The Point Is Not Just To Take Back Rights, But To Do It So Fast And Furiously That We Can't Keep Up With The Outrages - 303 Creative

 In a couple of days the Supreme Court threw out Affirmative Action for colleges and universities (and surely employment and other areas will be challenged soon); blocked Biden's waiving of $10-20,000 in student loans (ignoring the word 'waive' in the law that gave him the right to do that); and allowed a would be (but not actual) wedding website designer to refuse to take gay couples as clients.  

I suspect they intentionally timed the one case hailed by supporters of democracy - the voting rights case - earlier so that these three would all be together and there'd be less time to analyze them and protest.  

For the most part, lots of pundits are using these cases to get hits and likes.  Some are even worth reading.  But I want to just think out loud here about the 303 Creative case - the wedding website case.  

I posted in the past about the baker and about the photographer who didn't want to make a wedding cake for, or take photos of gay weddings.  Some of those same issues arise. 

Here I want to just lay out ideas as I try to understand this case and how it affects one's religious beliefs and what other collateral damage it might lead to. 

And I'm also setting aside the allegations that have come up after the decision that this whole scenarios was made up.  Or the arguments that the courts don't rule unless some harm has been done, but they skipped that standard in this case.  

As I said, I'm just thinking out loud here.  (And maybe even venting a bit as we reach a point similar to the post civil war court that used states' rights as an excuse to ignore the massive civil rights violations perpetrated against former slaves.)

PROBLEMS FOR THE COURTS

1.  How do you distinguish a true religious belief from an excuse to discriminate?  How did Lorrie Smith pick gay weddings to block?  Is it really a deep religious belief?  Or is it dislike/hate of gays that is being masked by religion?  When the Constitution was written, I think 'religion' was more concrete.  Today there are thousands of different Christian denominations?  Where do they all come from and what prohibitions can various ones have that the Supreme Court will eventually say allows them to discriminate against some target?

Homosexuality is not mentioned in the ten commandments, but Lorrie couldn't possibly make a website for a gay couple.  Would she refuse a wedding website for a couple that have been living together unmarried for five years?  And maybe have some kids?  What about businesspeople who cheat their customers and their employees?  Would she refuse making a site for them?  

If Lorrie belongs to a church that is part of the Southern Baptist Convention, which does not allow women to be pastors, how would she react to a client who was a woman pastor and wanted a website?  Would she refuse?  Based on her being a woman?

Many Christian denominations believe women should stay at home and raise babies.  Could someone from one of them refuse to make a website for, say, a woman lawyer?  

2.  When you look at all the things that a religion professes, how do you determine which ones are critical in that religion and which ones are not central requirements or prohibitions?  How does the Court decide which belief of any religion is an important enough one to allow the holder of that belief to discriminate against protected classes? 

If a congregation believes whites are superior and other ethnicities are inferior, can they then discriminate against people of color?  Last week I would have said the answer is a loud NO, but today I have no idea how the Supreme Court majority would rule.  

The Bible lists hundreds of rules.  Rules that Orthodox Jews follow, including a number of dietary restrictions.  Eating shellfish or pork, for example, are called out as abominations.  Why are those rules ignored?  Should the Courts look at whether someone practices all the rules or just identifies a few that trouble them enough to discriminate?  

3.  How do the justices weigh one right against another?  Is being denied service from a business because of one's sexual orientation - even when laws clearly protect against this - a lesser right than someone's professed religious convictions?  What happens in a small community where there aren't many choices of businesses?  Does the gay couple have to simply move so they can find vendors who will serve them?  Doesn't sound very American.  But perhaps MAGA's remember when whites - particularly in the South - were, legally, superior, and that's the world they want to return to.  

4.  How do you separate your own personal beliefs when they agree with one side or the other?  At what point does recusal become mandatory?  In this court, for the conservative majority, it seems recusal isn't necessary because they are all above human bias that could cloud their view.  At least in their own minds.  Note the expensive trips and vacation that various judges never reported and say would not affect their legal decisions?  

ALTERNATIVES FOR THE WEB PAGE DESIGNER

This was not a case where anyone tried to resolve the issue.  This was a case put together to invalidate Colorado's law that make discrimination against LGBTQ folks illegal.  And as mentioned above, the issues argued - that a gay man requested a wedding website - apparently didn't even happen.  There are other ways that Lorrie Smith, the designer, could have handled this (assuming she had such a request.)

1.  She could make it clear on her website that she adhered to a religion that only sanctioned male/female marriage and that she wanted to help such couples celebrate their weddings.  She's not, then refusing gay couples, but she's making it clear that's not her interest.  People don't enroll their kids in religious affiliated schools unless they are comfortable with their kids getting that school's religious instruction.  Gay couples would not ask such a website designer to design their wedding websites for several reasons:  

    1.  They don't trust such a person to make them the website they want

    2.  They don't want to financially support a business that doesn't approve of their wedding.

The only time a gay couple might ask for her services would be to create a legal basis for challenging her legal right to deny them. (What Lorrie Smith was doing to challenge the Colorado anti-discrimination law.)  If she doesn't deny them, there's no problem.  If they push, she can offer them one of her basic templates.  If they don't like them, they can go elsewhere.  Just as a bride, who  doesn't like a wedding dress in one store, can go to another.  

2.  She can politely decline and give them the names of three other web designers who specialize in gay weddings, or at least, who do gay weddings.  Unless she is so opposed to gay weddings that she won't help them in any way.  That would probably be proof that the 1st Amendment angle Lorrie Smith's case used, was just an excuse to discriminate.

3.  More radically, and much less likely, she could meet with the couple and learn about them as people, what being gay means to them, and why they want to get married.  

Well, I guess I had less to say about this than I thought.  Basically, this seems to show that this was not so much about  protecting 1st Amendment Rights as it was about sending a case to the Supreme Court that could create the first wedge to break down anti-discrimination laws protecting the rights of LGBTQ folks.  

I realize for some that might be a giant leap, so let me explain.  Normal business folks try to work out things with customers when they ask for services the business doesn't offer.  I gave examples of how this could have been done.  But none of that seemed to have happened.  And it now appears that there never was a request by a gay couple. (Though I'm not sure how the Colorado attorneys failed to contact the alleged client.)  Rather this was a case designed by group that has been fighting against LGBTQ rights for years now.  It was created to be a test case and they believed, correctly, that the current Supreme Court would look favorably on their argument.