Excellent article on why Stephanie Wilkinson, owner of the
Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., is the real bigot here.
The Owners of The Red Hen in Virginia Are the Real Bigots. Not the Christian Bakers
The key difference here is that baking a custom cake for a gay wedding is not the same thing as blanket denial of service at a restaurant. None of the Christian bakers ever denied service to gay customers — they just didn't want to make custom cakes celebrating a lifestyle they believe to be sinful. Media coverage of various incidents has likened the cases of Christian bakers not wanting to create custom cakes for same-sex weddings as refusing to serve homosexuals. However, this is simply not true.
Masterpiece Bakery, owned by Jack Phillips, the complainant (and victor) in the recent Supreme Court case,
never refused to serve gay customers.
...from the beginning, Jack has seen his business as an expression of his faith (hence the name), and that has led him to reject business throughout his career. For example, he’s refused to make custom cakes for Halloween and divorce celebrations, and he’s turned down requests for lewd cakes for bachelor and bachelorette parties.
Back in 2012, two men asked Jack to design a cake for their same-sex wedding. Now mind you, back in 2012, the state of Colorado didn’t even recognize same-sex weddings. Jack told them that he would gladly sell them any item in the store—including cakes—but that he could not, due to his religious convictions, use his cake-design talents to participate in the celebration of their ceremony.