This case is moving along quite nicely: State's highest court to review fine for faith Justices agree to reconsider penalty for New Mexico photographer Published: 16 hours ago by BOB UNRUH http://www.wnd.com/2012/08/states-highest-court-to-review-fine-for-faith/ This is an extremely important case if it ever gets to the SCOTUS. One possible ruling says that artists must work for anybody willing to hire them. That is the exact opposite of the garbage the National Endowment for the Arts promotes to justify the filth government-approved artists put out with tax dollars. Another possible ruling says artists decide for themselves which is more in line with NEA thinking, but it flies in the face of gay Rights, equal Rights, and liberalism’s blah, blah, blah. A third possible ruling says that there are two sets of rules; one for government “artists” and another set of rules for private sector artists. For once in my life I would like to hear the ACLU’s take on a case in progress. I’d also like to hear what that old ACLU hack, Ruth Ginsburg, has to say if she writes the majority or minority opinion.
I wonder how the article would read if it was an interracial couple instead of a lesbian couple? I think the real issue though is whether a wedding photographer should be considered an artist or a business.
To harvardpit: I think a vast majority agree with that. To DarkDaimon: Great question! No matter how Bob Unruh would have written it the Left would have had a collective nervous breakdown. To DarkDaimon: That’s what makes the case so delicious in relation to the NEA.
I think I am going to seek out a liberal artist and commission them to work on posters for a rally promoting racial segregation...
Are there any conservative artists in a liberal-fascist society like yours? How are you going to enforce slave-contracts?
UPDATE George Will makes some terrific points. I especially like the final paragraph: The tangled web of conflicting rights By: George Will 9/15/2012 08:00 PM WASHINGTON — Elaine Huguenin, who with her husband operates Elane Photography in New Mexico, asks only to be let alone. But instead of being allowed a reasonable zone of sovereignty in which to live her life in accordance with her beliefs, she is being bullied by people wielding government power. In 2006, Vanessa Willock, who was in a same-sex relationship, emailed Elane Photography about photographing a “commitment ceremony” she and her partner were planning. Willock said this would be a “same-gender ceremony.” Elane Photography responded that it photographed “traditional weddings.” The Huguenins are Christians who, for religious reasons, disapprove of same-sex unions. Willock sent a second email asking whether this meant that the company “does not offer photography services to same-sex couples.” Elane Photography responded “you are correct.” Willock could then have said regarding Elane Photography what many same-sex couples have long hoped a tolerant society would say regarding them — “live and let live.” Willock could have hired a photographer with no objections to such events. Instead, Willock and her partner set out to break the Huguenins to the state’s saddle. Willock’s partner, without disclosing her relationship with Willock, emailed Elane Photography. She said she was getting married — actually, she and Willock were having a “commitment ceremony” because New Mexico does not recognize same-sex marriages — and asked if the company would travel to photograph it. The company said yes. Willock’s partner never responded. Instead, Willock, spoiling for a fight, filed a discrimination claim with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission, charging that Elane Photography is a “public accommodation,” akin to a hotel or restaurant, that denied her its services because of her sexual orientation. The NMHRC found against Elane and ordered it to pay $6,600 in attorney fees. But what a tangled web we weave when we undertake to regulate more and more behaviors under overlapping codifications of conflicting rights. Elaine Huguenin says she is being denied her right to the “free exercise” of religion guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and a similar provision in the New Mexico constitution. Furthermore, New Mexico’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act defines “free exercise” as “an act or a refusal to act that is substantially motivated by religious belief,” and forbids government from abridging that right except to “further a compelling government interest.” So New Mexico, whose marriage laws discriminate against same-sex unions, has a “compelling interest” in compelling Huguenin to provide a service she finds repugnant and others would provide? Strange. Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law thinks Huguenin can also make a “compelled speech argument”: She cannot be coerced into creating expressive works, such as photographs, which express something she is uncomfortable expressing. Courts have repeatedly held that freedom of speech and the freedom not to speak are “complementary components of the broader concept of ‘individual freedom of mind.’” A New Mexico court, however, has held that Elane Photography is merely “a conduit for another’s expression.” But the U.S. Supreme Court (upholding the right of a person to obscure the words “Live Free or Die” on New Hampshire’s license plates) has affirmed the right not to be compelled to be conduits of others’ expression. New Mexico’s Supreme Court is going to sort all this out, which has been thoroughly reported and discussed by the invaluable blog The Volokh Conspiracy, where you can ponder this: In jurisdictions such as the District of Columbia and Seattle, which ban discrimination on the basis of political affiliation or ideology, would a photographer, even a Jewish photographer, be compelled to record a Nazi Party ceremony? The Huguenin case demonstrates how advocates of tolerance become tyrannical. First, a disputed behavior, such as sexual activities between people of the same sex, is declared so personal and intimate that government should have no jurisdiction over it. Then, having won recognition of what Louis Brandeis, a pioneer of the privacy right, called “the right to be let alone,” some who have benefited from this achievement assert a right not to let other people alone. It is the right to coerce anyone who disapproves of the now protected behavior into acting as though they approve it, or at least into not acting on their disapproval. So, in the name of tolerance, government declares intolerable individuals such as the Huguenins, who disapprove of a certain behavior but ask only to be let alone in their quiet disapproval. Perhaps advocates of gay rights should begin to restrain the bullies in their ranks. http://www.humanevents.com/2012/09/15/will-the-tangled-web-of-conflicting-rights/
