Posted on 02/16/2017 8:27:52 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
The Christian owner of a Richland floral shop violated state laws when she refused to make custom arrangements for a longtime customers same-sex wedding, an appellate court ruled Thursday.
The unanimous decision by the Washington state Supreme Court affirms a Benton County...
I forgot not only their first amendment rights are being violated but also their 8th amendment rights to protection from cruel or unusual punishment are also being violated by the state of Washington due to the massive, crippling fines and forfeitures like seizing her savings and IRA!
Unfortunately the court may be right. It is likely the agency that levied the fines is given broad powers by state law to interpret the statute and apply it. If so then the court pretty much has to find they acted within their authority when they applied the law to persecute businesses they believe are in violation of the law.
The court is not the main problem here. Poorly written laws and run away power hungry agencies with a progressive agenda
are.
That is one reason religious freedom protection laws are so important. It is also why it so important that state agencies not be given so much power.
I would have said “This store doesn’t provide flowers for same-sex weddings, but we will be happy to provide them for your funerals.”
Since the states have never amended the Constitution to expressly protect politically correct LGBT rights, low-information Washington State Supreme Court justices are unthinkingly violating Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, imo, by using a state protection to trump a constitutionally enumerated right, 1st Amendment-protected religious expression in this example. (Wherever Washington Supreme Court justices went to law school, I hope that somebody else paid for it.)
14th Amendment, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States [emphasis added]; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
With all due respect to mom & pop, the parents of the floral shop owner in question evidently did not make sure that their daughter learned enough about basic personal constitutional protections to be able to protect herself from unconstitutional state abridgment of her constitutional rights, by pro-LGBT activist state justices in this case.
Noting that the states gave Congress the 14th Amendment power to strengthen constitutional rights abridged by the states, regardless that several state abridgments of constitutional rights took place during the lawless Obama Administration, the RINO-controlled Congress has done nothing but sit on its hands with respect to legislatively strengthening the constitutional rights of citizens like this flower shop owner.
[[Why are gay people given more rights than other groups?]]
Because only gay people are allowed to discriminate against anyone who believes they are living in sin
What about the Muslim flower shops who won’t serve homosexuals?
They don’t call it the “Tri-Cycle Hearld” for nothing.
This needs to go to the SCOTUS once we have 9 justices in place.
Exactly...The way to beat Political Correctness is to use Political Correctness: Time to find some Conservatives willing to force muslims to violate THEIR beliefs then sue them.
This line of legal theory inverts the Constitutional relationship between citizen and government. But this also goes back several generations and will be difficult to unravel.
You will recall that black people where treated quite poorly by whites in some areas of the county. Blacks could not use a lot of bathrooms that were otherwise open to the public. They were denied services like some restaurants and lodging. Instead of finding ways to change people’s hearts and minds, it was decided to use government to force business to serve blacks. This was done in many cases by declaring that a business was a “public accommodation”.
In the process, the private property rights and right of free association of the business owner were infringed and destroyed. But the Constitution nowhere gives government this power, except that the courts have allowed it. And of course government is not done expanding this power.
In the course of time, other groups such as homosexuals have successfully lobbied government to include them in the list classes of people who qualify as a protected class. And thus we now have the case where a person who is is business can no longer politely decline to engage in a commercial transaction that violates their conscience when it comes to some moral issues.
This takes government into a relationship of power with respect to private behavior, a relationship that is nowhere found in the Constitution. Can we ever roll back the definition of a business as a “public accommodation”? I doubt it. But if we did, how many restaurants and convenience stores in the South decide to restrict service to any minority? And what kind of social backlash would rightly result should they put up a “No Colored” sign once again? The fact that it would be an outrage proves that these laws are now obsolete. That people have changed their hearts and minds about the treatment of others. Yet the law will stay and continue to be expanded. And as a result there will be some professions and some types of businesses that conservative Christians will not engage in, because they know that they are only setting themselves up to be destroyed.
#LoveWins => #BakeTheCake => #ReligionIsHate => #PinkSwastika => #LoveRedefined ==> #LoveWins
There is a huge difference between selling a black customer a slice if the same pie that a white person bought or who slept in the same bed a white guy did, etc.
But they are demanding the baker/florist etc create for them.
To me that is a huge distinction. Don’t know if its a legal one, but its different nonetheless.
Unlike yourself maybe it's because they are the kind of people who don't have an inherent inclination to lie.
Where is the Trump order on this crap? It’s the one thing I most want to see him issue. Enough is more than enough.
Homosexuals take great joy in destroying other people’s lives. They should not be able to continue doing this.
If there is such a huge demand for fake wedding flowers and cakes, why don’t they open up their own places to cater to such things? Because Christians are out there that need to be sued out of business.
All true and well said.
Where is the Trump order on this crap?
There was an order drafted that would address this. It got some PR and then supposedly was nixed by advisors.
>
They could say that, but it would be false. They did not have to enter your store. They are the ones violating your rights, not the other way around. You have no right to require people to do things they do not wish to do.
>
Though technically correct, your premise has ~100yrs+. precedent of being ‘false’ (any\all ‘welfare’ [taken by the point of a gun], O’Care, Kilo, etc.).
As we are talking about individuals demanding that other individuals cater to them, I would say the precedent is only about 50 years, form the civil rights act of 1964.
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