Jimmy Kimmel forgets facts while mocking Christian baker who won't create cake for same-sex wedding

Late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel — who recently said talk show hosts are liberal because the job "requires a level of intelligence" — put together a sketch blasting a Christian baker who refused to create a cake for a same-sex wedding.

And left out more than a few facts.

Kimmel during Friday's show said it "isn't right" that Tastries Bakery in Southern California wouldn't create a wedding cake for a lesbian couple — and questioned the judge's ruling in favor of bakery owner Cathy Miller.

"He said the bakery would have violated the law if it refused to sell the couple a cake that was already baked," Kimmel remarked to his audience, "but the baker can't be forced to bake a cake specifically for a same-sex wedding ... it sounded reasonable at first, but here's the problem."

What happened in Kimmel's sketch?

Kimmel then cut to a sketch in which he played a waiter who asked if any customers sitting around a table are gay — and then denied a salad to a woman who said she's gay.

"Our salad chef today is Tony, and he believes homosexuality is a sin, so we won't be creating any of our salads for you," Kimmel tells the woman in the sketch. "However, I could bring you a salad he made yesterday before he knew you were gay."

When a male customer who says he isn't gay offers to order a salad for a woman, Kimmel says the man can't do that because the restaurant's owner is a Wiccan priestess who won't allow men to order for women because it "perpetrates [sic] the patriarchy."

Kimmel's waiter also asks a customer if he's Jewish, and after the customer says he is, Kimmel denies lasagna to him. When another customer tries to order steak, Kimmel becomes indignant before explaining that the chef is a Hindu and "cows sacred to him." Then Kimmel's waiter kicks out the customers.

This writer's perspective

In questioning the judge's ruling in favor of Tastries, Kimmel completely ignored the judge's explanation: “A wedding cake is not just a wedding cake in Free Speech analysis. It is an artistic expression by the person making it that is to be used traditionally as centerpiece in the celebration of marriage. There could not be greater form of expressive conduct.”

Neither did Kimmel recall that the judge noted Miller's subsequent recommendation of a competitor to the gay couple so they could have their cake created.

In his sketch, Kimmel's waiter told the gay customer she could have a salad made the previous day "before [salad chef Tony] knew you were gay." In his attempt to mock the judge's point here, Kimmel — for all his stunning intellect by virtue of his shimmering liberalism — delivers a decidedly half-baked point.

Does the host not understand that Tastries wasn't likely ever to have created — and then displayed in its store — a cake specifically for a gay wedding?

Finally, in his sketch, Kimmel attempts to draw parallels between Tastries' stance and his waiter character denying lasagna to a Jewish customer and steak to another customer because the chef is a Hindu who believes "cows are sacred."

Kimmel not only fails to provide any context for the lasagna refusal to the Jewish customer, another question must be asked: What Hindu chef who believes cows are sacred would ever prepare a steak?

More to the point, if the latter ever happened in real life — including actions by a Wiccan priestess restaurant owner — would Kimmel actually care?

If so, that would be a Kimmel monologue worth staying up for.

(H/T: Newsbusters)