US top court deals blow to LGBTQ rights in web designer case
US top court deals blow to LGBTQ rights in web designer case
Supreme Court sides with business owner who refused to provide services for same-sex wedding, citing freedom of speech.
So as a queer person, does this mean I can choose not to service Christians at my business?
Because somehow I doubt the Supreme Court would back me up there.
It confuses me religion (an unscientific idea) is even a protected class versus an immutable characteristic like skin color, gender, sexuality, disability etc.
Religious privilege is getting an invite to the meeting where this stuff was decided
Edit: My app decided to post this multiple times, I'm cleaning them up, sorry for that yall. Didn't mean to spam 4 identical posts...
Because if it isn't then millions of people in this country will openly be discriminated against because of their religion.
I'm Jewish. Do I really need to explain why I think having protections for my religious beliefs is a good idea? There are more LGBT people than Jews in America. We are a small minority who has historically been heavily discriminated against, and that discrimination is ongoing right now. Antisemitism has gotten significantly more out in the open over the last decade. I can confidently state that had I not been protected by laws, I likely wouldn't have gotten into college, gotten my first job, or had many of the opportunities that I've had in life. I know friends who have been told to their faces that an employer didn't want to hire them because they were jews.
I don't really care if religion is "unscientific," for people who are religious is a critical part of who they are and, more importantly, a lot of other people (religious and not) assign it just as much importance and will happily discriminate against, ostracize, and even kill people for being the "wrong" religion if allowed to do so. I can't just "give up" by Jewishness because it's a deeply ingrained part of who I am, and asking me to "just stop" is frankly as offensive as telling a gay person to "just stop" believing they are gay. And, more importantly, even if I completely rescinded all of my belief in my religious beliefs AND stopped doing all Jewish activities, got rid of all my Jewish paraphernalia, converted to Christianity and lived openly as a Christian, there are still people who would consider me Jewish and discriminate against me simply for having Jewish parents.
YOU might not like religion, and I completely understand why so many people feel that way, but removing religions from being protected classes Isa really great way to guarantee millions of people get discriminated against every single day.
Honestly I've been waiting for someone to do exactly this. And now they have a precedent to cite when it goes to court, one which specifically addresses religious beliefs.
It means that if a Christian asks you to design a website with messages that violate your religious beliefs then you can refuse. If I as a satanist believe that a woman's right to abortion is sacred then I can refuse to design a website with an anti-abortion message. I can't simply refuse to design a website for a Christian. Not saying I agree with the ruling, just explaining what it means.
The ruling says you don't have to design a website that violates any sincerely held beliefs, not just religious beliefs.
So if you are gay and a Catholic asked you to design a website promoting "Marriage is for one man and one woman", you can refuse. Before the ruling, you might have been found to be discriminating against Catholics.
Not a lawyer, but my reading says: yes.
I might be misreading it, but I think this ruling only applies with artistic ventures, like webpage design. Though honestly with an illegitimate SCOTUS, who can tell?
“We have the right to refuse service to religious bigots who believe in zombie Jesus”
I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is it would depend on what kind of business you're in and what kind of services the Christian customers asked for. You could say "I do websites for weddings, but not Christian weddings" for example.
As I understand it, this ruling still wouldn't necessarily protect broader discrimination like "I own an ice cream shop, but I won't sell ice cream to certain people"; whether the people you're refusing to sell to are Christian, gay, etc...
Thank you. So many people don’t understand what happened and think the Supreme Court made it legal to discriminate against gay people.
If you're not super tired up with being American for the near future, do it and have an exist strategy to e.g. Canada.
Your response to hate is more hate?
I think they're more just pointing out how this ruling isn't fair because of the fact that it doesn't go both ways.
sides with business owner who refused to provide services for same-sex wedding, citing freedom of speech.
Um, “freedom of speech” would be to say that you don't support same-sex marriage, but refusal to provide a service based on the fact that you don't agree with same-sex marriage seems like flat out discrimination.
I think the argument is essentially that the alternative is forcing the person to literally “say” (write) something (code) and they have the freedom not to write things they disagree with. It seems like a very narrow ruling and it will be interesting to see if it is kept that way, I doubt it. I also may not understand all of the nuance.
I think of a bakery case, would the ruling mean they can’t refuse to bake a cake, which is not speech, but they could refuse to write “happy pride” on a cake, or does it now mean that they can refuse all forms of service. I don’t think it does, but it wasn’t really a question before.
One of the most interesting parts to me was an article I saw yesterday, where one of the supposed gay men who requested the website was contacted and said he was straight, married with a kid, and had never asked for such a thing. It seems like the case may have been invented out of thin air to create a precedent. (Apparently someone posted it farther down)
Freedom of expression includes the right to receive speech (unrelated here) and could be broad enough to include freedom to have and hold beliefs, thoughts, etc, which could be relevant as this doesn't work if one can have a belief but be forced to contradict it. Also, it's hard to conduct wedding services without using speech, so forcing someone to host a ceremony they disagree with would also force them to utter sentences they wouldn't choose to utter.
I'm only saying this to point out how slippery of a concept are human/constitutional rights. They're unreliable. Interesting to see that this is almost a mirror image of an Irish case about a cake for a homosexual couple. I can't remember the exact arguments, but reactionary lawyers would've been studiously reading them before this new case.
And all this is to say: down with homophobes and transphobes. We can't let them use the law to uphold their prejudice.
Nice to know that Supreme Court makes decisions based on fucking fabrications and delusions.
According to court filings from the plaintiff, Stewart contacted Smith in September 2016 about his wedding to Mike “early next year.” He wrote that they “would love some design work done for our invites, placenames etc. We might also stretch to a website.” Stewart included his phone number, email address, and the URL of his own website—he was a designer too, the site showed.
This week, I decided to call Stewart and ask him about his inquiry.
It took just a few minutes to reach him. I assumed at least some reporters over the years had contacted him about his website inquiry to 303 Creative—his contact information wasn’t redacted in the filing. But my call, he said, was “the very first time I’ve heard of it.”
Yes, that was his name, phone number, email address, and website on the inquiry form. But he never sent this form, he said, and at the time it was sent, he was married to a woman. “If somebody’s pulled my information, as some kind of supporting information or documentation, somebody’s falsified that,” Stewart explained. (Stewart’s last name is not included in the filing, so we will be referring to him by his first name throughout this story.)
This is almost more distressing on a few levels than the original story..
Just found this dark related article https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/06/hate-group-may-have-faked-key-argument-in-lgbtq-supreme-court-case-and-they-might-win/