Azucar Sweet Shop & Bakery owner Marjorie Silva airbrushes a display cake for the Denver Aquarium. (Photo by Reza A. Marvashti , The Denver Post)
Colorado Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt, R-Colorado Springs, a fervent evangelist, is rising in defense of a Denver baker who refused to make a cake for a pastor from Colorado Springs that she said demeaned homosexuals.
“I’m a Christian minister, and I believe the Bible, but I will defend to the death someone else’s right not to have to print the Bible in their artwork,” Klingenschmitt said Thursday.
His bill would prevent civil rights complaints against those who refuse to engage in speech or art that they disagree with. Marjorie Silva, owner of Azucar Bakery on South Broadway in Denver, is because she refused last March to decorate a cake for Bill Jack, a pastor who founded Worldview Academy, which
That incident also calls to mind the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, whose owner, Jack Phillips against gay couples, after two men asked for a wedding cake. Phillips refused based on his religious beliefs.
Silva said she offered to make Jack the Bible-shaped cake he wanted, but told him he would have to put on the decorative icing. She said Jack wanted the cake to show two men holding hands with an X over them, along with the words “God hates gays.” Jack contends he only asked for two Bible verses that condemn homosexuality. He provided Klingenschmitt a copy of what he says he presented Silva.
“The government should not be compelling speech, which is different than compelling service, and there is a distinction to be drawn,” Klingenschmitt said, referring to those who compare not making a cake for gay couples a modern form to Jim Crow laws, which denied service to African-Americans in the pre-Civil Rights Act South. “Unfortunately the Colorado statute is forcing these bakers to write words they disagree with.”
Klingenshmitt, a former Navy chaplain with a PhD who carries the nickname Dr. Chaps, said he’s fighting for free speech, not the gay community.
While he was a candidate last August, in an e-mail newsletter.
“The openly homosexual Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) introduced a revised bill to force Christian employers and business owners to hire and promote homosexuals with ZERO RELIGIOUS EXEMPTIONS for Christians who want to opt out,” Kligenschmitt wrote. He , said he was using hyperbole and that Democrats didn’t have a sense of humor.
He wasn’t winning over any converts in the Colorado LGBT Caucus Thursday.
A member of the caucus, Rep. Dominick Moreno, D-Commerce City, said Klingenschmitt’s bill would never make it out of the Democrat-led House.
“My feeling is it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” he said. “(Standing up for gays) is not Dr. Chaps’ interest. His interest is in protecting those who use their freedom of speech to discriminate against others, and that’s exactly what the bill would allow for and who the bill would protect.”
One Colorado, the advocacy group for the state’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents, provided a statement in response to Klingenschmitt’s bill from Rev. Laura Rossbert, a United Methodist clergywoman in metro Denver:
“My concern about this type of legislation is that it opens the door to discrimination against all kinds of people here in Colorado,” she said. “Freedom of religion and freedom of speech are already protected as fundamental rights in this country — which is why this bill is not necessary — but those freedoms don’t give any of us the right to harm or discriminate against others. Furthermore, as a person of faith, I believe we are all God’s children and that we ought to be treating others the way we want to be treated. Turning people away because of who they are does not represent my values as a Christian, nor does it reflect my values as a Coloradan.”
