A series of lawsuits and a new court ruling are fresh examples of how laws granting marriage benefits to gay couples can end up squashing religious liberty, says a Christian attorney involved in one of the cases.
All four cases involve states with gay "marriage" or same-sex civil unions laws: Illinois, Vermont, Hawaii and New Jersey. In Vermont and Illinois, bed and breakfast owners were sued for declining to host a same-sex ceremony or reception, and in Hawaii, a bed and breakfast owner was sued after turning away a lesbian couple who wanted to make a reservation.
In New Jersey, a state judge ruled Jan. 12 that a Christian beachfront property operated by United Methodists violated state non-discrimination laws when it refused to host a lesbian couple's civil union ceremony.
Jim Campbell, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund -- which is representing the Methodist group -- said the cases prove that there is harm to religious liberty when states legalize gay "marriage" or civil unions or pass broad legislation incorporating sexual orientation into non-discrimination laws.
"When people hear that their legislature is considering a law like this and they think, 'What's the harm?' they need to realize that there is this direct threat to religious liberty -- to business owners, employees, religious entities and people who attend all those religious entities," Campbell told Baptist Press. "These four cases are a good demonstration of that. People who are concerned about religious liberty should be concerned about these legal developments."
5 Comments
This should be published on commercials.
The people have to know.
This is disengenuous - it's about public accommodation and has nothing to do with "religion."
This is not at all disingenuous. The founding fathers would be shocked to see rather recently invented non-enumerated rights trumping enumerated rights.
Libertarians should take note of the increased government power arrayed against religious and private institutions that comes with the redefinition of marriage, a redefinition that the people have consistently rejected when given the chance.
Conveniently left out of the article is the fact that the beachfront property was dedicated to the state as public land and the Methodists agreed that it would be "available to all" as part of that dedication. They never paid any taxes on the land in 100 years. It's a public park and they were trying to stop a gay couple from using it.
They were trying to prevent a particular use of the land,not particular people from using it!