Judge Rules Against LGBT Activists in Suit Against Bake Shop Owner

A Christian bake shop owner has triumphed over LGBT activists in court, and to top it all off, it happened in California.

The case began in August of last year, when Christian baker Cathy Miller of Tastries Bakery refused to bake a wedding cake for Mireya and Eileen Rodriguez-Del Rio, a gay couple, according to The Bakersfield Californian.

The gay couple filed a complaint with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing accusing Miller of violating the Unruh Civil Rights Act, a state law that prohibits discrimination based on characteristics such as sexual orientation. The DFEH subsequently filed a suit against Miller.

On Monday, Kern County Superior Court Judge David Lampe sided with the Christian baker and against the DFEH and the gay couple. The ruling was a stirring defense of religious liberty.

“A wedding cake is not just a cake in a Free Speech analysis. It is an artistic expression by the person making it that is to be used traditionally as a centerpiece in the celebration of a marriage,” he said, as reported by the Bakersfield Californian. “There could not be a greater form of expressive conduct.”

Yet DFEH sought to “compel Miller against her will and religion to allow her artistic expression in celebration of marriage to be co-opted to promote the message desired by same-sex marital partners, and with which Miller disagrees,” he added.
Here’s the key, though, that differentiated this case from that of, as an example, a Christian baker refusing to sell an already baked cake to a gay couple: “(T)he cake in question is not yet baked.”

Here’s the key, though, that differentiated this case from that of, as an example, a Christian baker refusing to sell an already baked cake to a gay couple: “(T)he cake in question is not yet baked.”

Thus, DFEH wasn’t merely “petitioning the court to order” Miller to bake a cake — it was demanding that the court force her “to use her talents to design and create a cake she has not yet conceived with the knowledge that her work will be displayed in celebration of a marital union her religion forbids.”

“For this court to force such compliance would do violence to the essentials of Free Speech guaranteed under the First Amendment,” Lampe concluded.

Lampe further noted in his ruling, America’s legal system is obligated “to protect Free Speech, regardless of whose foot the shoe is on.”

Judge Lampe’s full ruling.