 What I want to do is talk about some material from my recent book, Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination. And that's a funny title in a way, unlike the book that I had done debating same-sex marriage where you have people in favor of same-sex marriage, you have people against same-sex marriage. It seems that everybody's in favor of religious liberty and everybody's against discrimination, at least in the morally laden sense, morally negative sense of the term discrimination. But in the United States right now, and not just in the United States, there are a number of conflicts around religious liberty, and particularly cases where people in virtue of wishing to exercise their religious liberty engage in behaviors thought to be discriminatory. And so what I want to do is just talk to you about three of those cases. The Kim Davis case, she was a Kentucky clerk who did not want to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after our Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. The Hobby Lobby case, that involved a large corporation that wanted an exemption from the Affordable Care Act's mandate to provide certain contraceptive coverage amongst its other forms of health insurance coverage. And the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, which involved a baker who did not wish to make wedding cakes for a same-sex couple. That case is currently before the Supreme Court in a few weeks. They will hear oral arguments, December 5th, those are scheduled. And sometime in the spring, the Supreme Court will be deciding that case. But it's interesting that so many of these cases right now seem to have this form, particularly with respect to same-sex marriage, but more generally with people who do not wish to serve or do not wish to support or be complicit in activities that they morally oppose. Because at least at its best, the history of religious liberty in the United States and in Western democracies more generally has been a history of aiming for greater inclusion. And in fact, two of the cases that we tend to talk about is the high watermark of religious liberty jurisprudence in the United States are good examples of that. Sherbert versus Werner, 1963, involved a seventh-day Adventist, Adele Sherbert, who was working at a textile mill, and her job requirements changed in such a way that required her to work on Saturdays. And she was a Saturday Sabaterian. She believed that Saturday was a Sabbath. She could not work on Saturdays. She applied for unemployment benefits with the state of South Carolina. And the state of South Carolina said, sorry, you're not available for work on Saturdays. You can't collect unemployment benefits if you're not available for work. And this went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ruled that South Carolina was treating her unfairly. They were interfering with her religious liberty. And one important thing about that case is that South Carolina quite explicitly said that nobody can be required to work on Sunday. And yet here they were saying that in order to be eligible for unemployment benefits, you had to be willing to work on Saturday. And so this seemed to be a case of religious discrimination, religious exclusion, and the court ruled in her favor. A few years later, Yoder versus Wisconsin, a case involving the Amish. In the United States, generally speaking, you must attend school through the 10th grade. The Amish wanted to take their children out of school at the 8th grade. So they wanted to take them out two years earlier than was legally required. And the court ruled in a somewhat complicated decision that the Amish should be allowed to do that as part of their religious liberty in order to preserve their special agrarian way of life. And you look at these cases, and at first glance you think, well, it's nice. We want to be more inclusive. People observe the Sabbath in different ways. People who live their lives in different ways live a more sort of farming lifestyle. But even these cases, these cases that are often brought forth as examples of the court doing good things for religious liberty, raise questions about what I sometimes call religious privilege. Cases where religious people are being given exemptions from laws where comparable secular claims would not be eligible. And these two cases in particular, Adele Sherbert was told that she did not have to be available for work on Saturday if that was her day of worship. But the court also said quite explicitly that if she had a non-religious reason that she couldn't be available for work, for example, if she couldn't get childcare on Saturday, that would not count as a good reason. And that strikes me as problematic as, wait a second, that seems to me just as legitimate a reason as the reason of going to church. Why is it that one has to have a religious reason in order to be legitimately, quote, unquote, unavailable for work regarding unemployment benefits? Yoda versus Wisconsin. On the one hand, the Amish is a gentle, peace-loving people. They have a nice way of life farming. On the other hand, why should one have to be farming and having that particular lifestyle for religious reasons in order to get this exemption? That's one concern I have. The other concern I have about Yoda is that we have reasons generally for requiring people to be in school through the 10th grade, usually through the 12th grade, but at least until the 10th grade. And the idea was, well, given their agrarian way of life, it's not really that important for these students to stay in school that long. And I say, well, that's fine, assuming they choose to remain in the Amish way of life. But what if some of these students eventually, these young people eventually decide, you know what, this lifestyle is not for us. We want to go out into the rest of the world and then are unprepared for that because their education has been cut short. So religious liberty, even in cases that look good at first glance, raises complicated questions about where the line is between religious liberty on the one hand and religious privilege on the other. So let me look now at the three cases I said I wanted to talk to you about. And I'm going to try to keep this relatively short so that we have lots of time for questions and discussion. Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis, this is a 2015 case. 2015 is when the U.S. Supreme Court extended legal marriage to same-sex couples across the country, including states like Kentucky, very conservative state. Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. When a same-sex couple came to her, she told them they could go to another county, even though that was quite a drive away, and cited her religious beliefs in that refusal. Not only did she refuse to issue the marriage licenses, she would not allow her deputy clerks to do so because, she pointed out, her name was still at the bottom of the form because she was the county clerk. A lot of people say, well, Kim Davis just needs to do her job or resign, and eventually this went to court, and the court ordered her to issue the marriage licenses or resign. And she refused to do so. She actually went to jail for a few days while she was in jail. The deputy clerk started issuing the licenses. Eventually, after a new governor was elected, the form was changed so that the clerk's name no longer has to appear at the bottom of the form, so that people like Kim Davis could retain their position without having to have their name on marriage licenses with which they disagree. And here she is. This is, like I said, she was in jail for a couple of days. Here she is after she got out of jail with her attorney from Liberty Council there on her right. And with Mike Huckabee, who is a well-known conservative radio host, he was a presidential candidate on the left, and they had this big rally and they played Eye of the Tiger and it was all because they were arguing that, you know, Kim Davis had been unfairly persecuted. And this was a case Huckabee called it the criminalization of Christianity in the United States. Now, it's interesting to me that in our book, my counterpoint authors don't exactly say that Kim Davis should have been given a free pass at the time. What they argue is that the solution of taking the clerk's name off the license is a good example of a win-win solution because same-sex couples can get the marriage licenses that they want and need and people like Kim Davis do not have to be complicit in a form of marriage that they find morally wrong. And it seems hard to argue if it's genuinely a win-win kind of solution, how can we argue with that? But I actually have some concerns about it. And the concerns I have about it are partly due to the fact that Kim Davis is a public official and as a public official is charged with administering the law as the law is written, not administering the law as she thinks it ought to be. But more generally, my problem has to do with making accommodations in cases where we recognize the particular desire of the state actor to be discriminatory. And let me give you a related example when I talk about this a little bit in the book. 2009 case involving Justice of the Peace, Keith Bardwell. He was a Louisiana Justice of the Peace. And Bardwell was morally opposed to interracial marriage. He claimed that he had nothing against black people. In fact, he said, I have piles and piles of black friends. He told this to a reporter. Piles. He actually said this. He just thought that interracial marriage was wrong. So anytime an interracial couple would come to his courthouse, he would just quietly step aside and have another Justice of the Peace step in and do the marriage. Now, one thing to notice about that case is he actually caused less of a third-party burden than Kim Davis did. He didn't get in the way of anybody marrying. He didn't say you have to drive to another county to get a marriage license. He just stepped aside and let somebody else do it. And yet at the time he was rightly pressured to resign. Why? Well, again, I think it's partly because he was refusing to administer the law as the law was written, but also because we recognize that the view behind his refusal is an unjustly discriminatory view and not one that we want to aid or abet or make room for by changing our licensing system by creating some kind of exemption. So that Keith Barwell case is a real-life case. You can also think of a number of hypothetical cases of, for example, a clerk who does not want to issue marriage licenses to people who have been divorced and want to remarry. Or how about a very conservative Muslim clerk who does not want to issue marriage licenses to any woman who comes into the court if they're not fully covered with a burqa? I bet you Mike Huckabee is not going to be holding a rally and talking all about the denial of religious freedom in our country in a case like that. You can think of a number of different cases where a clerk might want to or take a Brahmin clerk who says, look, I don't want to issue licenses to these untouchable Dalits. Will you change the licensing system so that I don't have to have my name on this license? And I think we would say no in all those cases. So this is a case, I think, where just because we can offer an accommodation, it doesn't follow that we should. And in Kim Davis' case, I would not have for the reasons I just stated. Okay. Second case I want to talk about, the Hobby Lobby case. Hobby Lobby is a chain of craft stores. I don't know what you would have here that would be roughly equivalent to that. But they sell craft products and picture frames and paint and construction paper and things that you sort of make crafting. And they have hundreds of stores around the country and they have thousands of employees in these stores. And as you may know, under President Obama, the U.S. introduced something called the Affordable Care Act, which was a way to ensure greater insurance coverage, health insurance coverage for Americans. And one of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act was that if you operated a company of a certain size, you had to provide a full range of health insurance options to your employees, and that included contraceptive coverage. And the owners of Hobby Lobby announced that they did not want to pay for certain contraceptives, particularly things like the morning after pill, which they said prevents implantation and thus, in their view, acts as a kind of abortive fashion. The morning after pill is not classified as an abortive fashion by most mainstream doctors in the United States. It's not like something like RU 486. It simply makes it less likely that the zygote is going to implant. But in any case, the owners of Hobby Lobby saw that as a form of abortion. They did not want to provide that insurance coverage for their employees. And they went to court appealing to something called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This was a federal law passed in 1993. It was passed actually in the wake of a case involving a Native American who wished to use peyote as part of his Native American religious rituals and who lost his job because he then tested positive for mescaline, which is a hallucinogen that's in peyote, and was denied unemployment benefits by the state of Oregon. And this went all the way up to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ruled against him and said, look, the laws against peyote are not directed toward any particular religion. They are there for the common good. You broke the law. If Oregon wants to change this law, that's Oregon's business. But we're not going to give you an exemption here. And in response, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the relevant provision of which says, the government shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion unless applying the law to that person is the least restrictive means for furthering a compelling government interest. So if there is a less restrictive way of furthering this interest, or if the interest is not a particularly compelling interest, we cannot apply the law to this person. We have to grant an exemption. And Hobby Lobby appealed to this law. It was the first time a corporation had appealed to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and of course, people asked the question, wait a second, how is it that a large company that sells craft paper and paint and so on can exercise religion? But under US law, corporations are persons, and the court ruled in Hobby Lobby's favor, decided that yes, for the purposes of RFRA, Hobby Lobby counted as a person. And that there was, in fact, a less restrictive way for the government to serve its compelling interest of providing health insurance, including contraceptive coverage to women, namely that the government could pay for those contraceptives itself or the insurance company could create some kind of separate rider and the insurance company could pay for them so that Hobby Lobby did not have to pay for them. And the idea was that this was supposed to be, again, a sort of win-win, a seamless way for the women to get their contraceptive coverage and for Hobby Lobby not to have to be complicit in the use of contraceptives that it thought were evil. One thing I think is important to note about this case is that while the court said that the government could pay or the insurance company could pay, the fact that somebody could pay doesn't mean that somebody will pay. And unfortunately, because of partisan politics, it took quite some time for the women, the employees of Hobby Lobby to get the contraceptive coverage that supposedly was going to be so seamlessly and easily provided to them. So there was, in fact, a third-party burden created by the court's decision in this case. But the other thing I think it's important to note is that here is a case where we see religious privilege and we see religious privilege in two ways. One is that by citing religion, Hobby Lobby's owners were able to get an exemption that other owners who did not have such religious beliefs would not be able to get. So suppose you disagreed with certain forms of contraceptives for natural law reasons and you did not have, let's say you were not a religious believer, maybe you're an atheist or an agnostic, but for natural law reasons you were against these contraceptives. You would not be able to appeal to RIFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. But Hobby Lobby was able to appeal to this because it cited religious reasons. And so were other companies, including, for example, Eden Foods, another major corporation in the United States, where interestingly, some time later, the owner in an interview said, look, I don't care whether the government is asking me to buy contraceptives for my employees or Jack Daniels. That's not the government's business to make me pay for that. Which suggested that the objection was not genuinely a religious objection, rather it was an objection to the Affordable Care Act itself. It's an idea, look, I don't want to have to pay for health insurance and here's one way that I don't have to pay for it. So just by citing a religious reason, the business owners could then do an end-run around a law that they did not like. And this is one way in which I think religious privilege arises in these cases because religious business owners and only those who can plausibly claim to be religious business owners can do that. I don't think anybody should be doing it, but under the current Riffer regime, only religious business owners can do it. But there's another way that I think that this case demonstrates a kind of religious privilege. This is a little bit harder to establish because it involves certain hypotheticals. But here we have a case where a business owned by evangelical Christians in a country that, at least traditionally, has been majority Protestant Christian. Puts forth an appeal based upon these objections and the court in a very narrow decision sides with them. Suppose, however, we had a Jehovah's Witness business owner who did not want to provide insurance that included blood transfusions because Jehovah's Witnesses oppose blood transfusions. Well, you could make the same kind of argument. The government could pay for the blood transfusions, the insurance company could have a separate writer for the blood transfusions. Would the court have been as sympathetic in that case? I very much doubt it. Or suppose we had a Scientologist business owner who did not want to provide mental health care. He said, I don't want to pay for antidepressants or things like that. I don't believe in that as a matter of religion. Could have a separate policy. The government could pay for it. The insurance company could pay for it. Would we provide that kind of workaround, that kind of exemption in those cases? I don't think so. What we hear is that not only are we privileging religious people over non-religious people, but we're also likely privileging certain kinds of religion by appealing to judges who are going to be much more sympathetic to claims that they find relatable. In this case, claims of evangelical Christians versus, say, claims of Jehovah's Witnesses or other minority religious groups. Third case I want to talk about, this is the last of the cases I want to talk about, is the one that's currently before the Supreme Court, the Masterpiece Cake Shop case. In 2012, a gay couple, Charlie Craig and David Mullins, went into Masterpiece Cake Shop in Lakewood, Colorado and attempted to order a cake for their wedding celebration. Same-sex marriage was actually not yet legal in Colorado. They were going to get married in Massachusetts, so they can celebrate with their friends in Colorado. And the owner of that cake shop, Jack Phillips, who is pictured... I'm sorry, you can't really see the slides very well, but Jack Phillips, there is baking cakes in his cake shop, told them that he would not make a cake for same-sex weddings. He said he'd be happy to sell them other things. They could buy birthday cakes. They could buy cookies, whatever. But he would not sell them a cake for their wedding. And did not discuss any other details of the cake or the desired design or anything like that. They left. They filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Now, Colorado prohibits discrimination on the basis of a number of factors, including sexual orientation. Here is the relevant section of the law. It says a place of public accommodation, which it defines quite broadly to include any place that's open for business to the public. A place of public accommodation cannot refuse, withhold from, or deny to an individual. The full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations based on race, color, disability, sex, sexual orientation, which Colorado interestingly reads to include transgender status, national origin or ancestry, creed, or marital status. So it's against the law to refuse service on any of these bases. The commission found that Jack Phillips had, in fact, refused service on the basis of sexual orientation, was liable for violating the law. He appealed that to a Colorado court. The court agreed with the commission. He appealed it up further to the Colorado Court of Appeals and so forth. And each court in Colorado that considered the case said, yes, he is liable for sexual orientation discrimination. And that case, as I said, is currently before the US Supreme Court and oral arguments will be heard on the case on December 5th. Jack Phillips is arguing, first of all, that he is not discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation because he's perfectly happy to sell various things to gay people, birthday cakes and so on. He is simply unwilling to use his artistic talent to participate in what he thinks is a wrong view of marriage. Same-sex marriage is something he disagrees with on religious grounds. And he is rooting his argument in First Amendment principles and the relevant section of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. This is part of our Bill of Rights. It says the Congress shall make no law respecting and establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech. And it goes on to say, I don't know if the press, et cetera, and so forth. But mainly he's appealing to his freedom of religion because he thinks as part of his practice of religion he sees his faith practice as imbuing the work he does at Masterpiece Cake Shop and his freedom of speech because he says the Colorado Public Accommodation's law is requiring him to assist in a message that he disagrees with and also is constraining his artistic freedom, which in the US is generally considered to be part of freedom of speech. It's more generally thought of as expressive freedom. So I want to say a few things about this case. And the first thing I want to say about this case and I think it's particularly important when I talk to American audiences about this because there's often not a lot of understanding of anti-discrimination law and I should mention that while Colorado prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, there's no federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and only about half the states have such laws. And within the other states there are sometimes local ordinances that prohibit such discrimination. But federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national or ethnic origin and so on, and it's really not sexual orientation. But I think it's important because so many of the well-known cases in the United States right now have to do with wedding services. They have to do things like cakes and flowers and people think, really you're going to court over cakes and flowers? I mean, what, you know, is that the worst problem you have? You can't buy a cake? I mean, it's hard to take that very seriously. And I point out to people that these laws are not mainly about cakes and flowers. They're mainly about things like employment discrimination and causing discrimination and discrimination in basic goods and services. And so one of the cases I've been talking about recently, there was a case several months ago in Mississippi where a person called up a funeral home, a partner was dying, they had been together for something like 60 years, an elderly couple. And they called the funeral home and said, we have somebody dying, we need, you know, can you perform cremation services, funeral services? And the funeral home said, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And when the finally, you know, a week later when the person finally died, they went to the funeral home to fill out the paperwork with the family and the funeral director realized that this person was in the same-sex marriage and said, I'm sorry, I don't do funerals for you people. And this was perfectly legal in the state of Mississippi because Mississippi is one of those states that does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. And as a result of this, this grieving widow work was to arrange, you know, during a time of great grief for a funeral service, I think it was something like 60 miles away. Actually, for cremation services, 60 miles away, and they had to cancel the funeral service because it was the last minute sort of thing. So, yes, the cakes that are in the news right now are about cakes and flowers, but these are not mainly, you know, the reason we have these laws is not mainly cakes and flowers. The second thing I want to point out is that even in the cases involving cakes and flowers, it strikes me that there's a good reason to prohibit the discrimination. And it's not just about lack of access to those services. It's also about the humiliation of being told that you can't buy the same things that other people are allowed to buy in a shop on the basis of your identity or your same-sex marriage. So there was a case in New Jersey, I talked about this case a little bit in the book, where a person spent hours with her friends trying on wedding dresses and when she went to order the dress, she told that she could not, you know, when she said, okay, what's the groom's name? There is no groom, it's for a lesbian wedding, and she was told that she could not buy the dress. In fact, the owner in that case told, this was before same-sex marriage was legal in the state of New Jersey, the owner told her it was legal for her to do what she was doing. I mean, you can wear a wedding dress to a lecture if you want. I mean, you don't have to be getting married even to buy a wedding dress, but in any case, this owner was not just discriminating, she was quite misinformed about how the law works, but these cases, even though you say, okay, I mean, you could buy a wedding dress somewhere else, sure you could buy a wedding dress somewhere else, but if you've put several hours into shopping for a wedding dress with your friends, there's something pretty humiliating about being turned away at that point. There was a case in Toledo, Ohio, not far from where I live in Detroit, Michigan, where a person ordered a birthday cake. The owner of the bakery, it's called Take the Cake Bake Shop in Toledo, Ohio, the owner of the bakery then went on the customer's Facebook page, realized that the birthday cake was for the customer's same-sex partner, and that she was in this lesbian relationship, and sent her a text cancelling the order. This is an actual image of the text she sent. Candice, I'm sorry, I just realized you're in a same-sex relationship and we do not do cakes for same-sex weddings or parties. I'm so sorry, I wasn't aware of this exactly until I saw your page. Take care. When this was reported in the news, they actually sent it around the image of the text. My initial reaction to this was that anyone who uses that font for text ought to lose in court. That's just my view. But putting that aside. All right, so one thing you want to say, who does that, right? You go on your customer's Facebook page? It seems highly inappropriate, number one. But number two, realize that the kind of objection she has here, a lot of people, even people who supported Jack Phillips, said, well, the birthday cake, that's going too far. Well, why is it going too far? Because remember, she only canceled the birthday cake order after realizing that this was a gift for somebody's same-sex partner, and she could reason much in the way that Jack Phillips reason. Says, look, I don't believe in same-sex relationships. This is an act of affection, gift-giving within the context of such a relationship. I don't want to be complicit in any way in that relationship. I don't want to sell this cake. It's the same kind of complicity argument. And if we allow Jack Phillips to have an exemption to the relevant anti-discrimination law on the basis of his religious convictions, on the basis of his free speech rights, it seems to me that it's hard to create an argument that we shouldn't do the same thing in the birthday cake case. And of course, I don't think we should do that in the birthday cake case, so I also don't think we should do it in Jack Phillips' case. So I think that there's a way to draw the line here that's useful, and it's easier to see that by looking at another case in Colorado. This is a case that happened in 2013, not long after the local Colorado Commission released its decision in the Jack Phillips case. The cake, by the way, the cake I'm going to talk about, did not actually say God hates gays, but it was reported in the news as the God hates gays case. The images that went along with the news stories often had God hates gays on the cake. But I'll tell you what happens. So a guy named Bill Jack walks into a Zucar bakery in Colorado and says, look, I'd like to order a Bible-shaped cake. And on one side, I want the image of two men and a red X through it. And on the other side, I want Leviticus 1822, homosexuality is a detestable sin. Leviticus 1822 is man shall not lie with man, as with woman is an abomination unto God. That's a lot to write on a cake. So he just said homosexuality is a detestable sin. It's a paraphrase. And it was actually even more complicated than that because he actually wanted two different Bible-shaped cakes. But the relevant part is Bible-shaped cake, men with an X through it, and homosexuality is a detestable sin. And the owner of that bakery, Marjorie Phillips, is like, sorry, that's against what I believe. I think that's discriminatory. I don't want to sell that to you. However, she said, I will sell you a Bible-shaped cake because, yeah, I mean, this is something I offer. It's in my catalog. I sell that to all of my customers. And I'll even give you, like, a piping bag, and you can write whatever you want. You know, go home, you know, just draw whatever you want, write whatever you want. That's your business. What you do after you leave the store is really not my business. But I'm not going to write that on the cake. And Bill Jack files a complaint with the Colorado Commission because that's the whole reason he went into order the cake in the first place. He was trying to make a point about the Masterpiece Cake Shop case. And the commission ruled that Marjorie Silva was not liable for religious discrimination. And, of course, Jack Phillips' supporters said, what? What are you talking about? It's not fair. If Jack Phillips is guilty or liable for sexual orientation discrimination, if he refuses to make the wedding cake, why is it not the same thing when Marjorie Silva refuses to make the Leviticus Cake or the God Hates Gays Cake? Both of them are just trying to live out their moral convictions, live out their religious convictions, want people to respect their artistic freedom, and so on. And my counterpoint authors in the book actually think that these cases should be treated the same. They think that both bakers should be allowed to refuse, notwithstanding Colorado law. And they also think that Colorado law, they also think that sexual orientation should not be covered by anti-discrimination law. I think there's, in fact, an important difference between the cases. And I think the difference is expressed by the difference between a design-based refusal, that is, a refusal on what is sold versus a user-based refusal, or a refusal based on to whom it is sold or for what purpose it is sold. So here's my idea. Generally speaking, business owners get to decide what they're going to sell and not going to sell. So I can't go into a kosher bakery and say I would like a cake topped with candied bacon. The baked kosher bakery is going to say, no, we don't sell bacon-topped cakes. Look, I'll provide you with the bacon bits. And they're going to say, no, we're still not going to do that. It's just not something we provide here in a kosher bakery. Or I can't go into a vegan bakery and say I want a real buttercream cake, not some of that fake buttercream that you've been feeding. Sorry that John's not here. I was going to use that example to tease him. You know, fake buttercream. So if it was a vegan bakery, that's not something we sell. And in much the same way, I think that Marjorie Silva is like, look, cakes with that particular design, with the men with the 2X on them and the homosexuality of the testable syndrome, that's just not something I sell. But you might say, but wait a second, Jack Phillips can say the same thing. He's like, I don't sell gay wedding cakes. To which my answer is a gay wedding cake is not a thing. I mean, wedding cakes or gay wedding cakes are from the same catalogs or straight wedding cakes. You pick your design, you pick your icing, you pick your filling, and so forth. And remember, Jack Phillips did not say anything, did not in any way discuss the design with the customers. Now it would be one thing if Jack Phillips had said, look, I'm not going to make a cake with 2 men on the top. I don't do that. Or I'm not going to make a rainbow wedding cake. I don't do that. He said he would not sell a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding. And in fact, his bakery had previously, and this is in the record for the case, his bakery had previously denied a cupcake order to a lesbian couple who tried to order just standard cupcakes from the bakery because they were going to use it for a celebration of their commitment ceremony, which is sort of like a wedding. That I think is very different from the case of Marjorie Silva who said, look, I will sell you the Bible-shaped cake because that's something I sell. You can even draw whatever you want on it. But I will not do this particular design. I think this is a good way to distinguish the cases. And it's something that I'm willing to be consistent about. So there was another case this past year in Kentucky. Kentucky is one of our more conservative states. But Lexington, Kentucky, which is the city where this happened, has a local ordinance that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Somebody called up a print shop that prints T-shirts and mugs and pens like they sort of customized products. And they said, look, we want to order a T-shirt for the Lexington Pride celebration. It was a gay pride celebration. We're going to order a T-shirt for this celebration. And the shop owner said, no, we're not going to... We're not going to sell you that particular... He asked, what do you want on the T-shirt? He said, well, we want this. He said, no, we're not going to sell that to you. And this is a case where, in fact, previously, the shop had refused various other kinds of designs and has right on their website. We reserve the right not to provide particular designs if this conflicts with our beliefs. And it's really interesting reading the case and some of the details of the cases. Reading law can sometimes be really boring, but every once in a while there's something really funny when you actually read the details. And it's that the shop had previously refused to do certain designs, including Jesus dressed as a pirate or selling fried chicken. I couldn't make this stuff up. And so the local gay pride organization filed a complaint in Lexington. The Lexington Commission said that the shop owners were guilty of sexual orientation discrimination, liable for sexual orientation discrimination. And then, I think, was the district court said that they were liable, but then the Kentucky Court of Appeals said, no, this is not about discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. This is about unwillingness to provide a particular design. And I actually wrote a piece for Slate, it's an online magazine, where I said the Kentucky Court of Appeals, I think got it right. I think that if we're going to have a line drawing principle here, a good way to draw that line is by making the distinction between what is sold versus to whom or for what purpose it's sold. And if you draw the line there, the Kentucky T-shirt shop should be allowed to refuse. So let me conclude and then open this up for discussion, which I'm interested in hearing from you. I think that part of what makes these cases difficult is that we have a kind of, what we might think of as a moral design problem. I think about this because I live in Detroit. And Detroit, you know, we historically are known for making cars, right? And if you're designing a car, there are certain things that you want, right? You want the car to be fast, you want it to be fuel efficient, you want it to have good trunk space and so on. And sometimes, you know, in pursuing some of those things, you have certain trade-offs, right? The more trunk space you have, the larger the car, the larger the car, the slower it's likely to be, because it's heavier, it's likely to be heavier and so forth. These cases involve our desire to uphold a number of important values. We want liberty. We want religious liberty. We want the liberty of people to be able to go out into the public sphere without being humiliated. We want to promote equality and these various other values that we have. And the challenge is to try to draw the lines in such a way that fits these things together, recognizing that none of the parties are likely to be happy 100% of the time, but we can at least keep working in such a way as to move closer to that kind of peaceable resolution. What worries me, what saddens me actually, as I've been thinking about these issues, is that so much of what gets included under the rubric of religious liberty nowadays strikes me as just a way of continuing the same-sex marriage debate and in particular a way for religious conservatives in the United States who lost the marriage debate in Obergefell. We now have same-sex marriage across the United States to find ways of saying, okay, but we still don't have to treat your marriage as real. We still don't have to treat you as full citizens. And that's troubling to me for two reasons. It's troubling to me, of course, because it hurts LGBT people and causes real grief in real lives. And again, not just about cakes and flowers, but even funeral services. But it's also troubling to me because I think it tarnishes the religious liberty brand, if you will, because what historically at its best has been about inclusion, about reaching out to minorities that we may have either explicitly discriminated against or just forgotten about, is now becoming about exclusion and discrimination and perpetuating this second-class citizenship for gay people and for same-sex couples. And I think that that's unfortunate and I think it's worth working against. And with that, I will conclude and open for questions. Thank you very much.