Christian couple can sue over Minnesota same-sex marriage video law

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Reuters

POLITICS AUGUST 23, 2019 / 10:11 AM / UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO
Christian couple can sue over Minnesota same-sex marriage video law
Jonathan Stempel
4 MIN READ

(Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Friday revived a lawsuit by a Minnesota couple challenging a state law requiring that their video production company film same-sex weddings, which they say violates their Christian beliefs.

In a 2-1 decision, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Paul, Minnesota, said Angel and Carl Larsen can try to show that the law violates their rights to free speech and freely exercise their religious beliefs under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Circuit Judge David Stras, an appointee of President Donald Trump, called videos by the St Cloud, Minnesota couple “a medium for the communication of ideas about marriage,” and said the state’s law “is targeting speech itself.”

The court ordered U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in Minneapolis to decide whether the Larsens and their Telescope Media Group deserve a preliminary injunction against the law, which subjects violators to fines and possible jail time. Tunheim had dismissed the lawsuit in September 2017.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office defended the law, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
....

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-minnesota-weddings/lawsuit-opposing-minnesota-same-sex-marriage-video-law-is-revived-idUSKCN1VD1LT

[msongs]

1. then everyone can refuse service to xtians because it violates religious beliefs... nt

[RKP5637]

2. Religion - a bullshit cover for political operatives. n/t

[not_the_one]

8. freedom OF religion must also mean freedom FROM religion

Sorry, lots of caps for emphasis, NOT VOLUME! And smilies galore! And the single, token BOLD.

We have the freedom to be a member of ANY religion (isn't America WONDERFUL? ), or we can choose to not believe in any SPECIFIC religion (but still have spiritual beliefs ), or to NOT BELIEVE in religion/spirituality at all (even MORE wonderful!!! ).

Laws are established relating to public services just for that purpose. If it is a PUBLIC offering of goods or services (meaning offered to EVERYONE), rules that apply to the PUBLIC must be applied.

If that is not the case, then if you are not a member with beliefs matching the persons offering the services, you have no rights.

In other words, you can't offer services to the PUBLIC. DUH!

Can't have it both ways.

If said CHRISTIAN video/photographer is only offering services to CHRISTIANS, then they can refuse someone who is not upholding their CHRISTIAN beliefs.

Or, restated, if said RELIGIOUS video/photographer is only offering services to others of the same religious beliefs, then they can refuse someone who is not upholding THEIR beliefs.

Otherwise, TOUGH SHIT. (Now THAT was a scream.

But we ALL know that what they REALLY WANT is to legislate and codify CHRISTIAN SHARIA LAW.

The fight should be framed that way.

[RKP5637]

11. "But we ALL know that what they REALLY WANT is to legislate and codify CHRISTIAN SHARIA LAW."

Exactly!!!

[LiberalFighter]

3. In order for anyone to do business they must accept certain requirements.

[metalbot]

7. Are you sure?

Any advertising agency who is in the business of advertising should be forced to make ads for anyone who is willing to cut a check, no matter how the agency might feel about the morality of the ads themselves.

Someone who paints murals for a living should be required, as a condition of doing business, to be willing to paint Trump campaign murals for a fee.

If you run a printing company, surely you would be obligated to design and print campaign materials for Trump?

Right?

Your argument gets repeated every time cases like this come up, and it's a intellectually dishonest one. There's a very fundamental difference between a commodity item and an artistic service. Baking a wedding cake and making wedding videos are inherently artistic services.

If you feel like businesses must accept certain requirements (performing creative services that they disagree with), then surely there would be examples of case law supporting this in areas that aren't gay marriage.

[yardwork]

16. How is baking a cake for a same-sex wedding different fro a cake for an opposite-sex wedding?

Every time somebody brings up this argument about cakes, I wonder what you all think a "gay wedding" cake looks like. ???

When my wife and I got married a few years ago (two women), we ordered a three tier round cake with white butter cream icing and sugar flowers. How would this have stressed anybody's morality?

(For the record, our wedding cake baker was lovely to us and never suggested in any way that we were less than equal to her other customers. Based on the art in her home bakery, we guessed that she is a devout Christian.)

Do you think that gay couples are demanding gay porn cakes? Do you realize how insulting that is?

[LanternWaste]

22. Why move the goalposts outside of the implicit anti-discrimination laws?

Why move the goalposts outside of the implicit anti-discrimination laws?

Political beliefs are not covered by anti-discrimination laws. Sexual orientation is.

"intellectually dishonest" indeed.

[LiberalLovinLug]

14. Why should a fundamentalist Christian baker be forced to provide a service to an openly gay couple

Or for that matter a gay baker forced to make a cake for the Westboro Baptist church?
(Another question would be why these parties would even choose those particular businesses)

Never understood this. In either case, the business owner is choosing to lose business, lose income. And also risk losing even more business if word of mouth spreads in that clients community. Shouldn’t that be their choice?

I can see a government office being required to service citizens of all stripes, but why should a private business be forced to service everyone regardless of how much they may detest their behaviour?

It’s their bottom line and reputation they are risking. Heck a business might do even better if they take a stand and deny service ie. Thr Red Hen.

[yardwork]

17. We've been through all this before. The Civil Rights movement resulted in federal laws.

It is illegal to deny services to somebody on the basis of their ethnicity, sex, religion, etc.

The United States decided decades ago that it is illegal for a business to post "whites only" in their window, and it should be equally illegal to post "straights only."

Businesses benefit from services and infrastructures that we all - even gay people - pay to support. If businesses want police and fire protection, they need to follow the law.

[LiberalLovinLug]

18. Thanks

Sorry I guess we haven't been through that before. I'm Canadian. Seems odd to me. So the Westborough Baptist Church could order a bunch of cakes spelling out God Hates F.... from a gay baker, even if just to fuck with his head or try and intimate him. Maybe he's trying to start up in a small Southern town. And the baker would have to spend the day piping that statement out over and over, even if he'd rather not take that kind of business?. Okay

[yardwork]

19. You are confusing two things.

1. No baker can refuse service to somebody on the basis of their religion. In other words, if you bake cakes, you can't decide that you'll bake cakes for everybody except Christians.

2. Nobody is ever forced to perform a specific service. If you don't want to write "God hates fags" on any of your cakes, that's fine. As long as you aren't writing that for some people while refusing service to others on the basis of their religion, that's fine.

In the case of gay people, why is there always this assumption that we want offensive messages written on our wedding cakes?

It's really quite offensive to assume that we gay couples are demanding that bakers write obscene messages on our cakes. I don't understand this thinking at all.

[LiberalLovinLug]

20. Thanks again, I guess

Still seems a bit murky. The WBC could complain that this hypothetical gay baker is refusing them service based on their religious beliefs that God Hates F.... They interpret the Bible that way. They believe they are the true Christians. Is their some kind of litmus test to prove which Christian denomination is the official one that is defined by the law?

I have no idea where you are going with your last two paragraphs though


I was just trying to find some extreme example to prove my point.
I wonder if a Trump humping evangelical church could order a cake saying "Every knee shall bow to President Trump" from a very liberal Democratic baker, claiming it is one of their religious beliefs?

[yardwork]

21. I don't think that you understand.

No baker is forced to write any particular message.

Why do you assume that gay people want extreme messages written on our cakes?

Any merchant can refuse to write anything. Nobody is forcing anybody to write anything offensive.

[Mike_DuBois]

15. That's an easy position to hold until one has to provide services to the Klan

[elleng]

4. This is an early procedural decision,

they 'can try to show that the law violates their rights to free speech and freely exercise their religious beliefs under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.'

[Historic NY]

6. R you #MAGA ?

is mine. You know how its just seems to ooze out of them. I say, I go elsewhere. Got a Trump sticker or flag I go elsewhere.

[Initech]

10. I was out walking my dogs with my dad the other day.

And we saw a Trump 2020 "Keeping America Great" sign hanging off the wall of one of the nearby houses. I was joking with my dad that *THAT* would cause your property values to drop 75%. He agreed.

[Initech]

9. This is why the Christian right is coming after the courts.

They want to reverse every same gender law, every law that gives protections to people, anything that indicates progress. And it's going to get really ugly (not that it already hasn't).

[RKP5637]

12. Throughout history, it's been the religious freaks persecuting others. Their crap to me about being

persecuted is a load of bullshit. What they want is it legalized for them to persecute others. Religion sucks!!!

[Initech]

13. Amen to that!!!