Masterpiece Cakeshop in Denver does indeed have its cake, but the owners may not fully enjoy eating it too.
On Monday morning, the Supreme Court weighed in on the long-simmering case of a baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay customer. The ordeal began in 2012, when David Mullins and Charlie Craig visited Masterpiece Cakeshop to order a cake for their wedding reception in Colorado. Jack Phillips, the baker, would not comply, on the grounds that his religious beliefs barred him from baking a cake for a same-sex marriage. Mullins and Craig filed a complaint, which bounced around to ever-higher courts in the intervening years, ultimately landing in the Supreme Court, who ruled in favor of the Colorado baker.
This decision was bound to provoke a hostile reaction no matter what; coming during Pride, however, a time of heightened attention to LGBT affairs, the response has reached a fever pitch. Although there are few courses of action to overturn a SCOTUS ruling, one area where critics of Monday’s decision are finding some sense of satisfaction is on the Masterpiece Cakeshop’s Yelp page.
Yelp pages have often served as battlegrounds for businesses that end up in the news. Just a couple weeks ago, New Yorkers in droves set upon reviewing so-called “racist lawyer” Aaron Schlossberg’s law practice as a Mexican restaurant. Shortly after Monday’s SCOTUS ruling, Masterpiece Cakeshop’s page was inundated with reviews like the following, all of which either chasten the restaurant for its intolerant policies in earnest, or make light of them:
“They do a really great job of balancing the prejudice with the discrimination – you know, sometimes you get too much of one or the other, but here they pile on BOTH! What a deal. Mmm, tastes like fresh hot bigotry.
If you’re not looking to buy hatred sweets, go elsewhere.”“Several months ago, I bought some cupcakes from here and brought them home to my lesbian lover. She was seated, as per usual, in the center on a pentagram we’ve emblazoned on our hardwood floors in goat blood, and smiled in delight when she saw I came bearing such a sweet, sugary bounty. We incorporated the cupcakes into our hour-long ritualistic worship of Satan and then held each other in romantic homosexual embrace. The cupcakes were so meaningfully integrated to our practice of lesbianic Satan worshipping that, between my girlfriend and me, we now refer to them as occult-cakes. Highly recommend everyone do the same–just don’t tell anyone at the shop what you’re using them for.”
“Giving a one-star review because their menu doesn’t include ‘hatred and bigotry’ as options.”
Of course, perhaps the most succinct summary of the situation comes from this reviewer: “More like masterpiece of sh*t.”
Have a look at more of the intolerant bakery’s Yelp reviews here.
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