ABCNews.com(NEW YORK) — The baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple tells The View exclusively in an interview airing Friday that he doesn’t “judge people.”
“I just don’t make cakes for every event,” he said.
Jack Phillips, who owns Masterpiece Cakeshop, is challenging a Colorado law that says he was wrong to turn away Charlie Craig and David Mullins, who requested a cake for their wedding. The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear Phillips’ case.
“I tried to politely tell them I didn’t do cakes for same-sex weddings,” Phillips said of his interaction with the couple in 2012.
His reasoning? “I serve everybody, all the time. But I don’t make a cake for every event that’s required of me.”
Phillips said he was “not turning them away.”
His lawyer, Kristen Waggoner, said: “He also told ’em that he would sell pretty much anything in his store” except a wedding cake.
“I don’t judge people when they come in,” Phillips said. “I try and serve everybody. I just don’t make cakes for every event that’s asked of me.”
Phillips said it was “difficult” to refuse Craig and Mullins’ request. “It’s a difficult thing to be in my position and know that somebody’s requesting me to do something I can’t, in good conscience, do,” he said.
James Esseks of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Mullins and Craig, said on Monday: “The law is squarely on David and Charlie’s side, because when businesses are open to the public, they’re supposed to be open to everyone. While the right to one’s religious beliefs is fundamental, a license to discriminate is not. Same-sex couples like David and Charlie deserve to be treated with the same dignity and respect as anyone else, and we’re ready to take that fight all the way to the Supreme Court.”
The ACLU declined to comment further on Thursday.
Watch the full interview on ABC’s The View Friday, June 30, at 11 a.m. ET.
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