Who the hell Else would keep forcing the entire country to take money out of their pockets and their children's future to pay Psychiatry/Psychology to continue inflicting itself on everyone else?
It is often said that Washington, DC is filled with a bunch of nerds dominated by psychopaths. Others say that politics is simply Hollywood for ugly people. These are usually said in a joking manner and often uttered after coming back from a young professional happy hour here in the swamp. Perhaps the most soulless congregation of folks ever assembled can be found at those kind of events.
But it turns out that a recent study showing the population density of psychopaths could confirm anecdotal suspicions that these two areas of American life have more in common than either would like to admit.
A report conducted by Ryan Murphy at Southern Methodist University found that Connecticut contained the most psychopaths per capita followed quickly by California. New Jersey and New York followed next. But our nation's capital by far had the highest level of psychopathic behavior than anywhere in the country.
As Newsmax notes, “Added in the study was Washington, D.C., which ‘had a psychopathy level far higher' than any state, according to the report – albeit because it is a small, entirely urban area and not as geographically diverse as a state. "The presence of psychopaths in District of Columbia is consistent with the conjecture found in Murphy [2016] that psychopaths are likely to be effective in the political sphere," Murphy concluded in his study. (emphasis added)
Murphy analyzed "levels of big five personality traits (extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience) in each state," to carry out his research.
"Boldness corresponds to low neuroticism and high extraversion, meanness corresponds to low agreeableness, and disinhibition corresponds to low conscientiousness," Murphy wrote.
Turns out our nation's capital attracts these kind of characters in a major way.
"The District of Columbia is measured to be far more psychopathic than any individual state in the country, a fact that can be readily explained either by its very high population density or by the type of person who may be drawn a literal seat of power (as in Murphy 2016)," the report says. (emphasis added)
Northeast states overall contained the most psychopaths of any region. But, it is a little discomforting that the two areas of American life that impact us each day - entertainment and federal government - contain so many psychos.
dailycaller Amber Athey | Media and Breaking News Editor
House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy
warned the DOJ and the FBI on Sunday that Republicans will come after
them if they choose not to comply with subpoena requests. WATCH:
.@TGowdySC tells Chris there will be action on the floor of the House if DOJ and FBI do not comply with subpoena request. Watch the full interview 2PM & 7PM ET @FoxNewspic.twitter.com/N74dEVWxg0
Gowdy told “Fox News Sunday”
that House Speaker Paul Ryan led a meeting with FBI and DOJ officials
on Friday night and “made very clear there’s going to be action on the
floor of the House this week if FBI and DOJ do not comply with our
subpoena request.” “Paul Ryan led this
meeting. You had Devin Nunes, Bob Goodlatte, myself and everyone you can
think of from the FBI and the DOJ, and we went item by item on both of
those outstanding subpoenas,” Gowdy explained. “We’re going to get
compliance or the House of Representatives is going to use its full
arsenal of constitutional weapons to gain compliance.” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray were present at Ryan’s meeting, according to Gowdy. WATCH:
.@TGowdySC
adds “There is no ambiguity, the Speaker of the House was really clear:
you’re going to comply or there’s going to be floor action.” Say floor
action would include contempt of Congress. pic.twitter.com/LgCxCzhRCM
Zero hour was approaching for the law-abiding gun owners of Deerfield, Illinois. The village had banned the ownership of so-called assault weapons,
which in reality meant AR-15 rifles and any other firearm that carried a
detachable magazine capable of holding ten or more rounds. That’s how
Deerfield defined a so-called assault weapon.
On
June 13, the anti-gun ordinance passed by the Chicago suburb would have
gone into effect. It was essentially a gun ban, and there were no
exceptions. It’s either you turn them over, move, or risk facing a
$250-$1,000/ day noncompliance fee. Yeah, the AR-15 and other rifles the
anti-gun Left finds scary were banned, but it also included scores of
handguns. Magazines holding 15 rounds are not uncommon. Luckily, a
circuit court judge blocked this law 24 hours from going into effect.
And yes, legal challenges were filed against this grossly
unconstitutional law (via Vice News):
A
judge blocked a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines in
the small town of Deerfield, Illinois, less than 24 hours before it was
meant to go into effect. The decision, handed down Tuesday evening
in the 19th Judicial Circuit Court in Lake County, Illinois, is a small
victory for gun rights groups, who sued the Chicago suburb in April
after it became the first municipality to ban assault weapons following
the Parkland high school shooting. The Deerfield ordinance was passed
unanimously by all six board members on April 2.
Gun groups,
including the National Rifle Association of Illinois, requested a
temporary restraining order against the ban while the lawsuit proceeded.
It’s not over. A proposed ballot initiative
in Oregon would force AR-15 owners to register their rifles with the
state, destroy them, or surrender them to the authorities. They would
also have the option to transfer them out of the state. Boulder,
Colorado also passed a law
banning high capacity magazines and so-called assault weapons within
the city limits. The anti-gun Left is waging a war against the Second
Amendment and the Constitution. It will be greatly expanded if Democrats
win the 2018 midterms, so don’t forget to vote. Thank You Mr Vespa and Townhall.
Sometimes people lack such self-awareness it really is an enigma of the mind to observe. For
example, yesterday on MSNBC's "AM Joy with Joy Reid," guest and CNBC
correspondent John Harwood questioned whether President Donald Trump's
mental health was sufficient after the president's G7 press conference.
Harwood, a Duke graduate, does not have a doctoral degree in psychology
or any other medical profession. Nonetheless, Harwood felt it his duty
to voice his concern. (Via RealClearPolitics)
HARWOOD: I got to say that the upshot about this press conference was about tariffs. I'll be honest as a citizen: I'm concerned about the president's state of mind. He did not look well to me in that press conference. He was not speaking logically or rationally. It sounded as if he was making stuff up,
saying China told me nobody's ever talked to us, saying, 'Oh, I talked
to Justin Trudeau and can't believe he was getting away with so much
trade stuff.'
I don't think those things are true. And he --
there was something about his affect which was oddly kind of languid for
him. I don't know what it means but he did not look well to me.
(emphasis added)
Dr. Johnathan Shedler recently published a paper critiquing how the
term “evidence-based” is being used in the field of psychotherapy. He
argues that “evidence-based” has come to refer to select, manualized
therapies that are wrongly upheld as superior.
“The term evidence-based has come to mean something very
different for psychotherapy,” Shedler writes. “It has been appropriated
to promote a specific ideology and agenda. It is now used as a code word
for manualized therapy—most often brief, one-size-fits-all forms of
cognitive behavior therapy (CBT).”
Photo Credit: PixabayThe term “evidence-based” was originally meant to encourage practice
grounded in critical thinking, multiple forms of information, and
scientific research. It was popularized in the 1990s within medical
fields. However, Shedler contends that “evidence-based therapy” has
taken on a new meaning within psychotherapy. Ultimately, this shifting discourse has developed alongside what
Shedler refers to as a “master narrative” in psychotherapy: that the
field has evolved away from therapists practicing unproven, unscientific
psychotherapy toward practicing evidence-based therapies that are
proven and superior. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has been
positioned as superior to insight-oriented therapies. The media
participate in denigrating relationship-based or insight-oriented
therapies in a way that forwards the master narrative. Practice that
deviates from the manual is painted as a rejection of science.
“Note how the language leads to a form of McCarthyism,”
Shedler writes. “Because proponents of brief, manualized therapies have
appropriated the term ‘evidence-based,’ it has become nearly impossible
to have an intelligent discussion about what constitutes good therapy.”
Past research has previously called CBT’s superiority into question (see MIA report)
and Shedler begins his paper by outlining primary sources that
contribute to a counternarrative, “that evidence-based therapies are
weak treatments.”
“There is a yawning chasm between what we are told research shows and what research actually shows,” Shedler explains.
By outlining the popularly cited work of the National Institute of Mental Health’s (NIMH) 1989 study,
he conveys that the misconceptions of CBT as superior treatment are not
a result of data misrepresentation. Instead, they are the result of a
translation error, or the failure to accurately discern research jargon
from colloquial language that informs policy and practice. Specifically,
Shedler describes the confusion that results from the word
“significance,” and its context-dependent meaning:
“Major misunderstandings arise when researchers
‘disseminate’ research findings to patients, policymakers, and
practitioners. Researchers speak of ‘significant’ treatment benefits,
referring to statistical significance. Most people understandably but
mistakenly take this to mean that patients get well or at least
meaningfully better.”
In revisiting this 1989 NIMH study, Shedler writes he is
“embarrassed” to admit that he initially assumed that the 1.2-point
outcome difference between the CBT group and placebo was meaningful,
only to find that this difference was not even statistically
significant. How did the results of this study come to be represented so
differently from the actual data? These are the questions Shedler
addresses in this paper.
“It was difficult to wrap my head around the notion that
widespread claims that the study provided scientific support for CBT had
no basis in the actual data. This seems to be a case where the master
narrative trumped the facts.”
What about recent cases? Shedler jumps to a review of a recent,
randomized control trial (RCT) of CBT for depression. The findings are
strikingly similar to the 1989 NIMH study: about 75% of patients did not
get well. Despite the results of these two major studies, and
everything in between, brief manualized treatments are continuously
promoted as “evidence-based” rather than ineffective. The support for brief manualized therapies as a treatment for panic
is equally bleak, according to Shedler. Worse still are findings that
consider the long-term impact, or lack thereof, of manualized therapies.
“Sadly, such information reaches few clinicians and fewer
patients,” he adds. “I wonder what the public and policy makes would
think if they knew these are the same treatments described publicly as
‘evidence-based,’ ‘scientifically proven,’ and ‘the gold standard.’”
In this paper, Shedler continues by addressing problematic research
practices behind the studies that support manualized therapies. First,
most participants or patients are not included in studies as the
research requires that patients only meet criteria for one diagnosis.
The findings are then practically meaningless with real-world
presentations, Shedler notes. Second, comparator treatments for CBT are “shams” writes Shedler.
They are essentially “fake treatments that are intended to fail”to prop
up CBT as efficacious. This is done in numerous ways. For example,
researchers might recruit graduate students rather than established
professionals to deliver the non-CBT treatments. In other studies
featuring psychodynamic therapy for PTSD as a comparator to CBT,
therapists were instructed to avoid discussing trauma. Unfortunately, these cases are not the exception. Shedler cites a review
of the literature which sought to identify studies that compared
“evidence-based” therapy with an alternative, bona fide psychotherapy
treatments. After sifting through the extant literature, they found only
14 studies that accomplished this, none of which demonstrated
“evidence-based” therapies to be more effective. Further, these manualized therapies are not only paradoxically
considered to be evidence-based bereft of actual evidence, but studies
that demonstrate evidence to support the opposite are suppressed. “Data
are being hidden,” writes Shedler, which is not a new concern given
well-documented publication bias. A team of researchers found that “the published benefits of CBT are exaggerated by 75% owing to publication bias,” Shedler highlights. Shedler ends by reexamining how much the term “evidence-based has
veered from its original intended purpose. “‘Evidence-based’ does not
actually mean supported by evidence, it means manualized, scripted, and
not psychodynamic. What does not fit the master narrative does not
count.” He writes that the newfound meaning behind the “evidence-based” hype
discounts patient values and perspectives as well as clinician judgment.
When patients are not appropriately informed about the potential
drawbacks and benefits to different forms of treatment, they cannot
exercise informed choice. Further, clinicians encouraged to adhere to
manuals rather than exercise clinical judgment are limited in the degree
to which they can respond to client needs.
“The narrative has become a justification for all-out
attacks on traditional talk therapy—that is, therapy aimed at fostering
self-examination and self-understanding in the context of an ongoing,
meaningful therapy relationship.”
Shedler leaves readers with the following words of advice: “You should not take my word for any of this—or anyone else’s word. I
will leave you with 3 simple things to do to help sift truth from
hyperbole. When somebody makes a claim for a treatment, any treatment,
follow these 3 steps:
Say, ‘Show me the study.’ Ask for a reference, a citation, a PDF. Have the study put in your hands. Sometimes it does not exist.
If the study does exist, read it—especially the fine print.
Draw your own conclusions. Ask yourself: Do the actual methods and findings of the study justify the claim I heard?”
It's been "Normalized", reduced to formulas. Creative thinking in music has quite simply become abnormal, a disease to be pruned from the collectivist "Greater Happiness".
Did she get the idea that Laws don't matter in Psychology class?
dailycaller 9:37 PM 06/05/2018 Hanna Bogorowski | Contributor
A Democratic candidate for a U.S. House seat in Alabama has been flaunting an unlicensed career in psychology, according to report by HuffPost.
Adia McClellan Winfrey repeatedly refers to herself as a “pioneering psychologist” on her campaign page as well as her Twitter page.
Winfrey received a doctorate of clinical psychology degree in 2008 from Wright State University’s School of Professional Psychology, according to her official campaign website. She founded the Healing Young People through Empowerment (H.Y.P.E.) Movement, a therapy curriculum aiming to heal the African-American youth community through music and other forms of therapy, in 2011.
Winfrey admitted in a phone conversation with HuffPost that she’s never been a licensed psychologist in any of the states she’s lived in.
“I did complete the hours required for licensure ― but right when I was going to be studying for licensure exam, that’s when my curriculum took off,” she said.
Winfrey claimed she was unaware that what she was doing could violate state licensing laws.
“No person shall hold himself or herself out to the public as a licensed psychological technician or practice as a psychological technician unless licensed by the board. Failure to comply with this section shall constitute a Class B misdemeanor,” according to the Alabama state legislature website. (RELATED: 500 Days Of Trump Accomplishments Inspires Next Five Months Of GOP Strategy)
Class B misdemeanors can result in jail sentences of up to six months and fines up to $3,000. Other Class B misdemeanors include resisting arrest, tampering with a witness, or animal cruelty.
Winfrey faces former Miss America Mallory Hagan in Tuesday’s primary.
The flip side of 'Social Justice'. dailycaller 4:18 AM 06/05/2018 Howie Carr | Host, 'The Howie Carr Show'
As FBI director in 2002, Special Counsel Robert Mueller directed his agents to oppose the pardons of four wrongfully imprisoned men because exculpatory evidence was merely “fodder for cross-examination,” newly revealed FBI documents show.
Four years later, the four men, or their estates, were awarded $102 million by a federal judge in Boston for their wrongful decades-long imprisonment due to FBI misconduct.
Mueller ordered the Boston FBI office to answer a request to him from the Massachusetts Advisory Board of Pardons for an “official version” of the imprisonment of the four men for a gangland murder in Chelsea MA in March 1965.
The four men – Louie Greco, Henry Tameleo, Peter Limone and Joe Salvati – were convicted in state court in Boston of murdering Edward “Teddy” Deegan, a small-time hoodlum, in an alley during a bank burglary. Teddy Deegan’s murder scene (courtesy of Howie Carr)
Within days of the murder, Boston FBI agents knew the identities of the actual murderers, and reported the information to J. Edgar Hoover in Washington. But they allowed a Mob hitman they had flipped, Joseph Barboza, to settle some old scores by falsely testifying that the four men had taken part in the gangland murder he had helped arrange with others.
In 2002, lawyers for one of the innocent men, Louie Greco, were seeking a posthumous pardon for him from the state of Massachusetts. Greco, a decorated World War II veteran, had been living in Florida at the time of the murder, but was nevertheless convicted on Barboza’s perjured testimony.
Lou Greco in uniform (courtesy of Howie Carr)
Greco died in 1995 after serving 28 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
Another Boston gangster later testified to a Congressional committee that after the 1967 trial, one of the FBI agents bragged about framing Greco and said, “How does Louie Greco like going from Miami to Death Row? He wasn’t even there!”
For 35 years, the FBI refused to release the evidence exonerating the wrongfully imprisoned men on the grounds of “national security.” It was finally released in 2000 as part of an investigation into corruption in the Boston office of the FBI.
After the state pardons board asked Mueller for the Bureau’s version of its actions, a Boston FBI agent, Charles Prouty, wrote back on May 9, 2002 that “FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. has directed the office to respond.”
While conceding that the damning FBI reports contained “impeachment material,” Mueller’s FBI still contended that the innocent men might in fact be guilty, despite the FBI’s own reports to the contrary.
“This does not necessarily mean, however, that Limone or any of the other defendants is innocent – it merely means that they are entitled to a new trial.”
Deegan was murdered on March 12, and the FBI office sent memos to Bureau headquarters in Washington on March 15 and March 19 identifying the real killers – and with no mention of the four men who later won the $102 million judgment.
Mueller, however, tried to convince the Massachusetts authorities that his own Bureau’s documents did not mean that the four men had been railroaded.
“Much of the FBI confidential source information relates to the individuals who were involved in the Deegan murder as principals,” Mueller’s deputy said, underlining the word. “This information is not necessarily inconsistent with the crimes for which the defendants were convicted.”
Prouty did not mention the fact that Greco had moved from Boston to Florida before the murder. Mueller’s agent also did not point out that the siblings of victim Deegan, who had grown up in Boston’s West End with Limone, had earlier written the state parole board in support of Limone’s release. The Deegan siblings told the Parole Board that Limone had warned his childhood friend Deegan to be careful because of the murder contract out on him.
Michael Albano, a former member of the MA parole board and one-time mayor of Springfield, worked for years to free the innocent men.
“Even after the facts of the FBI cover up were revealed,” he said last week on “The Howie Carr Show” after reading the letter, “the FBI continued the cover up with the approval and authorization of Director Robert Mueller III.”
This newly rediscovered letter is the latest indication of Mueller’s role in what may have been the FBI’s greatest scandal ever, at least until the current Spygate controversy which has led to Mueller’s ongoing “investigation” of President Trump.
John Cavicchi, the Greco attorney who found Mueller’s FBI letter in his case files last week, said it had “outraged” him all over again.
“After all those years,” Cavicchi said Sunday, “the feds still couldn’t admit that they had engineered this gross miscarriage of justice. Why couldn’t Mueller, who was in Boston while this frame up was going on, admit the Bureau’s culpability, then apologize and just settle the civil suit?”
In Boston, the four men were always widely known to be innocent. As early as 1973, a Mafia turncoat wrote in a local best-selling book how they were framed by the FBI and its star Mob informant, hitman Joe “the Animal” Barboza, one of the actual killers of Deegan.
Joe “The Animal” Barbazo through the years (Massachusetts State Prison)
Barboza had turned against the local Mafia, and decided to put several of their members and associates into the Deegan murder plot, while protecting a friend of his, another serial killer named Jimmy “the Bear” Flemmi.
One of the men Barboza fingered, Joe Salvati, had drawn the wrath of the Animal by refusing to contribute $300 to his bail fund. So Barboza testified that Salvati was in the front seat of the car the killers used on the hit.
The problem was, witnesses had seen the man in the front seat – he was bald, like Jimmy Flemmi. So Barboza said that Salvati had been wearing a “bald wig” that night.
Mueller was an assistant US attorney in Boston in the 1980’s as the imprisoned men futilely tried to get their convictions overturned. Greco passed a lie detector test on live national TV.
But the FBI was adamant that they should remain behind bars. Mueller served briefly as US attorney in Boston in 1986-87. Both his predecessor and his successor as US attorney wrote letters to state authorities demanding that the innocent men not be released.
Albano, the former parole board member, has said that he has seen a similar letter written by Mueller during his brief stint as US attorney. But that letter, if it ever existed, appears to have disappeared from state files.
Still, Alan Dershowitz, the retired Harvard Law School professor, recently described Mueller as “the guy who kept four innocent people in prison for many years… right at the center of it.” (RELATED: Dershowitz Dukes It Out On MSNBC Over Mueller)
Nancy Gertner, the now-retired federal judge who presided over the civil case for damages that ended with the $102 million award, then wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times accusing Dershowitz and Fox News host Sean Hannity, among others, of “smearing” Mueller.
Gertner, who was appointed to the bench by her Yale Law School classmate Bill Clinton, claimed Mueller “had no involvement in that case.”
However, in December 2006, during the civil trial, Judge Gertner wrote a show-cause order accusing Mueller of stonewalling production of exculpatory evidence – “a serious problem,” she wrote.
“This is a case about, inter alia, informant abuse, about the failure to disclose exculpatory evidence bearing on the innocence of the four plaintiffs, about FBI agents allegedly ‘hiding the ball,’ not disclosing critical information that would have exonerated the plaintiff… and not doing so for nearly 40 years.”
She continued, “Given those accusations, the position the FBI is taking is chilling… This Court is not remotely satisfied.”
Gertner said she had been asked by the innocent men to hold the FBI in contempt of court and that she had taken their motion “under advisement.”
“In order to make that decision,” she wrote, “the Court ORDERS that this matter be brought to the personal attention of the Director of the FBI.”
In other words, Robert Mueller III.
Six days later, attorneys for the Justice Department filed a notice of compliance, saying, “This matter has been brought to the personal attention of the Director of the FBI; counsel for the United States have been provided with unredacted copies of the FBI documents on plaintiffs’ trial exhibit list….”
And so Mueller avoided being cited for contempt for court.
During the 1980’s, in addition to the annual letters from the US attorney in Boston, local FBI agents lobbied state authorities to keep the innocent men behind bars. According to Albano and others, two local G-men would go directly to the State House to lobby members of the Governor’s Council, which considered commutations and pardons.
Another former member of the Governor’s Council recalled how the two agents liked to speak directly to the politicians, rather than leave behind a paper trail.
The two FBI agents were John Morris and John “Zip” Connolly. Morris has since admitted taking $7,000 in payoffs from gangster Whitey Bulger and his partner Stevie Flemmi, the younger brother of “the Bear,” who actually murdered Deegan in 1965.
Both Flemmi and Bulger, whose brother was the Democrat president of the Massachusetts state Senate, were longtime “top-echelon” informants of the FBI. Flemmi has testified to the Drug Enforcement Administration that he and Bulger at one time had six Boston G-men on their underworld payroll. Both Flemmi and Bulger are serving life sentences in federal prison; Bulger was convicted of 11 murders and Flemmi of five.
At Bulger’s 2013 trial, Morris admitted telling Connolly about a gangster who was about to flip and testify against Bulger in 1981. Connolly, despite being a mid-life student at Harvard at the time, got the message to Bulger, and the gangland chieftain gunned down the informant and another man in South Boston.
Connolly, the Harvard man, is currently serving a 40-year sentence in a Florida prison after being convicted of orchestrating a different gangland hit in Miami, to cover up still another organized-crime murder, at a golf course in Tulsa OK.
That Oklahoma murder was set up by a third corrupt Boston FBI agent, H. Paul Rico, who was one of the two agents who engineered the frame up of the four innocent men back in 1965. Rico died in a prison hospital in Tulsa in 2003 after being arrested in Florida and brought back to the Sooner state to stand trial on murder charges.
Asked for a statement about the 2002 letter Mueller authorized to be sent to the Advisory Board of Pardons, Mueller’s office on Friday declined comment.
In the Greco family’s 2002 plea for a posthumous pardon, their lawyer wrote:
“Louie Greco died an innocent man, despite numerous unheeded pleas of innocence. His innocence was known prior to trial, yet he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Now, the truth is being revealed and those responsible are facing a Congressional and Justice Department investigation. It is time for Massachusetts to officially acknowledge the wrong done to Mr. Greco and his family and remove this blot from his name.”
But after receiving the letter from Mueller, the Board rejected the family’s petition in July 2003.
Finally, in the waning days of his administration in December 2014, Gov. Deval Patrick issued a proclamation laying out the facts of the corrupt frame up by the FBI and Greco’s innocence.
“Any stigma and disgrace,” the governor wrote, “is hereby removed.”
Greco had been dead 19 years. He spent the last 28 years of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit – a fact Robert Mueller knew but adamantly refused to acknowledge even after Greco’s death behind bars.
“Even the dead,” Michael Albano said, “can’t rest in peace with this FBI memo.” Tags : fbihowie carrrobert mueller Thank You Mr Carr and the DC.
The Supreme Court has ruled 7-2 in favor of Colorado baker and devout
Christian Jack Phillips, who declined to bake a wedding cake for a
same-sex couple five years ago due to deeply held religious objections.
Justices Kennedy, Roberts, Alito, Breyer, Kagan, Gorsuch and Thomas
ruled in favor of Phillips, with Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissenting.
Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion.
"The Commission’s treatment of
Phillips’ case violated the State’s duty under the First Amendment not
to base laws or regulations on hostility to a religion or religious
viewpoint," the ruling states. "The government, consistent with the
Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise, cannot impose regulations
that are hostile to the religious beliefs of affected citizens and
cannot act in a manner that passes judgment upon or presupposes the
illegitimacy of religious beliefs and practices."
"The laws and
the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons
and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and
philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in
some instances protected forms of expression," the ruling continues. "To
Phillips, his claim that using his artistic skills to make an
expressive statement, a wedding endorsement in his own voice and of his
own creation, has a significant First Amendment speech component and
implicates his deep and sincere religious beliefs."
In
Masterpiece Cakeshop case, Supreme Court holds that Colorado Civil
Rights Commission violated baker's rights under the free exercise clause
Oral arguments in the case were made in December and Phillips was backed by the Department of Justice.
The
Department of Justice on Thursday filed a brief on behalf of baker Jack
Phillips, who was found to have violated the Colorado
Anti-Discrimination Act by refusing to created a cake to celebrate the
marriage of Charlie Craig and David Mullins in 2012. Phillips said he
doesn't create wedding cakes for same-sex couples because it would
violate his religious beliefs.
The government agreed with
Phillips that his cakes are a form of expression, and he cannot be
compelled to use his talents for something in which he does not believe.
"Forcing
Phillips to create expression for and participate in a ceremony that
violates his sincerely held religious beliefs invades his First
Amendment rights," Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey B. Wall wrote in the
brief.
Many legal scholars are saying the ruling
doesn't necessarily protect individuals on religious grounds from being
forced to participate in same-sex marriages overall. They argue the
Justices focused on the Commission's particular bias toward Phillips and
the unequal application of Colorado anti-discrimmination laws against
him, not strictly the issue of religious expression. Parts of Justice
Kennedy's opinion backs up this analysis.
"The commissioner even
went so far as to compare Phillips’ invocation of his sincerely
held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust.
This sentiment is inappropriate for a Commission charged with
the solemn responsibility of fair and neutral enforcement of
Colorado’s anti-discrimination law—a law that protects discrimination on
the basis of religion as well as sexual orientation," Kennedy wrote.
"The Court cannot avoid the conclusion that these statements
cast doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the Commission’s
adjudication of Phillips’ case."
"Colorado can treat a baker who
discriminates based on sexual orientation differently from a baker who
does not discriminate on that or any other prohibited ground. But only,
as the Court rightly says, if the State’s decisions are not infected by
religious hostility or bias," Kennedy continued.
Shorter Masterpiece Cakeshop:
States
can still punish wedding vendors who do not want to participate in
same-sex weddings, but they cannot be overtly hostile to religion while
they do it.
Masterpiece
Cakeshop decision leaves open the possibility that anti-discrimination
law, neutrally applied, could require bakers and others to provide
services for weddings or other events to which they have religious
objections. https://t.co/yNkQjhKPeI
