Jimmy Kimmel broke down last week’s headline-making ruling allowing a California bakery to refuse to make cakes for same-sex weddings as only Jimmy Kimmel can.
On Friday’s installment of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” he played waiter to a group of four customers in a cheeky “Food For Thought” skit. As the patrons attempt to place their orders, however, the host cited personal characteristics as a reason they wouldn’t be allowed to consume their dish of choice.
One customer is denied one of the restaurant’s “signature salads” because she’s a lesbian. Similarly, a Jewish customer isn’t allowed to order the lasagna, while the steak is off the menu, too, because the chef is Hindu.
Kimmel’s skit was a nod to a controversial case involving Tastries Bakery of Bakersfield, California. Kern County Superior Court Judge David Lampe issued a ruling in the case last Monday in favor of bakery owner Cathy Miller.
Mireya and Eileen Rodriguez-Del Rio spoke out against the bakery in August 2017, claiming that Miller had turned them away when she found out they were seeking a wedding cake. Miller confirmed the couple’s claims and pointed to her Christian faith, which “will not allow me to participate in things that I feel are wrong.”
California’s Department of Fair Housing had been seeking an injunction that would either require Miller to prepare wedding cakes for same-sex couples or force her to stop selling them entirely. It’s this request that Lampe denied, and his decision hinged on the fact that the cake had not yet been baked. It would have been a discriminatory act, he said in his ruling, if Miller had refused to sell a finished cake to the couple.
An attorney for the Rodriguez-Del Rios told 23 ABC News her clients were “disappointed” by the ruling against the preliminary injunction, but stressed, “Our fight against bigotry and discrimination is only beginning.”
LGBTQ rights advocates will be watching closely the outcome of a similar, higher profile case argued before the Supreme Court late last year. Justices are expected to rule soon on the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, deciding whether Colorado baker Jack Phillips was illegally discriminating against a same-sex couple when he refused to create a cake for their wedding ceremony.