Religious Freedom, Homosexual ‘Rights’ Clash in Supreme Court Appeal
by Tad Cronn
Lawyers for a Christian couple have filed with the Supreme Court an appeal of a New Mexico court that said homosexual rights are more important than religious freedom.
In the case of Elane Photography v. Willock, Elane Huguenin and her husband, Jonathan, are photographers who were fined by the New Mexico Human Rights Commission for refusing to photograph a homosexual “commitment ceremony.” The state does not recognize civil unions nor homosexual marriages.
The New Mexico Supreme Court upheld the penalty, ruling that religious freedom takes a back seat to homosexual “equality.”
In its opinion, the court wrote, “The Huguenins are free to … pray to the God of their choice. … But there is a price, one that we all have to pay somewhere in our civic life.”
The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the Huguenins, is asking the Supreme Court to reverse the New Mexico court’s ruling on the grounds that it violates the couple’s beliefs by forcing them to endorse behavior they view as sinful.
This is not an appeal of who has rights and who doesn’t. That’s not the way the Constitution works. There are no rights granted by the Constitution.
The Founding Fathers were very clear that rights come from God, not government. The Bill of Rights limits the government, not the individual.
The relevant question, particularly in light of the current wave of anti-constitutionalism that swept across the land under the Obama Administration, is whether the government is going to do its job of protecting the religious freedom that is inherent in every man and woman.
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