The Cake Artists brief says our right to freedom of expression is a strong as the right of artists who work in media other than cake.

I'm noticing the BRIEF FOR CAKE ARTISTS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF NEITHER PARTY (PDF) in the pending Supreme Court case — Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Phillips — about whether there's a religious freedom exemption to the requirement not to discriminate against gay people.

I love this brief. It says what I believe I've been saying in numerous posts. It's not a question of whether people with a religious objection to same-sex marriage can refuse to sell all manner of goods and services to gay customers. Nor is about about whether the cakeshop is forced to "bake a cake" for the wedding. It's about whether it must decorate the cake — apply icing and other materials to the surface of the cake to shape images and write words that say something substantive about the wedding. 

From the brief:

Amici take no position as to which party should prevail in this specific case. Their interest lies in making a single point—that their work, like that of petitioner Jack Phillips, requires artistic exertion within an expressive endeavor to generate works of art. Many of the amici listed below would gladly have prepared the cake that respondents requested—but they would have done so by accepting a commission to create a work of edible art. Amici wish to illustrate—literally, through the images of their own work in this brief—that cake design and preparation is an art....

Cakes for every conceivable occasion, ranging from the grandeur of weddings to abject apologies, can convey articulable messages. Sometimes words are used to assist in conveying those messages. But the art of custom cake design and creation is not so limited. Other times, the art behind a cake is simply sheer beauty or the technical mastery that it required. Cake artists must be adept at a multitude of artistic endeavors beyond simply “baking.” They must have visual-arts skills to design a cake that is pleasing to the eye—painting, drawing, and sculpting. They need the skills of an interior designer to create a unified whole from a series of individually artistic elements. They require the grace and technical powers of an architect, so that the final product moves from the theoretical to the real....

[C]ustom wedding cakes—even of the traditional variety—typically involve subtle elements that reflect the personality of the new couple (and perhaps the artist).... Cakes can still be instantly identifiable as part of the wedding genre yet involve stunning and unique elements that appear only as part of a special design.

The argument continues in this vein, with many more photographs of cakes, so please go to the link and see.

At one point, the argument turns to "America’s multi-cultural traditions" and shows an example of a very distinctive cake celebrating a wedding and the couple's Indian cultural heritage:

Even as a wedding cake carries a message about the wedding, the photograph of the cake conveys a legal argument: Art can come in cake form and the expression contained in cake can be complex and even — bonk you over the head, liberal Justices — multi-cultural.

This has me thinking that gayness is also a culture within "America’s multi-cultural traditions." A cake for a same-sex wedding might be a generic cake, but the Cake Artists wouldn't give this couple just another cake. They'd get specific. Yes, I'm seeing the brief goes in this direction at page 16. Some of the Cake Artists on the brief make cakes for same-sex weddings, and they make them a specific expression of gay pride. I'd been thinking of the expression in terms of the icing and other stuff on the outside of the cake, but the brief describes a cake with coloring in the batter, so that the cake-cutting at the reception would be a performance: revealing a rainbow.

That idea of performance is used, later in the brief, to counter the argument that cakes are transitory food:

But the fact that any given cake is a vanishing work does not distinguish it from artistic performances on the stage (or, indeed, protests on the street). Nature’s beauty is no less revealed through the flower that blooms for a single day than through the tree that lives for a thousand years; likewise, an ice sculpture is not inherently less artistic than one carved from stone....

That's getting poetic. Are legal briefs art?

The conclusion is not about who ought to win the case, but only "that cake artists are indeed practitioners of an expressive art and that they are entitled to the same respect under the First Amendment as artists using any other medium."