Quick! Somebody alert Bob Schieffer before he misses this story too.
In a closely watched case on gay rights, religious freedom, artistic freedom, the speech rights of businesses, and a host of other legal hot button issues, the New Mexico Supreme Court today ruled that wedding photographers could not refuse to shoot gay ceremonies.
“When Elane Photography refused to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony, it violated the [New Mexico Human Rights Act, or NMHRA] in the same way as if it had refused to photograph a wedding between people of different races,” the court said in a unanimous verdict.
The court rejected each of photographer’s Elaine Huguenin’s arguments, particularly one in which Huguenin had argued that her refusal did not discriminate against same-sex customers. Huguenin had argued that she happily photograph gay customers, but not in a context that seemed to endorse same-sex marriage. Likewise, she said, she wouldn’t shoot heterosexuals in a context that endorsed same-sex marriage.
The court rejected any legal differentiation between homosexuality and homosexual conduct.
You must comply is the new tolerance.
This is what it comes down to and with more and more legal recognition of SSA, the impetus to force faithful Christians to comply grows every day.
This is a great battle of our day.
August 23, 2013 at 8:41 pm
Perhaps a change in the business "shingle" to Holy Matrimony photographer would give an out to photoing something that is a mirage.
August 23, 2013 at 10:29 pm
If someone identifies himself as homosexual, chances are he doesn't see homosexual acts as unnatural and perverse, and he's more likely to BE an active homosexual (given the opportunity). I wonder why this woman honestly thought she could photograph people who blithely identified themselves as homosexuals and not find herself in a situation like this down the road. One of her homosexual customers might have thought, "Hey, we'll just call Elaine! She knows I'm gay, and she seemed cool with it last time …" only to find out, while she seemed perfectly okay with their being homosexual, she does sees a problem with homosexual "marriage." And she should. But why even give the homosexuals the impression that we're cool with their perversion. I realize she was probably trying to avoid a lawsuit by acting nonchalant about their open admission to being homosexual, but homosexuality doesn't deserve nonchalance or niceness.
If someone suffers from same sex attraction, it IS something to be ashamed of. The Catholic faith is not.
August 24, 2013 at 12:46 am
She should have shot the wedding and put a disclaimer on each and every photo! Don't the rights to the photos belong to her?
August 24, 2013 at 4:31 am
There is a precedent being set by the gay lobby now. If this case is upheld, the gay militants have a powerful arrow in the quiver. Homosexuals are truly tortured souls. We must pray and love them also. I understand the angered comments, but also wonder if other forces are behind the push? The problem began when psychiatrists stopped tthe DSM description of homosexuality as disordered, like pedophilia and necrophilia. Again, I truly believe its still psychologically "off" -and knoe its disordered when thought, and gravely deprived when acted on. Pray for them
August 24, 2013 at 4:41 am
There is a precedent being set by the gay lobby now. If this case is upheld, the gay militants have a powerful arrow in the quiver. Homosexuals are truly tortured souls. We must pray and love them also. I understand the angered comments, but also wonder if other forces are behind the push? The problem began when psychiatrists stopped tthe DSM description of homosexuality as disordered, like pedophilia and necrophilia. Again, I truly believe its still psychologically "off" -and knoe its disordered when thought, and gravely deprived when acted on. Pray for them
August 24, 2013 at 4:42 am
There is a precedent being set by the gay lobby now. If this case is upheld, the gay militants have a powerful arrow in the quiver. Homosexuals are truly tortured souls. We must pray and love them also. I understand the angered comments, but also wonder if other forces are behind the push? The problem began when psychiatrists stopped tthe DSM description of homosexuality as disordered, like pedophilia and necrophilia. Again, I truly believe its still psychologically "off" -and knoe its disordered when thought, and gravely deprived when acted on. Pray for them
August 24, 2013 at 11:32 am
@Sarah: "If someone suffers from same sex attraction, it IS something to be ashamed of. The Catholic faith is not." Same sex attraction is like any other disability, being armless or footless, neither being a sin or shameful. Acting out unnaturally, pretending that sodomy is a sex act or the marital act is first and foremost A LIE, PERJURY IN A COURT OF LAW, lacking any standing in a court of law. Had the court heard our Pope say that acting out sodomy is disordered, the judges might have understood the truth about sodomy. Before the American Psychiatric Association was forced by the North American Man Boy Love Association to diagnose same sex attraction as "NORMAL" , the psychiatrists had diagnosed ssa as "ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT". NAMBLA is legally forcing the adaptation of pedophilia without allowing informed sexual consent of minor children. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg supports legal informed sexual consent at fourteen years of age for minor children. I say, perhaps it would be nice to legalize Phds. for minor children without college.
August 24, 2013 at 10:17 pm
So what happens if, instead of playing the game set up by the proponents of gay marriage, a Christian photographer agrees to take their business and then proceeds to take the absolute WORST pictures imaginable? Seems it would be more difficult to prove "discrimination" in that case.
I know it poses other possibel problems such as the implicit endorsement of gay marriage by accepting their business. But in these times avoiding a head-on confrontation in the courts where legal precedent would be set for the further persecution of Christian believers might have merit.
Just wondering.
August 25, 2013 at 3:08 am
Most of us don't know enough about the case to really comment. Overcaffeinated says that they made the correct decision according to the state's law, but I'm not certain this is true. The SC all ruled that the business was a "public accommodation" and so has to serve gay people because they are a protected class. But the business DOES serve gay people. What was in question was the business's refusal to cover a particular event.
Event photographers do not have to photograph every event they are queried about. These photographers could legitimately say "we don't photograph soccer games" but may not, SC says, say "we don't photograph gay commitment ceremonies."
Now the question is, why are those things different? The lawyers say it's because it's a GAY commitment ceremony, but surely the photographers may say, "we don't photograph outdoor weddings" or "we don't do weddings at this or that venue" or "we only photograph Saturday weddings." The latter are all things that wedding photographers actually do say.
You're allowed to say the latter but not the former, because the former is about "sexual orientation" and not practical considerations. But event photographs are not products one purchases, they are services performed by people who must attend the event to provide them. How is it that one class of people are apparently able to compel a business to provide custom services at the location of the customers' choice, while other classes of people are not?
Also, the case was actually on First Amendement grounds — for SPEECH, not for Freedom of Religion. Lawyers argued that photographs are artistic speech, and that compelling photographers to produce photographs was in essence making them endorse the event they photographed as a good thing. I find this an odd argument. The SC, unconvinced by it, decided it had nothing to do with speech and was simply a matter of the business accommodating the public.
The bases for legal decisions are really important. You aren't really discussing cases unless you discuss the bases for rulings.
August 25, 2013 at 3:30 am
overcaffeinated is right about the problem being "sexual orientation" being including in the NM laws prohibiting discrimination, and many people would very much like it to be in the federal Equal Opportunity law as well. Most people who support this think vaguely of wanting to protect people against being fired, or not allowed to rent an apartment. But what it would actually do is far broader, and this is just one example of how.
Subvet: I dont' think it would be at all difficult to prove discrimination in that case. Taking terrible pictures on purpose? While also being juvenile and detrimental to the photographers' careers, it would also lead them open to fraud or similar charges.
August 25, 2013 at 5:37 pm
@Mitchell: Rather a brilliant suggestion.
@John C: Don't fight science. It's not a disease or a disorder or a handicap and we certainly dont want our scientists to say it is. Scientists also no longer recognize "female hysteria" as a treatable disease/disorder. (If it were, a few of the commenters here would be in big trouble!)
August 25, 2013 at 11:09 pm
Gail Finke: you may be right. But I know there are a lot of incompetent people in all walks of life, some come with surprising high recommendations from supposedly trustworthy sources (don't ask, long stories. caveat emptor always applies).
So I wonder how high the bar of proof for discrimination in such cases could be.
As for being detrimental for business, everybody has an "off" day. I'll cheerfully cede "juvenile", you got me there!
August 26, 2013 at 8:48 am
Actually, Pat, no new research prompted its removal as a disorder from the DSM, it was simply political fiat. Look it up.
The little research that has been done seems to suggest that it is, in fact, a maladaptive coping mechanism for childhood sexual abuse. So it probably is a disorder. Don't fight science.
Also, no serious ethologist considers homosexual interactions to be remotely comparable to opposite-sex ones. Homosexual ones are at best a secondary sexual behavior—often a pathology triggered by various stresses. It's no more comparable to "mating", from a scientific standpoint, than a dog licking his crotch.
Don't fight science.
August 26, 2013 at 9:51 pm
Sophia, you are delusional. "Political fiat"? Please. Are you telling me that the thousands of medical professionals who are members of the AMA, the APA, the AAP, the ASA (Oh, please don't make me list them all) disagree with this conclusion and have been just sitting silent for 30 years? Please.
Your second and third paragraphs are ridiculous and offensive to critical thinkers everywhere.
Me thinky you just don't like the gay.
Potty mouth.
August 27, 2013 at 1:42 am
It's Sophia's Favorite, not Sophia, Prat. And no, I'm telling you that most members of the various organizations simply assumed there was a good reason the DSM was changed, they didn't bother to look for the rationale (and thus find that there hadn't been one). Let us leave to one side that those various associations generally only account for a fraction of their profession—or did you not know that?
My second and third paragraphs are merely reminders that human beings are animals, and that therefore their behavior can be analyzed by evolutionary criteria—criteria by which homosexual behavior can barely even be analyzed, so comparing it to mating (which is evolution) is a joke. And "critical thinkers"? Please, how would you know what critical thinkers are offended by, or find ridiculous?
You are a hard-wired brainwashed little fanatic, overcome with an attack of the vapors when something in science threatens your irrational dogmas.
Your last line…is that supposed to be funny, your sad attempt at Chinese Pidgin (the only pidgin that adds a "-y" after a consonant)? Because aside from being racist, you didn't even get it right; Chinese Pidgin uses "My", not "me", for the first-person pronoun, e.g. "my can catch them you three days".
Jackass.
August 27, 2013 at 3:15 am
Soph-
I bet you're a real joy to come home to after a hard day at the office.
-Patrick
August 27, 2013 at 7:50 am
Not only racist but misogynist, I see.
But I'm a dude.
Come to think of it, if you could read, you'd have realized that "Favorite" has a neuter implication, and "Sophia's" is an adjective.
Then again, considering that you've just demonstrated you would address someone using the handle "Billy's Mom" as "Billy" and assume they were male, I suppose we should just be impressed that you've managed to get this long without eating from a bottle with a skull on it, and not get too annoyed that you can't formulate a meaningful thought.
August 27, 2013 at 12:50 pm
Everybody is clear that this is just the opening salvo, right? All the re-assurances that nobody is going to be 'forced' into doing anything they don't believe in went right out the door with DOMA. Churches need to start thinking and talking strategically about changing the way they handle marriage (provide ONLY a sacramental marriage?) because it is just a question of time before the lawsuits begin.
In the UK, a male couple is gearing up to sue the Church of England so they can have a church wedding (http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2013/August/Gay-Couple-Sues-to-Wed-in-Church-of-England/). We are minutes behind…
August 27, 2013 at 1:52 pm
Soph-
This is boring.
Misogyny? Hmm, I guess in your world only men work outside the home. Well, at least that's consistent with the rest of the picture you've painted of yourself.
August 27, 2013 at 3:31 pm
Oh, and Soph? I misspoke when I said its been 30 years. It's been 40. FORTY years.
ALL major medical and mental health organizations agree that homosexuality is not a disorder, including but not limited to:
American Psychological Association
American Psychiatric Association
American Medical Association
National Mental Health Association
American Counseling Association
American Academy of Pediatrics
American School Health Association
National Association of School Psychologists
American School Counselor Association
National Association of Social Workers
School Social Work Association of America