Racism or Religious Liberty? Why LGBT Issues Aren’t the Next Civil Rights Frontier

Back in 2012, Charlie Craig and David Mullins entered Jack Phillips’ business, Masterpiece Cakeshop, and asked if Phillips would design a custom cake for their same-sex wedding ceremony. Phillips explained that he could not participate in their ceremony through unique artistic expression due to his Christian beliefs concerning sex and marriage. However, Phillips said he would be happy to provide any other ready-made item in his shop to the couple. The couple left the shop and filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which ruled against Phillips and ordered Phillips to make custom cakes for same-sex wedding ceremonies

Judge Posner to America: We Rule, You Submit

The majority in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has just rewritten the 1964 Civil Rights Act, ruling that the law’s ban on sex discrimination now means sexual orientation discrimination. Judge Richard Posner, a libertarian legal lion first appointed to the court by Ronald Reagan in 1981, was at least quite frank about his legal reasoning. Sex discrimination did not mean sexual orientation discrimination. But now it does because, well, we have freshened up the meaning of that hoary, old word. David French is on the case: Judge Posner at least respects the public enough to be honest. Instead of

Federal Court Rules Sex Discrimination Not Same as LGBT Discrimination

By a 2-1 margin, a three-judge panel on the 11th Circuit on Friday rejected a security guard’s claim that legal protections against sex discrimination can be stretched to include sexual orientation discrimination, in a case where the guard claimed a hospital fired her because she was a lesbian. The majority opinion relied on a 1979 ruling that stated sexual orientation is not covered by Title VII. A more recent 2011 case held that gender noncomformity could be used as the basis for a sex discrimination claim, but that, as concurring Judge William Pryor wrote, “[a] gay individual may establish with enough factual