A gay and lesbian wedding expo in Salt Lake City is an example of how businesses are making it known they’re open to doing same-sex weddings, reports the Washington Times:
With a string quartet playing on one side of the exhibit hall and pop music on the other side, gay and lesbian couples chatted with businesses showing off fancy wedding cakes, fun photo booths and elaborate floral arrangements. Karl Jennings and Chris Marrano were looking for a cake baker and photographer for their June wedding. … “We know that whoever is here isn’t going to turn us away because we’re gay,” Jennings said. “It’s very relaxing and makes you want to give people business here. I want support people who want to support us.”
Which is good for same-sex couples, and good for business:
For wedding-related businesses, gay marriages represent a growth market. Gaining a toehold requires spreading the word you’re open to LGBT weddings – and not just doing it for the money, said Annie Munk, who along with her wife Nicole Broberg rents photo booths for weddings.
“Couples need to feel comfortable with the person they’re working with and know that’s not going to be any judgment, or awkwardness or whispering behind the counter,” said Munk, owner of Utah Party Pix.
And that’s how voluntary transactions are supposed to work in a free society. The role of government is not to force small business providers to engage in expressive services that violate their religious faith; it’s to ensure equality under the law, as the U.S. Supreme Court just did when it voted unanimously on Monday to reverse an Alabama court ruling that refused to recognize a lesbian’s adoption that was granted in another state.
22 Comments for “Free to Choose”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The role of government is not to force small business providers to engage in expressive services that violate their religious faith; it’s to ensure equality under the law …
If the role of government is to “ensure equality under the law”, how do you justify your continuing support for proposed laws that single out gays and lesbians for government-sanctioned special discrimination?
posted by Mike in Houston on
Stephen is convinced that the best possible outcome for GLBT people is for us to remain ghettoized so that his BFF straight Christian people’s fee-fees aren’t traumatized by having to deal with us as equal citizens.
If you never considered yourself a person of equal worth and value as a citizen of the United States — which I’m convinced that Stephen and his ilk do not — then it really IS inconceivable that you might assert your rights as an equal.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
A large number of LGBT people can not relocate to a urbane, upscale gay ghetto.
By choice or due to career/economic realities, it is simply absurd to pin LGBT rights on the idea that gays will just live in Castro.
I took a road trip to California last year, and had the chance to visit Castro.
It was a nice place to visit, but very much an “up market” neighborhood.
posted by Lori Heine on
So these laws are worded in a way that specifically single out gays and lesbians?
We know the intention of those proposing them. That in no way guarantees them the ability to keep religious freedom legislation carefully corralled within those parameters. Especially not once others become involved in the debate.
I keep hearing about what anti-gay social conservatives intend. Got it. Not that hard to figure out. How they are going to seize super-human power and keep religious freedom only for themselves, and keep it away from everybody else, has never been answer–here, or anywhere else.
posted by Houndentenor on
The way the new laws are worded is going to create problems. Easily predictable problems. Meanwhile we have things like this being ruled on…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/03/07/jury-agrees-if-you-werent-a-polygamist-in-two-towns-you-couldnt-get-basic-services-like-police-or-water/
We need to think carefully about these “sincerely held religious belief” exemptions.
posted by JohnInCA on
“So these laws are worded in a way that specifically single out gays and lesbians?”
In most cases, yeah.
One of the recent attempts, Georgia HB 757, calls out “the belief that marriage should only be between a man and a woman or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a union”, language that I’ve seen popping up in a lot of the bills this year. Not restricted to “marriage services” either, so a Denny’s could kick me and my husband out ’cause the franchise operator is a dick.
South Dakota’s HB 1107 contains language that is largely the same.
So yeah. The recent crop of “religious liberty” bills? Really are that narrow.
posted by JohnInCA on
It just me, or did a whole bunch of comments get dumped from this post?
In any case, a quick list of recent/current “religious liberty” attempts.
Georgia HB 757
Missouri SJR 39
South Dakota HB 1107
All three are very narrowly focused on religious objections to same-sex weddings and (with the exception of Missouri) fornicators. The South Dakota one *might* let an atheist object to a same-sex wedding, but the other two are strictly religious objections.
posted by JohnInCA on
Of course, after I post this comment everything reappears and the comment is put in the wrong thread. Gotta love computers, eh?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I keep hearing about what anti-gay social conservatives intend. Got it. Not that hard to figure out. How they are going to seize super-human power and keep religious freedom only for themselves, and keep it away from everybody else, has never been answer–here, or anywhere else.
If the laws proposed have a single application (to exempt business owners who oppose same-sex marriage, and only those business owners, an exemption from public accommodations laws, and if the laws proposed eliminate the Sherbert/Yoder “substantial burden” requirement in only in cases of opposition to same-sex marriage, I’m at a loss about how the laws, to carefully targeted and so narrowly drawn, are going to be transformed into a broad religious exemption.
The courts might well toss the laws out a unconstitutional under Romer reasoning, simply because the laws are so targeted and so narrowly drawn as to be walking, talking examples of animus, but the courts are not going to broaden the laws or their application.
posted by Lori Heine on
If they have a single application, then ultimately they will not survive court challenge. Even a conservative judge (if not a total lunatic) will throw them out.
Those who abuse the concept of religious freedom must be challenged on their narrow interpretation of an important and necessary concept. The answer is more freedom–not less.
A crackdown against freedom–even that which is dishonestly-defined and ill-used–merely shuts the debate down.
It would be helpful if once–just once–the left didn’t react in mindless and unhelpful ways. An intelligent response, at least occasionally, would be constructive.
posted by tom jefferson 3rd on
“Free To Choose” is a catchy slogan that an economist (Republican libertarian) popularized . Quite a fe
posted by Houndentenor on
If I owned a bakery and decided I would not make wedding cakes for weddings held in anti-gay churches, that would be illegal and those couples would scream discrimination. But they can refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple and they want that to be okay. Either discrimination is okay or it’s not. Conservatives need to decide if they want to attack all nondiscrimination laws or if they are going to champion special rights only for social conservatives to discriminate against lbgt people.
posted by Lori Heine on
Actually, that is the way these laws’ boundaries are tested and the details of them hashed out. It happens messily, and in a contentious environment.
A bakery certainly should be able to deny services to an anti-gay church. As a freelance writer, I refuse to work for or even with bigots. That situation just came up, as my publisher recommended an illustrator for my children’s book who was a fundamentalist. I didn’t even want to take the chance, when I went to her website to check out her work and saw “Jesus this” and “Bible that.”
It’s my right. If she wanted to sue me, then she could bring it on, and I would fight it.
We want things neat. Many times, they simply aren’t.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
So, if the small business happens to be providing say, medical services . ..
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
1. It would b
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
If the “libertarian” advocates were serious about crafting small business exemptions as part of a LGBT civil rights bill…It would be much, much more credible
posted by Tom Scharbach on
“Free To Choose” is a catchy slogan …
If (as most of the proposed laws posit) “Free to Choose” is limited to “freedom to choose” not to serve gays and lesbians (but no one else) that is so limited a form of freedom as to be laughable.
But, hell, unless and until Stephen gets big enough hands to come right out and say that public accommodations laws should be repealed, that’s the “freedom” we are stuck with on IGF.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
So these laws are worded in a way that specifically single out gays and lesbians?
Most, not all.
Most of the proposed “religious freedom” laws follow the formula of the proposed First Amendment Defense Act, the operative language of which reads:
The FADA-clone language sanctions special discrimination against gays and lesbians, and eliminates any “burden” requirement from the Sherbert/Yorder test, which allows discrimination for the sake of discrimination.
A few of the proposed laws follow the formula of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the operative language of which reads:
The RFRA-clone language restores the Sherbert/Yoder test to state law, as it existed before conservatives on the Court eliminated the “compelling interest” test with respect to laws of general application (Employment Division v. Smith (1990)) and declared that Congress had no power to impose RFRA on the states (Boerne v. Flores (1997)).
I support RFRA-clone laws because it seems to me that returning the law to the Sherbert/Yoder test increases religious freedom protection. I oppose FADA-clone laws because the laws violate the “equal means equal” test (religion-neutral, issue-neutral, class-neutral).
A caution: Several hundred proposed bills of one sort and another are floating around state legislatures at this point. A number of faux-RFRA bills are in the pipeline, laws that restore the “compelling interest” requirement but eliminate the “substantial burden” requirement. You have to keep your eyes on the details of each proposed law.
posted by JohnInCA on
“You have to keep your eyes on the details of each proposed law.”
Which would be much easier if news articles gave the actual bill number. It’s about 50-50 on whether or not any given article calls out the bill by number. Calling out the bill by name is near-worthless as a way to identify it.
posted by JohnInCA on
I’ll believe that there’s any significant public interest in actual “Freedom to choose” when “religion” is taken out of non-discrimination laws.
Until then, non-discrimination carve-outs that only go one way are a farce and nothing more.
posted by ShadowChaser on
Obviously, Stephen has never lived in a small town
When my father died, there was only one florist in the area that provided flowers for the funeral; the area’s other florist was ill in the hospital at the time, so only one florist was available to provide funeral flowers (unless one wanted to order flowers from 45 miles away).
In small towns, there may be only one florist or one jeweler or one caterer. If that business person has religious objections to gay wedding, well, the brides or bridegrooms are just s**t out of luck
posted by Mike in Houston on
So… Stephen assumes that “religious freedom” is hunky-dory because it only applies to certain Christian sects that “object” to “participating” in same-sex marriages by providing “expressive” services that they normally would provide for the rest of the public… and we should just get over it.
Got it. I’ve asked before, where the limits are to this carve out? Witness the latest: An army reservist (and a transgender man) was refused a haircut because… Jesus.
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2016/03/09/army-reservist-refused-service-at-rancho-cucamonga-barber-shop-claims-gender-discrimination/
I’m still waiting to here a coherent response on the boundaries & limits.