A Lambda Legal attorney is suing two fundamentalist doctors in California who refused to artificially inseminate lesbian Guadalupe Benitez. The doctors said to have done so would have violated their religious beliefs, and that they also would have refused to inseminate an unmarried heterosexual women.
So, Ms. Benitez couldn't go to another doctor? The idea, it seems, is now prevalent in the gay legal world that no matter of personal conscience or religious conviction should permit a private business or practitioner to discriminate against a gay client.
I believe discriminating against gays is morally wrong. I also believe that there are limits in the ability of the state to force people to go against their personal convictions, especially in matters of abortion or procreation. There are other doctors in Southern California.
The matter has parallels with attempts to force all pharmacists to dispense birth control.
By the way, I also oppose
attempts by religious conservatives to pass laws that forbid
gays or unmarried heteros from procreating through artificial
insemination, and which sought to criminalize doctors'
participation in assisted reproduction in those cases. The state
should not be involved in either forcing or forbidding doctors from
making such personal decisions.