CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
 |  Subject: Are we still in America? City threatens jail time for ministers who refuse to perform gay weddings  Sun Oct 19, 2014 12:57 am | |
| We told you it would come to this. Religious liberty is in grave peril in the United States, and gay activists are doing their very best to stamp out all religious opposition to their chosen lifestyle. It began with businesses like catering services, wedding photographers, and bakers who are now being forced to participate in gay weddings, regardless of their religious convictions.
Now, we have officially moved to clergy.
from Todd Starnes:
Two Christian ministers who own an Idaho wedding chapel were told they had to either perform same-sex weddings or face jail time and up to $1,000 in daily fines, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court.
Alliance Defending Freedom is representing Donald and Evelyn Knapp, two ordained ministers who own the Hitching Post Wedding Chapel in Coeur d’Alene.
“Right now they are at risk of being prosecuted,” attorney Jeremy Tedesco told me. “The threat of enforcement is more than just credible.”
The wedding chapel is registered as a “religious corporation” limited to performing “one-man-one-woman marriages as defined by the Holy Bible.”
However, the chapel is also a for-profit business and city officials said that means the owners must comply with the local nondiscrimination ordinance.
That ordinance, passed in 2013, prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and it applies to housing, employment and public accommodation.
City Attorney Warren Wilson told The Spokesman-Review in May that the Hitching Post Wedding Chapel likely would be required to follow the ordinance.
“I would think that the Hitching Post would probably be considered a place of public accommodation that would be subject to the ordinance,” he said.
He also told television station KXLY that any wedding chapel that turns away a gay couple would in theory be a violation of the law “and you’re looking at a potential misdemeanor citation.”
Wilson confirmed to Knapp in a telephone conversation that even ordained ministers would be required to perform same-sex weddings, the lawsuit alleges.
“Wilson also responded that Mr. Knapp was not exempt from the ordinance because the Hitching Post was a business and not a church,” the lawsuit states.
And if he refused to perform the ceremonies, Wilson reportedly told the minister that he could be fined up to $1,000 and serve up to 180 days in jail.
read the rest
Two important thoughts about this:
1) For-profit/non-profit…who cares? Are we really going to let somebody’s tax status qualify or disqualify them for their 1st Amendment rights? Seriously? We’re going to let the IRS with its convoluted US tax code be the arbiters of who has religious liberty in this country? That is utter insanity. Whether or not your business exists to make a profit should in no way decide what Constitutional liberties you are privileged to. The Founding Fathers made no such caveats when they wrote the Constitution, and we should not be adding those caveats now.
2) Being denied service at a business does not violate a person’s rights. Any business owner should be free to deny service to any customer at any time. Will some business owners deny service for bad reasons? Sure, but their denial doesn’t violate anyone’s rights. The customer they just turned away is free to take their business elsewhere.
This is not the same as dealing with a government entity. Government and government contracted businesses (like utility companies with exclusive contracts with a municipality) don’t get the luxury of denying service because individuals don’t have the ability to take their business elsewhere. You’re stuck with the government, so the government is stuck with you. But private businesses are a different animal. Private individuals have Constitutional rights, and that includes the religious liberties guaranteed in the 1st Amendment.
You know what does violate an individual’s rights? Forcing them to work against their will. That’s what you call slavery. That is exactly what the gay activist bullies are trying to do: force people to work for them against their will. It’s wrong, it’s immortal, and it clearly violates their rights.
http://poorrichardsnews.com/post/100368469093/are-we-still-in-america-city-threatens-jail-time-for#_=_ |
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