Baker who won Supreme Court case maintains he said no to cake, not couple

For the past six years, Jack Phillips says that he’s missed welcoming couples into his shop, hearing their proposal stories and being part of their wedding days -- at least, some of them.

After the Supreme Court ruled in his favor Monday, Phillips, who made headlines for refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple in 2012, can once again bake wedding cakes.

"One of the main reasons I got in the business is because I love making wedding cakes," Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, told ABC News.

In 2012, David Mullins and Charlie Craig filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission after Phillips told them he would not make their wedding cake because it was counter to his religious beliefs. The couple argued he had violated Colorado law, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The case started at Phillips's shop in Lakewood and then gained national attention as it moved through the nation's courts, ending with a ruling by Supreme Court on Monday.

Mullins told ABC’s Colorado affiliate KMGH his first emotions were "shock" and "disappointment" after the ruling.

Phillips said that the last nearly six years have been difficult emotionally as well as financially, as wedding cakes represented 40 percent of his business.

"We've had death threats, we've had hundreds of phone calls and emails that were vile and vulgar and vicious," Phillips said.

One time, he said he was at the store with his daughter, who also works at the bakery, and his granddaughter when someone called in a death threat and said they were coming to the shop.

"I had to have them go hide in the back. It was a crazy situation," Phillips said.

"It’s just been an emotional drain on the family all the way 'round," he added.

Phillips maintains that he said no to the baking of the cake itself rather than to the couple.

"We serve everybody who comes in the shop. We just can’t create every cake they ask us to," he said, adding that he would refuse to make Halloween cakes or ones with "anti-American" themes.

"It’s always the message that I decline to create rather than the person," he added.

Mullins said he hoped the case raised awareness.

"The struggle is real and you know civil rights aren’t gained overnight, and we hope we raised awareness not just in Colorado but across the country about how this form of discrimination affects LGBT people across the country every day," Mullins told KMGH.

The ACLU also released a statement Monday in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, saying that the ruling "upholds basic principles of non-discrimination."

"The Supreme Court today reaffirmed the core principle that businesses open to the public must be open to all in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The court did not accept arguments that would have turned back the clock on equality by making our basic civil rights protections unenforceable, but reversed this case based on concerns specific to the facts here," the statement read.