By Matthew Monforton

The Court just agreed to hear a case filed by Jack Phillips, who owns Masterpiece Cakeshop, a Denver-area bakery. As his attorneys explain, Phillips is not just a baker — he’s an artist:

[Phillips] cakes communicate the important celebratory themes of birthday parties, anniversaries, graduations, and weddings. His faith teaches him to serve and love everyone and he does. It also compels him to use his artistic talents to promote only messages that align with his religious beliefs.

Phillips’ faith trumps business:

He declines lucrative business by not creating goods that contain alcohol or cakes celebrating Halloween and other messages his faith prohibits, such as racism, atheism, and any marriage not between one man and one woman.

That last one won’t fly — not in Colorado, and not in an increasing number of other states, either.

State authorities penalized Phillips under Colorado’s “non-discrimination” statute after he declined the demands of a homosexual couple for a custom cake for their “wedding.” Those penalties include monetary sanctions, for starters. But that’s not all. Phillips’ employees must submit to “comprehensive training” on non-discrimination. The former Soviet Union might have closed its re-education camps, but Colorado’s are open for business.

In fact, the only real discrimination, and bigotry, in this case comes from the homosexual complainants and the government thugs doing their bidding. As Phillips’ attorneys note, Colorado gave a pass to three other bakeries that refused a Christian customer’s request for custom cakes that criticized same-sex marriage on religious grounds. Nor will the government penalize bakers who refuse to bake cakes “bearing a white-supremacist message for a member of the Aryan Nation” or an Islamic baker who refuses to make a cake denigrating the Koran.”

Bakers are free to decline any expression that they find offensive. Unless they’re Christian bakers. Or Christian florists. Or Christian videographers. Or Christian farmers.

And if the Supreme Court rules against Phillips, you can add every other Christian to that list. The militant homosexuals who hauled Phillips into court did so by bypassing hundreds of Denver-area bakeries that would happily have taken their money. If Phillips loses, that tactic will be repeated in every state and with believers in every profession.

Archbishop Chaput’s maxim has been on full display in the Supreme Court’s gay-rights jurisprudence. In 1986, the Court reaffirmed two millennia of moral teachings and held that “there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy.”

Evil preached tolerance and, in 2004, convinced the Supreme Court that there was such a right.

The judiciary’s decent into abomination has accelerated. Two years ago, the Supreme Court determined that James Madison’s Constitution required state governments to recognize sodomy as a foundation for marriage.

After Evil’s preaching of tolerance won the day, it began demanding conformity. The lower courts have complied and are ordering our brothers and sisters in Christ to facilitate gay weddings.

In a few months, we’ll learn whether the Supreme Court is cool with that.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, which is defending Phillips pro bono, produced a video showing Phillips’ quiet resolve in the face of tyranny:

This is what real resistance looks like — the kind Christ commanded of us for such a time as this.

We should pray for Phillips’ victory, of course. But even that will simply delay the inevitable. Decades ago, gay marriage was barely a blip on pollsters’ radar screens. Now, nearly two out of three Americans support gay marriage, so you don’t need to have read Daniel and Revelation to figure out where this is all headed. The mob always demands, sooner or later, that all of us go from tolerating to facilitating its abominations. Aaron caved when the mob demanded a golden calf. Jack Phillips stood his ground when it demanded a cake. Each of us needs to begin deciding which will be our role model for the day when the mob comes knocking on our door, which it surely will.