Canon Lawyer Peter Vere writes in the Washington Times on the case of the photographer who refused to do wedding photo’s for lesbian wedding.
The New Mexico Human Rights Commission ordered the photographer to pay $6,600.
Whenever the words "Human Rights Commission"
are used in any context for country you know that if you are a Christian and/or a conservative you are going to get screwed.
Somehow freedom of religion is not a human right
and the First Amendment seems to have been lost.
Add this to the recent case of the pharmacist loosing his appeal not to have to dispense Plan B and we can see the path we are headed on. Homosexual and abortion ideologues forcing their will on whoever stands in their way.
"There is a strong tendency among supporters of nondiscrimination laws and hate crime laws to use them as weapons to suppress dissent against same-sex marriage," Mr. Lorence said.
You will be assimilated or fined.
14 comments
Indeed…there is freedom of religion…as long as you don’t practice it.
Whoa, whoa, whoa…
Here’s what I’d love to hear – how is it that Muslim taxi drivers in Minnesota can refuse to cart around fares if they have bottles of alcohol they’re carrying in their luggage but yet our government is going to throttle the Christians? This is outrageous and I’m pretty steamed about it. When I see the whole “separation of church and state” being given the heave-ho in order to appease Islam but yet brandished time and time again toward Christians – it’s enough to make me carry a banner with St. George’s Cross on it.
My husband is a photographer. I am so glad I told him not to get involved with wedding photography. Why do I smell a set-up? Believe me, it’s not as though the gay culture doesn’t have enough artistic photographers of their own running around. Why did they go to this particular couple?
Part of me wants to tell all photographers to just say sorry, you’re booked on that date and keep saying it until they go away. But then that’s just a way to get out of taking the stand we know we must take.
Man, I’m mad about this. Really, really mad. Talk about the trampling of our rights. (Tell me again where our Constitution guarantees their “right” to have someone photograph their stupid wedding. Oh, yeah. It doesn’t.)
How is that discrimination against their sexual orientation? The lesbian couple received the exact same treatment as two straight women who wanted to “marry” each other would receive.
Hey. I just checked the Albuquerque Yellow Pages for wedding photographers. There were 91. And I didn’t see Elane Photography even listed in there.
So how did those two women find out about this photography business? The lawsuit was lodged in 2006. Elane Photography’s website has the copyright date of 2006 on it. It doesn’t sound as though Elaine and her husband were even in business for a year before this happened.
I’m starting to sense more and more they were deliberately targeted. Elaine could have made an offhand comment when she was assisting at someone’s wedding. Who knows? But something just doesn’t seem right.
Oh, it just got better.
The lesbian who filed the report seems to be a pro at this sort of thing. She’s “currently an EEO Compliance Representative with the Office of Equal Opportunity where she investigates claims of discrimination and sexual harassment. Not to mention a member of the Diversity Committee at University of New Mexico�” according to a commenter at another blog. Plus, they produced a PDF of the complaint.
Okay, my apologies for going all Columbo-like, but I can’t help it. This poor couple is getting sent up the river and it looks like it was a set-up from the very start.
Man, I’d love to be Elaine’s attorney. First question out of the gate: How did you find Elane Photography?
Well, here’s the problem: this really doesn’t seem to be a matter of freedom of religion. The photographers in question will have a hard time showing that extending their services to a lesbian couple violates the free exercise clause of the first amendment. As it stands right now, sexual orientation has the same legal status as race, gender, and creed in terms of discrimination protection. Businesses are generally bound by law not to discriminate based on race, gender, religion, or sexual preference.
We, as a society, have a few options here:
1. Suck it up.
2. Remove “sexual orientation” from these laws. This would require reevaluating the purpose of these laws.
3. Ditch discrimination laws altogether, and let business owners make their own rules.
None of these are really ideal. I wish the lesbian couple in question had the basic human decency not to back the photographers into a corner like that.
The difficulty here is that photography is not so much a business in the strict sense of providing goods and services, as it is an art form. Thus it requires a certain “artistic eye” and engagement from the photographer to do it right. This artistic speech cannot be compelled.
In fact, since writing the piece I’ve heard from some homosexual photographers who are like, “Why would the couple insist on a photographer who disagrees with their lifestyle? The end product would be awful.” Their other concern is that homosexual photographers can now be compelled to photograph weddings at the Westboro Baptist Church.
Jeff? Lesbian weeding?
Their civil and religious rights are being violated. In a free country one should be free to determine for whom one will work. Otherwise we are just another communist country with the government assigning each company the jobs they will do with no consideration for the individual.
Do you want to see how bad it could get? Take a look at Canada.
Mexico is predominantly Roman Catholic. How much more photographers are out there who will refuse the coverage? Must be a Goldmine?
“The photographers in question will have a hard time showing that extending their services to a lesbian couple violates the free exercise clause of the first amendment”
The photographers didn’t refuse on the basis of sexual orientation. They refused because they photograph weddings–this isn’t a wedding. If they were news photographers and they were asked to photograph something that they couldn’t conceive of as news, wouldn’t they have an obvious right to say “No, thanks.”?
Joanne made a good point. It’s not a question of refusing to serve someone in a restaurant, for example, or something similar. To photograph the “wedding” would be to take part in an event that by it’s very nature is opposed to the photographer’s religious beliefs–beliefs that until very recently were held by virtually everyone in Western society.
As a same sex attracted male I will concede that the gay movement is just as intolerant as they claim their opposers to be. As Pete said, it’d be ludicrous or at least duplicitous to ask someone to disagree with what you’re doing to take pictures in the first place since you’ll most likely end up getting a botched job.
The Westboro scenario was a good idea. Maybe a Christian group should try to get a gay photography company to do the same and sue.
If only people acted on good faith (at the very least)…
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