澳彩开奖

Sessions and Pruitt may have been the highest-ranking administration officials at the annual Christian conservative confab, but they weren鈥檛 the stars of the show.

That honor went to Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker and owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in 2012. The Supreme Court decision in Phillips鈥� case against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which had ruled his action violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, was announced on Monday of last week, just days before the conference.

The Supreme Court did not rule on the underlying First Amendment question of whether Phillips, as a 鈥渃ake artist,鈥� was exercising his free speech, but only that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission failed to give Phillips鈥� beliefs 鈥渘eutral and respectful consideration,鈥� violating his right to free exercise of religion. The decision was celebrated as a conservative victory throughout the conference.

On Saturday morning, Phillips appeared onstage to a standing ovation from the crowd, telling them, 鈥渋t was shocking to me that the government would try to take away my freedoms and force me to make something that went against my faith,鈥� before introducing the head of the organization that provided his legal representation, Michael Farris of the anti-LGBT hate group Alliance Defending Freedom.

Farris asserted that 鈥淎merica was on trial鈥� in the Masterpiece case, 鈥渂ecause if Jack Phillips doesn鈥檛 have the freedom to decide which messages he wants to deliver, then America cannot call itself a free nation.鈥� But again, that鈥檚 not the issue the Supreme Court decided, as Farris later briefly acknowledged.

Interestingly, Farris repeatedly referred to the 鈥渢otalitarian impulse鈥� of the left throughout his speech, yet as reported by Hatewatch, ADF International is pushing overseas for a rewrite of the Romanian constitution to redefine families as the product of marriage between a man and a woman, effectively banning same-sex marriage.

The previous afternoon, ADF senior counsel Erik Stanley spoke at a workshop titled 鈥淲hy Religious Liberty?鈥� Stanley was attempting to explain why it鈥檚 inaccurate to call religion a 鈥渄isguise for bigotry or animus,鈥� but since the Supreme Court ruling in 2015 which legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states, 鈥渞eligious liberty鈥� has been a common call to arms for anti-LGBT groups. The narrative behind 鈥渞eligious liberty鈥� portrays Christians who object to homosexuality on biblical grounds as victims of religious persecution.

This concept of Christian persecution was pushed by main stage speaker Kelly Shackelford of the First Liberty Institute on Friday morning, who declared Christians have 鈥渘ever seen anything like the attacks鈥� on them. Shackelford鈥檚 organization, a legal firm similar to ADF, works against antidiscrimination ordinances, and he鈥檚 known to peddle alleged anti-Christian incidents .

ADF鈥檚 Farris, in summing up the Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court decision, stated that 鈥渨hen you treat people with hostility because of religion, that鈥檚 unconstitutional.鈥� But that perspective was entirely pre-empted by the speech earlier in the day by Frank Gaffney, Jr., of the anti-Muslim hate group Center for Security Policy .

Gaffney asserted that 鈥淪haria is at the core of Islam, but it is a very special part of what is described as a religion. Indeed, only about 10 percent by some estimates has anything to do with religion, the rest of it is pretty much a totalitarian political, military and legal doctrine.鈥� Occasionally Gaffney acknowledged that 鈥渁 lot of Muslims鈥� aren鈥檛 actually Sharia adherents鈥� but many millions of Muslims do embrace Sharia.鈥�

While repeatedly reminding the crowd that 鈥渢hey will use violence where they can,鈥� he focused on what he called 鈥渞efujihad,鈥� the migration of Muslims from war-torn countries to western countries, and 鈥渄emographic jihad,鈥� which he defined as 鈥渙utbreeding non-Muslims.鈥�

Included in Gaffney鈥檚 anti-Muslim fear-mongering was this gem: 鈥淭he leading edge of civilization jihad in America and worldwide is to try to silence people like me, and for that matter, anybody else who dares to raise an alarm about this.鈥� The accompanying graphic projected on immense screens showed the logos for the 澳彩开奖 and the Anti-Defamation League along with those of Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and the European Union.

Gaffney specifically called out 澳彩开奖 for objecting to the appointment of the Center for Security Policy鈥檚 vice president, Fred Fleitz, to be chief of staff to National Security Adviser John Bolton.

The anti-immigrant faction of the Republican Party was represented at the WCS by Representative Steve King of Iowa, who once compared illegal immigration to the holocaust. King鈥檚 penchant for hyperbole was on full display Saturday morning, after he declared, 鈥淚鈥檓 the one who actually has my hands on the data for DACA now.鈥� (DACA is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama administration policy that lets undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to have deportation deferred; the Trump administration has been working to undo DACA.)

King announced that 鈥渢here are 135,000 out of the 817,000 [DACA recipients] that are prime, gang-age recruitment. If they expand DACA out from [age] 16 to 18 you can add another 66,000, so you鈥檝e got 200,000 young people right in the heart of prime gang-age recruitment coming into America, dropping them into ethnic enclaves where MS13 is as powerful as they are anywhere in the world.鈥�

The final session Saturday night included a presentation by the conservative college and high school group Turning Point USA鈥檚 founder Charlie Kirk and communications director (and the YouTube vlogger behind 鈥淩ed Pill Black鈥�) Candace Owens, which was a symphony of racist dog-whistles.

Owens, for being Kanye West鈥檚 far-right drill instructor, talked about how she, an African-American, converted to conservatism during the 2016 election with this startling declaration: 鈥淚 was watching the election cycle go on and I kept hearing the word 鈥榬acism,鈥� 鈥榬acism,鈥� 鈥榬acism,鈥� 鈥榮exism,鈥� 鈥榮exism,鈥� 鈥榮exism,鈥� and it started to look a lot to me like racism was being used as a theme to guarantee black votes, and it was no longer something that was actually a threat in our society.鈥�

Owens and Kirk were full of quotable nuggets pandering to the extreme right.

鈥淚f you go to Harvard and you鈥檙e black, you鈥檙e not oppressed, you鈥檙e like the luckiest person in the world,鈥� Kirk exclaimed. 鈥淭hese black politicians have had their pockets lined to keep black people dependent,鈥� Owens asserted. 鈥淲hen there were less black politicians in office, black people were doing better in America 鈥� when there was only 1,500. Today we have over 10,000 black politicians in office and we had a black president for two terms and the black community is worse off.鈥� Kirk opined. 鈥淭his president has done more in 18 months for black America than Obama did in eight years.鈥�

The audience at the Western Conservative Summit, almost completely devoid of people of color, sounded like it wholeheartedly agreed with Kirk鈥檚 assessment of the current president, who saw 鈥溾�� after the racist and violent 鈥淯nite the Right鈥� event in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer, some time after Owens had concluded that racism is no longer a threat to our society.