Christian owners of small businesses are increasingly finding themselves targeted by the legal system for declining to provide services for same-sex weddings. How do they respond when the state takes away their religious freedom and threatens their business? For baker and evangelical Christian Jack Phillips, the question is far from theoretical.

In July 2012, Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., declined to bake a rainbow-themed wedding cake for a same-sex wedding — although he told the two men he could make any other type of cake for them and they easily found another baker to make the cake for them. Colorado did not recognize same-sex marriage at that time, but the men still filed a complaint against him with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In December 2013 — even though Phillips had violated no law — an administrative law judge ruled against him, requiring him and his staff to undergo re-education training and file quarterly compliance reports for two years. One member of the commission actually likened his religious objection to slave owners and perpetrators of the Holocaust.

The Colorado Court of Appeals upheld the decision against Phillips last August. Represented by lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), he appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, but in April, the court declined to accept the case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Craig. The chief justice and another justice would have taken the case but were outvoted. The ADF says  it is “evaluating all legal options to preserve this freedom for Jack.”

His ADF lawyers argued that Phillips, as a “cake artist,” shouldn’t be required to design cakes that contradict his religious views. The government is forcing him to communicate messages that he disagrees with.

Phillips will not make cakes featuring sexually suggestive images, demons, witches or ghosts. Nor will he provide cakes for bachelor parties or cakes with “hateful, vulgar or profane messages, or sell any products containing alcohol.”

He said during an interview, “Sometimes it seems like I’ve turned down more cakes in a day than I’ve taken orders for.” Yet no one is accusing him of discrimination against Satanists or bachelor party hedonists because of his scruples.

Coping

So what is Phillips doing now? He stopped making any wedding cakes in March 2014. His business has survived, but it has greatly reduced his income. Phillips started his bakery in 1993, and used to make around 200 custom wedding cakes a year, charging about $500 each.

Notably, Phillips says hundreds of gay people have contacted him telling him they support his right to decline providing cakes for same-sex weddings.

Friends and supporters started a fundraising page for Phillips on Continue To Give, a Christian-owned crowdfunding site. He is fortunate to have this site to raise funds, because some crowdfunding sites will no longer let Christians raise funds for what they refer to as “discrimination.”

Phillips could make more money if he would just keep his religion to Sunday worship, but Phillips explains that he wants God “to run our lives, through our lives, every day and any way that he wants.”

Phillips’ ADF attorneys say they are looking at all options, so this may not be the end of the story. ADF senior legal counsel Jeremy Tedesco said in a statement, “Jack, who has happily served people of all backgrounds for years, simply exercised the long-cherished American freedom to decline to use his artistic talents to promote a message and event with which he disagrees, and that freedom shouldn’t be placed in jeopardy for anyone. We are evaluating all legal options to preserve this freedom for Jack.”

For more information on the case, visit the Alliance Defending Freedom.

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