LifeSiteNews reports on a legal case from New Jersey that is of a type that we’re going to be seeing more and more of in the future unless the U.S. Supreme Court puts a halt to it. A judge has ruled that a United Methodist retreat house has to open its facility to same-sex union ceremonies because non-discrimination is a more important value that religious freedom:
A New Jersey judge ruled against a Christian retreat house that refused to allow a same-sex civil union ceremony to be conducted on its premises, ruling the Constitution allows “some intrusion into religious freedom to balance other important societal goals.”
On Thursday, administrative judge Solomon A. Metzger ruled that religious liberty did not exempt the seaside retreat, which is associated with the United Methodist Church, from renting its facilities out for purposes that violate its moral beliefs.
In March 2007, Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association declined Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster’s request to rent its Boardwalk Pavilion for the ceremony. The couple sued, claiming they had been discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation. In December 2008, the state Division on Civil Rights found the Christian campground had likely violated the state Law Against Discrimination (LAD) and joined the case.
Judge Metzger said church doctrine was irrelevant. “As to ‘free exercise’ [of religion], the LAD is a neutral law of general application designed to uncover and eradicate discrimination; it is not focused on or hostile to religion,” he wrote. The free exercise clause did not factor into his ruling, he stated, but “a much lower standard that tolerates some intrusion into religious freedom to balance other important societal goals.” He believed the “arm’s-length nature of the transactions” gave Ocean Grove “comfortable distance from notions incompatible with its own beliefs.”
Metzger agreed in his ruling that Ocean Grove “is fundamentally a religious organization, free to form its mission without government oversight or intrusion” and that its owners had not “acted with ill-motive.” The facility “opposes same-sex unions as a matter of religious belief, and in 2007 found itself on the wrong side of recent changes in the law.”
Metzger ruled that, since the facility allowed non-Christians to use its facility for [weddings], it had no doctrinal limitations. But Methodists do not limit their sacramental ministry to Christians and historically do not recognize marriage as a sacrament.
The judge in this case had no business basing any of his decision on his understanding of Methodist doctrine. The only relevant religious issue is whether the Camp Ground Association was using the teaching of its parent denomination in making its decision, and the answer to that is unequivocally yes. At that point, the issue becomes whether to prefer the non-discrimination rights of gays to the religious freedom of practitioners. The place of religious freedom in the First Amendment, and the fact that sexual orientation does not (yet, at least) have protected class status under the SCOTUS doctrine of “strict scrutiny” means that this should have been an easy decision to make in favor of the CGA. That it went the other way is an indication that personal and political preference was at work.
Given the culture of the bench, I predict you’ll see more and more judges making the same choice to prefer gay rights over religious freedom until such time as the SCOTUS makes a definitive ruling in favor of the First Amendment. And if the latter should ever decide the other way, that’s when it’s going to be time to head underground, or give up our consciences and faith altogether.
January 16, 2012 at 9:16 pm
This is a very good case for showing why elections matter.
January 17, 2012 at 11:48 am
It’s another case of the seeds of the sixties producing a surprising crop. The moral crusade for civil rights ran roughshod over a whole host of private property and free association rights. Should someone who believed miscegenation was immoral have the freedom to discriminate against mixed race couples? The easy emotional answer was “of course not.” So people used the sword of the civil authority to force people to “act morally” and forced people not to discriminate against mixed race couples.
And since racists had — and have — very few friends among respectable thinkers, nobody took too seriously the issue of what authority has to force people to do business with people with whom they don’t want to do business. People who did argue the point were dismissed as racists whose real agenda was defending immorality.
So fast forward a generation to today. Now the question is should someone who believes homosexuality is immoral have the freedom to discriminate against same sex couples. The only difference, in principle, is whose ox is being gored. Now they’re coming for us rather than for them.
A whole generation of judges and legislators have grown up idolizing the heroes of the civil rights movement who endured so much to fight to end discrimination against, among others, mixed race couples. Is it any wonder they want to follow in the footsteps of those heroes?
It was easy for church leaders in the sixties to get on the civil rights bandwagon, because government compulsion changed conduct much quicker than moral persuasion. There’s always a danger when use the government to build the kingdom of God. As one of my teachers used to say, Romans 13 (“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities…”) has a tendency to become Revelation 13 (“And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with … blasphemous names on its heads”) before we’ve realized what’s happened…
January 18, 2012 at 10:21 pm
Pretty soon these judges are going to haul God into court (now there’s a nice irony) because He discriminates against homosexuals in the procreative process….How dare He!…Didn’t he get the memo that we are now living in more enlightened age?…What’s interesting to me is how how these liberals have given us the shack-up culture, having told us all these years that marriage is not particularly important…now these same libs are telling us how terribly important marriage is in so far as it can be granted to homosexuals. And with a straight and sanctimonious face! The liberal governor of New York, Cuomo, made gay marriage a priority of his adminstration despite the fact that the New York economy is tanking and taxes going through the roof. Cuomo shacks up with his live-in honey and the press hardly makes a peep about the irony. In countries where marriage has become redefined in this way marriage has totally lost its meaning. Dysfunction begets more dysfunction. Beam me up Scotty!