The Patriot Post® · Commissioner Compares Free Speech to Slavery, Nazism

Shortly after Christian business owner Jack Phillips was ordered by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission to undergo “sensitivity training” for refusing to bake a wedding cake for homosexual couple Charlie Craig and David Mullins, one member of that panel accused Phillips of acting on convictions commensurate with slavery and Nazi Germany. In July, Commissioner Diann Rice asserted, “Freedom of religion … has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust.” She added, “I mean, we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use – to use their religion to hurt others.” What about radicals who use an agenda to hurt those with strongly held beliefs? As Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Jeremy Tedesco put it, “Rice compared a private citizen who owns a small bakery to slaveholders and Holocaust perpetrators merely for asking that the state respect his right to free speech and free exercise of religion.” The couple could have taken business elsewhere – nobody is trampling on their right to do so – but instead chose to publicly ridicule a Christian man who is constitutionally protected, just as they are, to live according to his convictions. It sounds like Ms. Rice needs a remedial course on America’s heritage. More…