Flower Shop owner, Baronelle Stutzman.
Court rules she must not victimise gays even if she is a Christian and so feels she should be entitled to.
Court rules she must not victimise gays even if she is a Christian and so feels she should be entitled to.
In declining to hear a case, the Supreme Court of the United States, even with its Trump-given conservative Christian majority, has in effect confirmed that even Christian bigots do not have the right to deny other people their basic human rights and so cannot victimise minorities of their choice.
In 2013, Baronelle Stutzman, the owner of a New York flower shop, refused to supply flowers for the wedding of Robert Ingersoll to Curt Freed, even though same-sex marriage is legal in New York, and discrimination of the grounds of sexual orienation is illegal. She was prosecuted by NY law enforcement officials, found guilty and fined $1000.
Strutzman then appealed to the New York Supreme Court arguing that supplying flowers would amount to an endorcement of gay mrriage with which she disagreed on religious grounds. She lost again, the court confirming the decision of the lower court, basing their decision on the fact that supplying flowers for a gay wedding was no more an endoresment of a religious opinion than would be supplying flowers for an Islamic or Atheist wedding or the marriage of divorcees be an endorcement of their religious opinions. In court, Stutzman even agreed that she would have no problem supplying flowers for Islamic, Atheist or divorcee weddings!
So, Strutzman took the case to SCOTUS, which, although not ruling against the NY Supreme court, nevertheless put the case back to them to reconsider on the grounds that state officials might have exhibited anti-religious bias in their decision to prosecute and punish Strutzman, as happened in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. So, the NY court duly reconsidered and unanimously found that there had been no such bias and again confirmed their earlier decision.
So, Struzman went back to SCOTUS. But SCOTUS, having failed to find fault with the NY court's interpretation of the law the first time, had little choice but to unanimously decline to hear the case, and in effect, confirm that Christians and other religious bigots do not have the right to discriminate against people with whose (legal) lifestyle they disapprove. They have the same obligation to comply with the law as does everyone else. They are not above the law and have no right to deprive others of their rights or to bully and victimise with impunity.
No doubt, this ruling will come as a shock to many Christian fundamentalists who believe they have a special place in American society as God's chosen people living in God's chosen country, where the constitution should recognise their privileged right to impose their prejudices on others.
The news has already jerked Rod Dreher, senior editor at The American Conservative, into a self-righteous, indignant frenzy, declaring that the ruling forces Stutzman to endorse same-sex marriage despite her religious objection - an opinion specifically ruled against in the NY Supreme Court - and asking:
Where were you, John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett? These two, by the way, also were among the majority that refused to hear the Gavin Grimm case, handing a big victory to transgender bathroom-invaders.Which kinda gives away the fact that the conservative Christian right see these two as their poodles on SCOTUS, placed there to maintain their assumed privileged right to continue to victimise and bully anyone with whom they disagree, and certainly not there to ensure the law complies with the Constitution of the USA and applies equally to all Americans.
This bleating will only grow louder as Christianity loses its influence in the USA and the gap widens between what the increasingly humanitarian, inclusive law says and what the divisive, discriminatory religious right think the law aught to say. Religion might be giving these bigots an excuse for their bullying and victimisation of others, but that doesn't mean the law should sanction their antisocial behaviour.
To be fair to American Christians, they are not the only ones who feel giving full human rights to others means they are being unfairly deprived of their right to victimise minorities of their choice. We have the same situation in the UK where case after case brought by Christians to the Court of Human Rights, under the Human Rights Act, has been thrown out on the grounds that no-one has a fundamental right to deprive others of their human rights or to decide which minorities may be freely bullied and victimised.
So far, there has been no sign that our Supreme Court would be prepared to restore that former privilege to them either, entitled though they feel they are.
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