Smith: Bakery's success proves we don't need a 'religious freedom' bill

The storefront on East 16th Street was barren when I walked by. The pink-lined, glass cases replaced by the sterile white of empty shelves.

I noticed that 111 Cakery had closed just hours before my colleague, Will Higgins, posted a story about it last week. The bakery was in my neighborhood, but I had long ago stopped patronizing it.

The fact that owners Trish and Randy McGath had refused to bake a cake for a gay couple's commitment ceremony last year rubbed me the wrong way.

I figured that 111 Cakery would get along fine without my money. That people who shared the owners' religious beliefs would rush to their side and buy cupcakes and cookies, and order wedding cakes.

For a while, that seemed to be true. But when I walked by the empty storefront last week, I began to wonder otherwise.

Had there been a lawsuit? Surely, the same-sex couple that was denied service had pursued legal action. Surely, some kind of settlement had been reached or a verdict rendered that cost the McGaths a ton of dough.

Or maybe I had missed a boycott. I once saw a guy picketing outside the bakery; after all, the shop was near four gay bars. And a year ago, the backlash on Facebook and Twitter was fierce.

Surely, that public shaming — and its financial consequences — led to the bakery's demise.

As it turns out, not so much.

The McGaths closed the bakery because it became too much work for Trish, who wanted to spend more time with her grandchildren. The business was still profitable, her husband, Randy, said.

In short, the couple closed 111 Cakery because they wanted to, not because they had to.

Which is why I question the need for Indiana to enact "religious freedom" legislation.

The measure would supposedly protect business owners with strong religious beliefs from having to provide services for same-sex weddings. We're talking florists and bakeries and photography studios. The Senate approved the bill last week, and it's now in the House.

"This bill acts as a shield," Sen. Scott Schneider explained, "not a sword."

But a shield from what?

If the McGaths, citing their religious beliefs, can decline to make a cake for a same-sex commitment ceremony and avoid legal repercussions, why do we need a "religious freedom" law to protect other business owners like them?

Simple. We don't.

Here's the ugly truth that no one seems willing to discuss at the Statehouse: In Indiana, it is already legal for private businesses to discriminate against customers for being gay or transgender. The reason is that neither group is a "protected class" under our civil rights and consumer protection laws, the way that race, color, age, disability and a few other categories are.

This isn't the case in every state, but it's true in Indiana. That's why you see cases like the one in Washington, where a judge found a florist violated state law by refusing to provide flower arrangements for a gay couple's wedding.

Indianapolis, like a few other cities across the state, does have its own Human Rights Ordinance that covers sexual orientation and gender identity. But that mostly applies to discrimination in housing and employment.

The bottom line is that as private business owners in Indiana, the McGaths did nothing illegal.

That said, I'm not entirely proud to live in a state where it is OK to deny services to customers who are gay and transgender. And I thought hard about whether to write this column because I wasn't sure I wanted to advertise this gap in our state law.

But I'd rather advertise the truth than to see this "religious freedom" bill pass on the foundation of a lie. The damage would be far worse.

"What's going to happen when someone comes forward to say my religion bans me from selling someone cupcakes? Are we going to have ministers testify?" asked Ken Falk, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana. "This is an invitation for people to claim religious beliefs to be able to do things that we might not particularly like."

I don't want to lay the legal framework for businesses to deny service to women who aren't wearing burkas or to Mormons because, according to some, they belong to a cult. Legal discrimination against gay Hoosiers is bad enough.

We don't need more laws to divide us.

Contact Star columnist Erika D. Smith at (317) 444-6424, erika.smith@indystar.com or on Twitter at @erika_d_smith.