National Rifle Association Spokeswoman Dana Loesch believes that forcing Christians to serve same-sex couples is akin to “slavery.”
In a Monday broadcast on her NRATV program Relentless, Loesch sounded off on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which was handed down the same day. Jack Phillips, a baker in Lakewood, Color., fought to overturn a 2013 decision from the state’s civil rights board claiming he violated the rights of Charlie Craig and David Mullins, a gay couple who asked him to bake a cake for their wedding, when he turned them away.
SCOTUS claimed in a 7-2 verdict that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission contravened the “free exercise clause” of the U.S. Constitution by denying Phillips a “neutral and respectful consideration” in the case. Justices argued the board’s deliberations illustrated an unconstitutional animus toward religion.
Loesch said the ruling—a narrow procedural verdict on whether the case had been adjudicated fairly, not so-called “religious freedom”—was “clearly a victory for Jack Phillips.”
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The host further claimed that “big, statist government progressives” are trying to “force people to engage in expression.”
“Now in other words, that state wants to compel this baker to perform… against the baker’s wishes,” Loesch said, calling attention to a similar case in California siding with an anti-gay baker. “Now, in the real world, we would call this slavery. We would call this some sort of indentured servitude. Who owns whose labor, right? I mean that’s what this is.”
In the California case, Tasties Bakery owner Cathy Miller turned away a lesbian couple, Eileen and Mireya Rodriguez-Del Rio, last year after they requested a cake for their wedding. Kern County Superior Court Judge David R. Lampe ruled in February that Miller was in her right to refuse them service.
“The right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment outweighs the State’s interest in ensuring a freely accessible marketplace,” Lampe claimed.
But Loesch pointed to some key points in his written opinion to bolster her argument that equal accommodations for LGBTQ people is akin to thousands of years of forced labor. Lampe claimed that Miller was being compelled to “use her talents and to design and create a cake that she had not conceived with the knowledge that her work would be displayed in celebration of a marital union that her religion forbids,” the host noted.
Thus, slavery.
This isn’t Loesch’s only nonsensical attack on the LGBTQ community in recent months. In January, the conservative Trump supporter accused U.S. Senate hopeful Chelsea Manning of “appropriating” her gender in an NRATV segment forcibly misgendering her several times.
“[D]on’t correct me on pronouns, for anybody who is watching,” Loesch said, “because I’m not going to suddenly pretend that this individual who is pretending to be a woman is a part of my sisterhood. He went through maturity and puberty as a male. Just because you get some boobs, and you put some red lipstick on, poorly applied, and a very poor smoky eye bad dye job, that don’t make you a chick.”
Numerous companies have cut ties with the NRA in recent months following national protests of its opposition to gun control measures.