivalent of back seat driving with overtones of 'let's violate the separation of powers.'

Pictured: a sad, mournful dirge 
being playing at a comically high pitch.

Anyway, the Trump administration's Department of Justice filed one of these briefs on Phillips' behalf saying in part:

"Forcing Phillips to create expression for and participate in a ceremony that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs invades his First Amendment Rights..." 

-Acting Solicitor General

Jeffery B. Wall, presumably while

the world's smallest violin plays

I'm sorry, that was going too far. It was
wrong of me to assume Phillips is unfamiliar
with internet porn and for that I apologize.

So first of all, horseshit. As we've discussed many, many times over the last few years of listening to homophobes whine about how intolerant of their intolerance the country is getting, shouting 'cause Jesus' does not give anyone carte blanche to discriminate. Second of all, he's just a goddamn baker. Phillips isn't participating in the ceremony anymore than the cashier at the creepy roadside adult store where he buys his porn is participating in his Friday night plans.

What's that? You can't find anything
about that? Huh, interesting.

But most importantly, nobody's forcing anyone to do anything. You can either be some guy who bakes cakes only for people whose marriages you approve of based on whatever cherry picked Bible quotes you like, or you can run a business and that means you have to be a person. Pick one. After all, God was probably kidding when he said 'thou shalt not bake a wedding cake for gay dudes, because it is an abomination.' I mean, that's in there, right? Maybe somewhere in the back?

But whatever, Phillips is going to be a dick and that's his right. Because America. And hopefully the Court will give the administration's helpful suggestion the due consideration it deserves. Which is to say, not much.

Pictured: the consideration it deserves.