Let them eat swastika cake? Image by iStock

New Year’s resolutions: get outdoors more often, read more books, and stop hanging out with people who only bring up the Holocaust as a way to illustrate unrelated arguments and never to talk about the systematic murder of six million Jews.

This week the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune published an editorial, “Wedding Cakes And Conscience,” contending that a baker in Colorado being forced to design a wedding cake for a gay couple would constitute a violation of his freedom of expression. To illustrate the point, the Tribune encouraged readers to understand Colorado baker Jack Phillips’ predicament, saying, “imagine a Jewish baker being required to put a swastika on a cake.”

Should a religious baker have to create a cake for a same-sex wedding? Imagine a Jewish baker being required to put a swastika on a cake. https://t.co/v9nnD7Vyye pic.twitter.com/fXuJbcmFXW

Antisemitism Notebook

Your weekly guide through the news and the noise of how rising antisemitism and disputes over how to address it are shaping American Jewish life.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

— Tribune Edit Board (@Trib_ed_board) December 7, 2017

The newspaper rounded off the article about why the gay couple should stop “forcing a baker to swallow his objections” by pointing out that the cake situation is not the same as Black Americans being turned away from businesses during the Jim Crow area, since the issue there was just that a lot of the time Black people needed to use the bathroom, which is a “basic bodily function.” You know, that thing that happens after you eat a cake with a swastika on it.

Freedom of expression really is an amazing thing. In only one article, a newspaper managed to take anti-Semitism out of context to make a point about how gay people should be grateful and stop complaining, while saying that the Black civil rights movement was mostly propelled by the need to use the bathroom.

Is there a journalism award for insulting three minority groups at once? If so, nominate the Tribune.

Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount