In response to a Christian Colorado baker’s likely upcoming victory in the Supreme Court, an atheistic troll group is urging its supporters to order Satanic cakes from Christian bakers who conscientiously object to serving same-sex weddings.
“The Satanic Temple (TST) has announced a plan for those who feel alienated or oppressed by the privileged status that religion holds over sexual orientation: Request your homophobic baker make a cake for Satan,” Satanic Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves wrote in a guest post at Patheos on Thursday.
“Because religion is a protected class, a baker may refuse service to LGBTQ people, but they may not refuse service based upon someone’s religion. If they aren’t willing to make a cake for same-sex unions, let’s have them make a cake to honor Satan instead,” Greaves said.
Did you know: bakers can't refuse service to The Satanic Temple because religion is a "protected class"? #SatanCakes pic.twitter.com/9VrVndkbSi
— Lucien Greaves (@LucienGreaves) September 26, 2017
“The argument has been contextualized as a matter of Free Speech versus Civil Rights,” Greaves fretted. “However, because sexual orientation is not a protected class under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, (whereas race and religion are), there is a good chance that the right to discriminate against gay couples will be affirmed as a constitutional liberty. Given the political persuasion of the majority of Supreme Court Justices, this outcome is even more likely.”
Greaves told The Daily Caller that the Temple has “received a significant positive response from the LGBT community.”
“A lot of our membership is also homosexual as well, and I feel like there’s obvious reasons for that,” Greaves told TheDCNF. “You know, we’re very into that kind of thing. There’s no issue of tolerance with us. And a lot of people who have grown up gay feel very alienated from traditional religion. So we have a very high population of LGBTQ community also as membership of the Satanic Temple.”
Greaves explained the thinking behind the initiative, telling the DCNF, “If evangelical theocratic nationalists want to deny LGBTQ community services, then other people should be allowed to deny them services as well. I think that’s a legally tenable option. It’s not a very socially tenable option. We’ve already gone over this in the Jim Crow era, I think we came up with a kind of social contract that if you’re going to run a business and provide services to the public that you need to act within the boundaries of what is within accepted social behavior, regardless of your own religion or whatever else. And now, what we’re really seeing is a push from the evangelical theocrats to hold themselves as not being in equal status but as having a type of super status, a kind of overly privileged and exempt group from the rest of what is accepted social norms.”
Greaves said he wanted the initiative to force people into questioning why sexual orientation is not a protected class, but “some backwards superstition” is.
The Temple’s plan was wholly endorsed by a HuffPost writer who gushed: The Satanic Temple Has An Ingenious Plan To Troll Anti-Gay Bakeries.
But it’s not clear that it is an ingenious plan at all.
In fact, it’s highly unlikely that bakers would be obligated under the law to bake a cake like the one Greaves suggested.
As a commenter at Patheos pointed out, “If a satanist couple walks in, tries to order a wedding cake from the baker’s catalog, and gets turned away because they’re satanists, that’s discrimination. However, there is no law that states vendors need to offer products that do or do not conform to a particular set of religious rules. If a Jew walks into a deli, they don’t have the right to demand kosher meat if the deli only sells pork. Similarly, a gentile can’t walk into a Jewish deli, demand to buy pork, and claim religious discrimination when it doesn’t happen.”
A baker could also wipe the smug grin off the Satanic Temple customer’s face by informing him that 100 percent of the proceeds for the cake (be sure to nickle and dime it) will go to the Christian charity of your choice.
“Well, bless your heart, Lucian,” you could say. “I’m donating the entire $600 to St. Mary’s Vacation Bible School fund. That’ll buy a lot of children’s Bibles! Where can I have Sister Angelica send you your thank-you note?”
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson debated Greaves on his show Friday and called him out as “just a troll” trying work out his unhappy childhood by hassling people.
Greaves argued that his religion is a legitimate one.
“These are an expression of our deeply held beliefs,” he insisted. “You don’t see us going into public forums where there isn’t already religious representation. What we’re doing is upholding pluralism,” he argued.
“No, you’re not upholding pluralism,” Carlson shot back. “You’re going and you’re seeking out people to bother …”
“Do you ever have an evangelical on and ask them why they need to force their Bibles into schools?” Greaves asked.
“What they’re not doing is showing up at your house and saying ‘Say the Lord’s Prayer with me, Lucien Greaves, and if you don’t then I’m going to sue you,'” Tucker countered.
The Fox host argued that the reason we’re seeing these types of cases now is because people in the past had “a sense of decency and politeness” that prevented them from getting into people’s faces to make some kind of statement to violate their beliefs.
“Then the gay baker shouldn’t be forced to make a cake for the Evangelical theocrat,” Greaves argued.
Carlson agreed with him: “I haven’t seen a single case of an evangelical forcing any kind of bakery to bake a cake that violates the baker’s personal beliefs. And if there was such a case, I would come down on the side of the bakery,” he said. “Why don’t you back off and just let people live their lives?”
Greaves replied, “Right, exactly, but you can’t because religion is a protected class.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Carlson scoffed. “You’re making a nonsensical point and I think you should crawl back into your hole.”
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