| the service. How could an analogous accommodation have worked in Masterpiece Cakeshop? A court could have imposed a duty on Phillips to provide a custom cake—or its equivalent—to Craig and Mullins. He could have fulfilled this duty by hiring a sous chef who was willing to service same-sex weddings. Alternatively, like my Istanbul café, he could have contracted with another cakeshop to prepare a cake whenever a same-sex couple made a request. Craig and Mullins would have gotten their cake, and Phillips wouldn’t have needed to bake it. This solution wouldn’t be perfect. A baker whose conscience doesn’t allow him to facilitate a same-sex wedding would still experience some coercion. And subcontracting a cake, even behind the scenes, would mean that same-sex couples would be receiving a different product from what other customers receive. The dignitary harm this substitution might confer may be more tolerable in relation to a cake than, say, a photographer. The degree of harm, like other facts, should matter to a court. A second possible resolution of some of the conflicts that have sprung up between religious freedom and LGBTQ rights would be to hive off wedding ceremonies from other activities. Weddings are inherently expressive in a way that eating in a restaurant, staying in a hotel, or getting one’s car fixed just isn’t. A food order, a hotel reservation, or auto body work is typically functional and doesn’t call for substantial creativity or art from the service provider. Weddings are different, which is |
his tail off to get it. Holmes, the Boston Brahmin, became an early target. Frankfurter lived in a Dupont Circle boardinghouse with a dozen or so other young bachelors then working in the Taft administration. The roommates hosted dinners, cocktail parties, and salons, mixing drinks with verve and chatting up the D.C. intelligentsia, among whom Holmes was the ne plus ultra. Holmes was “the gay soldier who can talk of Falstaff and eternity in one breath, and tease the universe with a quip,” recalled journalist Walter Lippmann, a boarder with Frankfurter at what came to be known as the House of Truth. “A sage with the bearing of a cavalier… he wears wisdom like a gorgeous plume, and likes to tickle the sanctities between the ribs.” Frankfurter excelled in this environment. Standing just five feet, five inches tall but gifted with a quick wit and preternatural self-confidence, he could charm and dominate in equal measure. He would grab firm hold of his listener’s arm, squeezing tightly as he spoke to—or at—him. Kiss up and kick down, as they say. Eventually, Frankfurter became a frequent caller at Holmes’s Northwest D.C. home, and the two grew close. Frankfurter wrote a great many letters to Holmes over the years, always fawning, almost nauseatingly obsequious. Holmes was, for Frankfurter, “the King” before whom all others were “creeping worms,” as he wrote to Holmes in one missive. Though never waning in adulation, Frankfurter’s letters to Holmes grew more intimate in tone |
