Later this year, the U.S. Supreme Court will render a decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. At issue is whether Jack Phillips, a Denver-area baker, could lawfully refuse to create a cake for a same-sex wedding celebration. This case puts to test two critically important concepts.

The first is the Supreme Court’s understanding of liberty. Writing for the Court in the 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Anthony Kennedy famously remarked that "[a]t the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." Masterpiece Cakeshop will reveal how seriously Justice Kennedy and the Court takes this dictum. For at the heart of Masterpiece Cakeshop is the liberty to define one’s own concept of love. To Phillips, and other similarly situated bakers, photographers, and florists, love is not about giving or telling someone what they want. Rather, love is about doing what is objectively right and good, for others as well as one’s self.