The gay couple at the center of a lawsuit against a conservative Christian baker who refused to sell them a wedding cake slammed the U.S. Supreme Court for putting a dent in LGBTQ rights on Friday .

In an opinion piece for USA Today , Charlie Craig and David Mullins reflected on the new decision five years after the couple narrowly lost their case before the Supreme Court, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

The courts 2018 ruling against Craig and Mullins had left broader questions about discrimination and the First Amendment unresolved.

Its new ruling, in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, provided clarity at the expense of gay rights as the conservative court made it easier for businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people.

The courts decision allows a business owners rights to trump the civil rights of less-favored minorities. The opinion promotes supremacy at the expense of equality, the couple wrote.

Like the Masterpiece case, the 303 Creative lawsuit also grew out of a religious business owners refusal to serve a gay couple.

But no one had actually been hurt in the 303 Creative case. The gay couple was imaginary. The owner of the website company, Lorie Smith, was merely worried about the possibility she would be asked to create a wedding website for such a client if she started offering to design wedding websites.

Craig and Mullins said that was by design. The right-wing group representing the Masterpiece baker, the Alliance Defending Freedom, was the same group involved in defending the web designer.

The couple said the ADF manufactured the 303 Creative case as something of a legal do-over without the emotional, human component that they brought to the case.

The ADF learned its lesson that when LGBTQ+ people have a chance to share their humanity with the courts and the country, it becomes harder for them to paint a distorted, inaccurate and frightening picture of a predatory community trampling the rights of religious individuals, Craig and Mullins wrote.