A Washington florist who refused to participate in a same-sex wedding lost a unanimous decision yesterday at the state Supreme Court. The 9-0 ruling rejected her claim to a First Amendment right to exercise her right to religious liberty in favor of the state’s anti-discrimination law. The next step for Barronelle Stutzman will be the US Supreme Court...Really? A unanimous decision for forcing a florist to make an arrangement for a gay wedding? I'm really curious to read the legal reasoning to force this kind of compulsion, one which raises all kind of additional questions. Can a Jewish baker be compelled to bake a swastika cake? How about asking a Muslim photographer to take wedding pictures in front of a drawing of Mohammad? Too bad, I guess.
Update - Here's part of the explanation from the AP:
Stutzman argued that she was exercising her First Amendment rights. But the court held that her floral arrangements do not constitute protected free speech, and that providing flowers to a same-sex wedding would not serve as an endorsement of same-sex marriage.I guess I just don't understand why this explanation doesn't open the door for any kind of compulsion. Is freedom of commerce just an illusion or is force necessary to make sure everybody plays nice? I guess Melania Trump is going to get her Tom Ford dress after all.
"As Stutzman acknowledged at deposition, providing flowers for a wedding between Muslims would not necessarily constitute an endorsement of Islam, nor would providing flowers for an atheist couple endorse atheism," the opinion said.
10 comments:
It's simple and straightforward. Laws protecting against discrimination do not unfairly target religious beliefs, because they apply equally to all people.
Previous wedding cake discrimination rulings (in Colorado and Oregon) and a wedding photography discrimination ruling (in New Mexico) have already been adjudicated in favor of equal rights. Then they were appealed. Then the higher courts declined to reconsider them. Perhaps this was a cutting edge legal debate back when Lester Maddox was fighting for the same kind of freedom of commerce (though he lost too), but it isn't anymore.
But man the barricades, because this florist is totally "ready to take religious liberty case to Supreme Court." Or rather, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) that fundraises from the suckers is willing to pursue this case, just like the other identically hopeless cases they've lost, into the abyss and beyond. Won't you donate generously?
The CRA, no matter how well intended or how much I agree with the sentiment, is not constitutional.
A private individual, by virtue of being in business, cannot exercise their religious beliefs? And the federal government is authorized to regulate this via what? The Commerce Clause?
The day is coming where some judge will rule the Constitution to be unconstitutional.
And Eric is right: nobody would prosecute a Muslim baker or florist for the same behavior.
The rule of law is long dead.
The Supreme Court has enforced the CRA's constitutionality at least half a dozen times. So-called judges.
The florist's lawyer said, “[The defendant] stands to lose all that she owns—her retirement, her life savings, her home—simply for declining to create custom expression for one event that violated her conscience for a long-time friend and customer.”
She faces a $1,000 fine.
And Eric is right: nobody would prosecute a Muslim baker or florist for the same behavior.
When and if they misbehave, we'll see. Perhaps Muslim bakers and florists have a better appreciation of minority civil rights and being part of a larger society than some other people do?
There's a Youtube video - I think it's Steven Crowder - asking Muslim bakeries around Dearborn Michigan to prepare a wedding cake for a gay wedding. They all refused.
I worry that James O'Keefe must be seriously ill. He hasn't shown up to a mosque wearing a flamboyant SanFran gay parade get-up and demanding his porkless wedding cupcakes yet.
Alas, Wikipedia says Steven Crowder is already married, and thus lacks legal standing to sue any bakery for discriminatory practices. Should he divorce, go gay, and remarry, at that point he'd have more to offer on this dead and decided issue than a YouTube video. He'd also win his discrimination suit, which ruins his whole argument.
Whenever some Muslim baker refuses to make a cake for a gay wedding, we should all hope and expect they will be treated the same way as the previous lawbreakers. Because that isn't just an illegal act, it's an unChristian one.
And the reporter who wanted Memories Pizza to deliver calzones to a gay wedding was neither getting married nor gay. But it's fun and easy to attack conservative Christians, less so Jews and Muslims.
It's chilling to remember how the straight single reporter successfully sued Memories Pizza for discrimination. Between him and Steven Crowder abusing the legal system the way they have, I don't see how any decent neighborhood shop run by self-martyring bigots stays in business these days.
It's scary to think about these hypothetical Jews and Muslims who conceivably could one day also break the same law and then possibly not be charged by Christian-hating hypocrite prosecutors to be determined. That speculative threat is so much worse than the real living Christians who actually violated the law, the common social contract, and the Christian ethic.
Well we can only hope that Muslim lawbreakers and hoaxsters will receive the same level of condign punishment and condemnation we saw for Clock Boy.
Clock Boy? CLOCK BOY? The legal and social parallels, they're just so unbelievably strong.
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