Sometimes, the best journalism relies on a really simple recipe. That’s the case with a recent Associated Press news-feature headlined “How a wedding cake became a cause.”

Here at GetReligion, we have critiqued numerous mainstream media reports — here, here, here, here and here, for example — on the battle over religious freedom for bakers and others opposed to same-sex marriage.

But few, if any, of those stories on what happens when religious liberty clashes with gay rights have matched the quality of this AP story out of Colorado: