But neither Lorie Smith nor Jack Phillips turned away any customer because of an immutable characteristic or sexual preference or religious belief. Rather, they refused to create a message that conflicted with sincere convictions. If a straight cousin of a groom asked for a same-sex wedding site, Smith would have turned that person away, as well. If a gay customer wanted a website for his business, Smith would have created it. If a straight couple asked for a bawdy website or a website that declared Xenu the one true Lord of the universe, they too would have been rejected, because that idea also runs afoul of her evangelical Christian beliefs. It’s a shame that Cole and Sotomayor pretend not to comprehend the distinction.
Progressives like to act like Christian (or Islamic or Jewish) opposition to same-sex marriage is some newfangled ruse cooked up by activists to allow them to put “no gays allowed” signs in the shop windows. I assure you that the notion that true marriage is exclusively between one genetic man and one genetic woman is a generational notion. Before his “evolution” on the question, Democrat icon Barack Obama had tethered his opposition to gay marriage to theology.
Whether you agree with this stance or not is entirely irrelevant when it comes to the matter of speech. There is no Hurt Feelings clause in the Constitution. Rather than dealing with the question, Cole, who has a difficult time seeing anything in nonracial terms, lists a slew of scary slippery slope hypotheticals — among them: “Should an architecture firm that believes Black families don’t deserve fancy homes be permitted to turn away Black clients because its work is ‘expressive’?”
Here is a better question: Would Cole, who says the “A.C.L.U. has been this nation’s leading defender of free speech for more than a century,” call for the state to intervene in the case of an evangelical customer who wants to compel a gay designer to create a website for an organization that works to overturn same-sex marriage laws or preaches that acts of homosexuality are a mortal sin? Christians, after all, are also a protected group under anti-discrimination laws. The answer is: highly unlikely.
Read it all.
I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.
