Jimmy Kimmel employed age-old homophobic tactics Thursday night to attack a Christian cake artist for refusing to bake a transgender-themed cake.

Like a gay-baiting schoolboy, Kimmel taunted Jack Phillips — the Colorado cake artist who just won a Supreme Court case protecting his religious freedom and freedom from compelled speech — as a closeted gay man.

Using homosexuality as a pejorative, which is the very definition of homophobia, Kimmel not only accused Phillips of being gay, but mocked him for looking like a woman.

“It’s funny because this is a guy who spends all day, every day, meticulously designing flowers out of icing — his whole life is gay, okay?” Kimmel said.

“I don’t know if he’s worried the wrong cake might bring that to life or what.” Kimmel taunted, because ha ha you might be gay.

What’s next? Will Kimmel taunt people because they might be Jewish or black?

Kimmel was far from done.

“And I will add, this is Jack Phillips, the totally straight cake baker — you would think that someone who looks like the Reba McEntire version of Colonel Sanders would be more sympathetic to gender identity issues.”

Interestingly enough, Phillips has said he would never denigrate homosexuals like Kimmel did Thursday night.

Back in June, on top of cakes that slander America or racial groups, Phillips told the Today Show, he would never design a cake that “would disparage anyone who identifies as LGBT.”

Kimmel, however, is more than willing to disparage those who identify as LGBT — and is doing so on network television by using their identity as an insult.

Something else Kimmel fails to grasp is the slippery slope that would come with giving the government the power to intimidate artists into creating art, into participating in behavior that violates their consciences.

If the government can force a cake artist to make a certain kind of art, why not late-night comedians? What would stop the government from telling Kimmel or Colbert or Fallon that they must tell jokes that mock leftists or abortion or same-sex marriage or transgenderism?

Leftists like Kimmel are now so blinded by ideology they are not only no longer standing up for artistic freedom, they are revealing a latent homophobia to express their seething anti-Christian bigotry.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.