Posted on 04/07/2014 12:04:02 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Gay rights trump religious rights.
That’s the rule of law in New Mexico after the U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to consider whether a wedding photographer was within her rights when she refused to film a gay couple’s commitment ceremony.
The high court’s decision not to hear the case lets stand a New Mexico Supreme Court decision that the owners of Elane Photography violated the state’s anti-discrimination laws.
As one New Mexico justice ominously noted, Jonathan and Elaine Huguenin “are compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives.”
The state’s demand that the Huguenins disobey their religious beliefs and photograph the ceremony is “the price of citizenship,” a justice wrote.
I write extensively about the Huguenins in my upcoming book, “God Less America.”
The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case sends a chilling message to Americans who oppose gay marriage, said Jordan Lorence, an Alliance Defending Freedom attorney who represents the Huguenins.
“It is disconcerting because the (state) decision was so harsh that this small company can now be forced by state anti-discrimination laws to create messages that they don’t agree with,” he told me. “This new authoritarianism – forcing people to bow the knee to a new orthodoxy or they be punished – is very chilling.”
In 2006 Elaine Huguenin received an email from Vanessa Willock asking her to photograph a “commitment ceremony” between Willock and her same-sex partner. Huguenin declined because the event would have been at odds with her deep convictions, Lorence said.
She had previously declined to photograph other events, including nude photography sessions.
The lesbian couple found a lower-priced photographer to shoot their ceremony, but they nonetheless filed a complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission. The ensuing legal battle became one of the first major cases to explore the collision of gay rights and the First Amendment rights of business owners.
“When people say things like gay rights trump religious rights, what they are saying is the government can force people to believe a certain way – and that is something that in a free society should not be tolerated,” Lorence said.
The idea that gay rights take precedence over everyone else’s rights was recently manifested in the forced resignation of Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich, who came under fire from the gay rights community after it was revealed he had donated money to California’s Prop 8 initiative.
“We are now going to see more situations where people are going to be forced to choose between what they believe about marriage – and their job or their business,” Lorence told me.
“What concerns me is there will be an effort to expand these types of hunting down people with wrong opinions. I don’t know how far this can go.”
I know exactly how far this can go.
I believe militant gay rights groups will start targeting churches that own fellowship halls. I believe they will start targeting pastors who preach against homosexuality. And I believe they will go after individuals who attend those kinds of churches.
Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) was among those shocked by the Supreme Court’s inaction. He said every American should be concerned.
“The ability to speak freely and live according to our beliefs is the prize, not the price, of citizenship,” the congressman said. “And we all have a stake in protecting it.”
It’s not out of the realm of possibility that one day Americans could be forced to answer this question: Do you know or have you ever been a member of a church that opposes gay marriage?
The religious cleansing of America has begun.
Well said. I have mentioned this previously in a number of threads. Nothing will change without bloodshed. The problem I see is when/where the new Lexington and Concord will happen to be and what will be the general reaction? Will people see it a a clarion call to arms or will they watch and say “Yup. Another nut trying to take on the system.”?
Are you in Arizona?
I'm in San Francisco and they aren't a problem for me here. The rest of the state has become so very tolerant of them that they have DEPARTED from my foggy city and have SPREAD throughout the state. Home prices in the rest of the state tempted them and now the OTHER counties of the state have seen a huge influx of tutti fruities. GOOD for me.
The Castro District in San Francisco has young white heterosexual couples with a baby carriage, with babies in them...VERY weird after all the years of fudge packers. So, the prices of apartments and homes got very low when the fudge packers left.
The yuppies wouldn't move there as it wasn't chic and fancy enough, so these younger white heterosexual couples with a baby carriage, with honest-to-God babies in them, have scooped up the apartments and homes.
Dang. GOOD for me.
Things change here every so many years and that is, for a change, a GOOD change.
This is absolutely insane, to say that a company has to provide a service that they simply don’t provide. And the fact that apparently no court could see the obvious insanity is very, very frightening.
What huge steps in illogic. Just because the majority of the justices HAPPEN to be Catholic you make the HUGE, STUPID assumption about the Catholic Church in its entirety.
It IS the oldest and largest, continually existing institution in human history...yes, even larger than the Roman Empire.
Also, you sure show yourself to know very little about the Catholic Church. Don't you know that half the altar servers are now GIRLS? I guess not. You're stuck back in the '80's.
Also, half of all the lectors are women. I know that because I was in charge of the lectors for years. That is, I was in charge of the weekend lectors for only the 7:30 A.M. Mass on Saturdays and the 8:00 A.M. Mass on Sundays. There are SEVERAL Masses on each day of the week, with the MOST on Sundays.
There are separate lectors for EACH Mass for Saturdays and Sundays. We have multiple Masses every day, weekdays included. I COULD, if I wanted, be in charge of other days and/or other Masses.
When I went to Mass in New York City, the amount of Masses was double, New York being a HUGE city.
Also, the Catholic Church is now extremely careful about who becomes a priest. The Church learned its lesson. However, if your attitude of the 80's prevails here you won't believe that either.
My parish has no homosexual priests or altar servers. I haven't seen even ONE homosexual looking parishoner in all the decades I've been attending Mass there.
"Ask any altar boy"
Your flippancy is puerile.
That is indeed good news about San Francisco. If young hetero couples (whom the faggies call “breeders”) are moving back in, then hallelujah!
Actually I’m in South Carolina. We don’t have out & proud faggies, local Muslims keep a low profile (all those `infidels’ with their GUNS), and the few liberals are but voices crying in the wilderness. But we still have James Clyburn & Lindsey Graham.
Too bad for Arizona, though.
as the spearpoint in the quest to criminalize Christianity"????
Please.
Your sweeping generalities sound foolish, dramatic and downright hysterical.
Re: "homos"--you are getting your shorts WAY TOO bunched up for .5 - 1.5% of the population. I have WAY TOO MANY other things to think about that are FAR MORE interesting than the .5 - 1.5% of our population.
we need a purge of law schools.
State court judge need to lose a few elections to purify their minds.
Merit retention is a joke.
“I would say that the 10th Amendment prevents SCOTUS from being able to overturn the decision since this was done in a state court and not a federal one.”
Respectfully....that is nonsense. Since when does the 10th Ammendment become the grounds to ignore the 1st? It doesn’t....and the Supreme Court would not be using that logic. So, that leaves us with a Court that is saying that if you are in “business”, then you don’t have 1st Ammendment Rights. That is scary in the extreme...and it makes me realize the SCOTUS is going to rule against Hobby Lobby.
Now that being said....I do agree with you that the people of the State need to deal with the problem. It is a “bad” law and needs the people to overturn it by changing their state constitution. However, if they did, would the SCOTUS then rule the new state constitution as “unconstituional?” What is it going to take to stop the judicial tyranny we are witnessing?
http://www.governor.state.nm.us/Contact_the_Governor.aspx
RE: demand she exonerate Elaine Huguenin and work on a law or executive order restoring religious freedom in the state of New Mexico:
Arizona did that. The result:
1) Businesses ( including the NFL ) threatened to boycott the state.
2) Jan Brewer caved to pressure and DID NOT sign the bill.
The Bill of Rights is supposed to make sure that nothing else trumps religious freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of the people peaceably to assemble, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, or other fundamental God-given rights. Apparently, the far left no longer cares, and they are willing to bet future freedom in return for a shortsighted and temporary political win today. I find that general choice far sadder than the damage from any particular leftist position.
Remember the term "Bloody Mary?" Like old England, we are expected to change our 'religion' every time the monarch changes.
Apparently.
I don't know any "faggies" and I was born and bred here and have lived here most of my life. My sister and her husband lived in the Castro for five years and we three saw the changing of the guard, so to speak. It WAS yucky way back in those days, the late 1960's and early 1970's, but it has changed so much that it is unrecognizable.
Stooping to name calling makes you sound hysterical and hateful. The GUY who does my nails is homosexual. I've been going to him for 20+ years. He does everything by hand and is an artist.
Wherever I travel my nails look better than ANYONE else's on the planet...and that includes New York City. By the way, New York City's nail places are now also predominantly Chinese women, foreigners, all NON-native American, whatever.
==========================
Side note: The female nail people here in the City by the Bay, all Chinese, are really fast. Unfortunately they are also lousy at their job. Their nail jobs last 2-3 three days, if you're lucky, with built-in failure. I went to them for three weeks and had enough of their incompetence. They have run out all the white women who used to have all the nail shops. Their cheap prices didn't help them for long. They did themselves in because they are SO bad that their shops have dwindled down to 1/10th of what they had when they TOOK OVER from the white women. Now, the white women get their nails done at clubs. No Chinese women there...that would cost them money. Chinese women get their nails done by their incompetent sister Chinese. Hah, they prefer race over quality...and it looks it.
By the way, the Chinese-Americans, called ABC's (American born Chinese) aren't like the Chinese, they are 100% American, with butts, chests and boobs.
==========================
Actually I’m in South Carolina. We don’t have out & proud faggies, local Muslims keep a low profile (all those `infidels’ with their GUNS), and the few liberals are but voices crying in the wilderness. But we still have James Clyburn & Lindsey Graham.
Too bad for Arizona, though.
My husband and I lived in Saudi Arabia for five years. He was a mechanical engineer who worked in the natural gas industry for ARAMCO. SO, I know all about Muslims. I wouldn't live there again for all the petroleum in the middle east, but I did have a Saudi boss who was one of the kindest men I had ever met. I worked with 30 Saudis, all blue collar types...and they were really Joe-Schmoe types. Some I liked, a couple I didn't care for, but they were just working stiffs like we were.
Again you are WAY behind the times, in oh so many way, though only 35 years behind.
"Proud faggies"?? Please you sound like a seven year old. OR are you sounding like a South Carolinian? If the latter is true, then I do apologize as I wouldn't dream of offending anyone from another of our fair states.
1984
crimethink
simple as that.
we not longer live by guilty mind guilty act
guilty mind alone is sufficient to execute.
sad, pathetic statement
Wow! Stream of consciousness, meet TMI.
;^)
Maybe this isn’t as bad as it seems, since the reason the Supreme Court declined to take this case might be because it is so similar to the Hobby Lobby case that it’s now considering.
The Hobby Lobby verdict will determine if religious freedom truly exists in this country or not.
If Hobby Lobby loses, we might as well be back in 17th-century England when the Puritans realized that they would be unable to practice their religion unless they left home for a far-off wilderness.
The Constitution’s Freedom of Religion clause was specifically adopted to prevent such religious intolerance in America. Yet here is our government forcing photographers and bakers to help celebrate homosexuality, which is against their religions, by contributing their talents to homosexual weddings.
The fact that six of the Supreme Court Justices are Catholic and three are Jewish is relevant, because both religions have been persecuted in other lands and would have been persecuted in America also without America’s specific constitutional protection against religious intolerance.
The consequences of this Court’s rejecting Hobby Lobby’s religious rights and therefore religious freedom in America are hard to fathom.
First they came for America’s religious employers, and I did not speak out — because I was not a religious employer. Then they came for religious orders like the Little Sisters of the Poor, and I did not speak out — because I was not part of a religious order. Then, when the economy collapsed, they came, as always, for the Jews — and nobody cared because without Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Stephen Breyer our religious freedoms would not have been destroyed and the pogroms against their fellow Jews would not have started.
YOU WILL BE MADE TO CARE.
But, Mississippi just passed similar legislation into the law.
If Susana Martinez wants any consideration as the Republican VP in 2016, she'd be get off her ass and take some action to protect religious liberty in her state.
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