Colorado baker and cake shop owner, Jack Phillips, revealed to have encountered some disturbing experiences, including receiving death threats, simply for declining to create a cake because it was against his personal beliefs.
In an interview on "Edifi with Billy Hallowell," Phillips spoke about the book he recently released, "The Cost of my Faith." He also recounted the harassment he had gone through following his refusal to create a wedding cake for a same-gender couple in July 2012.
Phillips never thought that his conversation with the gay couple would bring him nine years of fighting for his belief. He said that when he and his wife started the shop, they already decided to never create certain cakes such as for Halloween, expressing racism or anti-American sentiment, and those that denigrate other people including members of the LGBT.
The baker said that if he could go back to that day, he would still say the same statement but wished that he had more time to explain to the couple that they are welcome to the shop to buy other goodies.
He said that 20 minutes after the couple left, the phone of his shop started ringing. Callers were asking him about his rejection to bake a cake for the gay couple. Hateful emails also started pouring in.
The following week, he communicated with the Alliance Defending Freedom and the organization responded that they could help. By October of that year, he received a notice that he was being sued by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (CCRC).
The commission wanted him to change his policies, requiring Phillips to design cakes for same-gender weddings. He was also forbidden to exercise his religious freedom in his own shop.
Further, the CCRC demanded the cake shop owner to report his progress quarterly for two years.
Because of this, he decided to not make wedding cakes at all which is about 300 units annually, losing a big part of his business. The move affected him financially and the shop had to lay off seven of its 10 employees.
Phillips also disclosed that after the incident, his store encountered other disturbing experiences. The phone calls that they received in his shop became horrifying, wherein callers would throw words of profanity. His shop was also vandalized and he even received death threats.
He said that there was a guy who called him up one day, telling Phillips that he was on his way to the shop with a gun and would "blow [his] head off." Fearing for the lives of his family members, the baker had to call the police.
In addition, the incident has also caused him so much stress. The night after his encounter with the gay couple, after a day of receiving disturbing phone calls, he stopped at a grocery store on his way home and he felt paranoid and uncomfortable, thinking that the people hate him. But he was reminded by the Bible's statement in 2 Timothy 1:7.
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind," the verse says.
The passage strengthened him, confident that God is in control and that his paranoia was just a lie, no one in the store knows about what happened in his shop.
Phillips said that his position on creating cakes in accordance with his belief "is a line that [he] couldn't cross" because he wants to honor Christ in everything that he does.
Moreover, he clarified the media's misconceptions about him, portraying him as a "hater" and that he does not serve gays. Phillips said that those descriptions are not true.
As an advice to business owners who are also holding the same belief and position like him but are not sure of what to do when faced with the same predicament as he had, Phillips said that they have to stand by the lines they have "drawn." But he added that those positions should be worth standing by, which in his opinion, should be places where Christ is standing behind them.
He also mentioned about his current legal fight with a gay lawyer who sued him for declining to make a cake for her gender transition.
For the Colorado cake shop owner, designing a cake is a medium of communicating an important message. As its designer, he gets to be a part of it. Being a man who wanted to honor God in his life, he wanted his creations to reflect his Christian belief.
Phillips's book, "The Cost of My Faith: How a Decision in My Cake Shop Took Me to the Supreme Court," is currently available on Amazon.
