Author Archives: Stephen Henry Miller

All About Compulsion

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As Williamson notes:

What [Phillips] declines to do is to make cakes for certain events, participation in which, even as a vendor, would violate his conscience. As he put it: “I serve everybody. It’s just that I don’t create cakes for every occasion.”

Phillips has been prosecuted under a civil-rights law, but this is not really a case about civil rights: It is a case about compulsion. …

The point is not to see to it that gay and transgender people can live their lives as they wish to — the point is to coerce Jack Phillips into conformity.

More.


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Religious Liberty Isn’t Anti-LGBT Unless You Want It to Be

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Point:


Counterpoint:


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When Worlds Collide

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Point:


Counterpoint:

More. I’m not saying that none of the nominees have records that are suspect, although the Blade conflates cases they accepted as lawyers and positions they took as elected legislators with judicial opinions. But much of the criticism is just partisan bloviating. This is especially evident with two of the five judges about whom the Blade, following the lead of LGBT activist groups, is aghast:

[David James] Porter leads the Lawyers Chapter of the Pittsburgh Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that argues for strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. … Also of concern to LGBT groups is Porter’s opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

[Thomas Alvin] Farr has faced criticism from LGBT groups because of the larger progressive coalition’s concern over his defense of policies seen to target minority groups, such as a North Carolina gerrymandering law seen to block black voters from being heard in the political process.

I could make reasoned arguments against the ACA and race-specific congressional districts gerrymandered with surgical precision, and in favor of photo IDs at polls as a common-sense step to deter fraud, but that’s not the point. If you’re not lock, stock and barrel behind the progressive agenda, then you’re opposed by LGBT activists groups and thus you’re “anti-LGBT.”

Still more. A comment posted on the Blade site by mginsd says:

There are many gay members of the Federalist Society – I’m one of them – and not all gays are or were thrilled by the self-described “Wise Latina’s” record on and before her appointment to SCOTUS. Moreover, the stale, quarter-century old claims against Farr re: voter intimidation are just that; he was never found responsible for anything other than annoying a lawyer in a Democrat-led DOJ. And, as to his efforts “to undermine unionization efforts,” gee, guess what: employers need representation, too, and the sanctity of Big Labor is not a matter of gay rights, however expansively they are defined.

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