It’s Not Just For Canada Anymore (UPDATE)

What’s not just for Canada is the penalizing of people by “human [civil] rights commissions” for acting on their religious beliefs. It’s just happened in New Mexico, and the victims are a Christian husband-and-wife photography team who refused to do the photos for a lesbian “commitment ceremony.” According to the Alliance Defense Fund:

Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund say they will appeal a ruling by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission Wednesday because of its “stunning disregard” for the First Amendment. The commission found an Albuquerque photography company, run by a Christian husband and wife, guilty of “sexual orientation” discrimination under state anti-discrimination laws for declining to photograph a same-sex “commitment ceremony.”

“Christians in the marketplace should not be penalized for abiding by their beliefs anymore than anyone else should,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence. “The Constitution prohibits the state from forcing unwilling people to promote a message they disagree with and thereby violate their conscience. The commission’s decision shows stunning disregard for our client’s First Amendment rights, and we will appeal this ruling in state court.”

A same-sex couple asked Elaine Huguenin, co-owner with her husband, Jon Huguenin, of Elane Photography in Albuquerque, to photograph a “commitment ceremony” that the two women wanted to hold in Taos. Neither marriage nor civil unions are legal between members of the same sex in New Mexico.

Elaine Huguenin declined because her and her husband’s Christian beliefs are in conflict with the message communicated by the ceremony. The same-sex couple filed a complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission, accusing Elane Photography of discrimination based on sexual orientation. The commission held a one-day trial in January.

Wednesday the commission issued an order finding that Elane Photography engaged in “sexual orientation” discrimination prohibited under state law and ordered it to pay $6,637.94 in attorneys’ fees to the two women who filed the complaint.

“The government cannot make people choose between their faith and their livelihood,” said Lorence. “Could the government force a vegetarian videographer to create a commercial for the new butcher shop in town? American business owners do not surrender their constitutional rights at the marketplace gate.”

So this couple is being penalized financially for standing up for a moral principle that is still the opinion of the majority of Americans, and refusing to take part in an action that carried with it an implicit affirmation of the behavior of the women involved.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has a pair of excellent posts on this case (here and here).

UPDATE: I hadn’t thought of this before, but consider the possibilities that Roger Severino outlines in the Washington Examiner:

Although the First Amendment protects dissenting houses of worship from being forced to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies against their will, that is not the end of the story — it is barely even the beginning.

Simply changing the definition of marriage opens the door to a flood of lawsuits against dissenting religious institutions based on state public accommodation and employment laws that prohibit marital status and sexual orientation discrimination.

Additionally, religious institutions that refuse to recognize a new state-imposed definition could be stripped of access to government programs, have their tax exemption denied and even lose the ability to solemnize civil marriages.

We need only look at Massachusetts for a preview of what to expect. There, in 2004, justices of the peace who refused to solemnize same-sex unions due to religious objections were summarily fired.

It did not matter that other justices of the peace were available to do the job because, by Massachusetts law, same-sex unions were now entitled to equal treatment. A religious belief became a firing offense.

It is but a small step for the state to impose this rationale on churches and other houses of worship and end legal recognition of religious marriage ceremonies that do not comply with the state’s expanded definition of marriage.

Read it all, and imagine what the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission and its allies in the gay advocacy organizations could do with this (if New Mexico ever changes its definition of marriage).

(Via Stand Firm.)

Free Speech Under Attack in Canada

The foremost opponent of free speech in the Frozen North, a former Human Rights Commission employee named Richard Warman, has decided that the civil courts are the way to go to shut down voices he doesn’t like. Among his targets are a number of conservative bloggers, including Kathy Shaidle of Five Feet of Fury, who writes:

Canada’s busiest litigant, serial “human rights” complainant and — the guy Mark Steyn has called “Canada’s most sensitive man” — Richard Warman is now suing his most vocal critics — including me.

The suit names:

•Ezra Levant (famous for his stirring YouTube video of his confrontation with the Canadian Human Rights tribunal after he published the “Mohammed Cartoons”)
•FreeDominion.ca (Canada’s answer to FreeRepublic.com)
•Kate McMillan of SmallDeadAnimals.com
•Jonathan Kay of the National Post daily newspaper and its in-house blog
•and me, Kathy Shaidle of FiveFeetOfFury.com

Richard Warman used to work for the notorious Human Rights Commission, which runs the “kangaroo courts” who’ve charged Mark Steyn with “flagrant Islamophobia.”

Richard Warman has brought almost half these cases single-handledly, getting websites he doesn’t like shut down, and making tens of thousands of tax free dollars in “compensation” out of web site owners who can’t afford to fight back or don’t even realize they can.

The province of British Columbia had to pass a special law to stop Richard Warman from suing libraries because they carried books he didn’t approve of.

Richard Warman also wants to ban international websites he doesn’t like from being seen by Canadians.

Read it all, help if you can, and pray for the future of freedom in Canada.