Same-Sex Marriage Trumps Religious Liberty in New Mexico

An exchange in the comments section following the above-titled article by Ryan T. Anderson were brought to my attention:

COMMENTER 1: Businesses can’t discriminate. It doesn’t matter what your religious beliefs are. Refusing service to a gay couple is like refusing service to an interracial couple.

COMMENTER 2: So a Jewish photographer can be forced to photograph a Nazi wedding?

Here’s the opening of Anderson’s article:

[Recently] the Supreme Court of New Mexico ruled that the First Amendment does not protect a Christian photographer’s ability to decline to take pictures of a same-sex commitment ceremony—even when doing so would violate the photographer’s deeply held religious beliefs. As Elaine Huguenin, owner of Elane Photography, explained: “The message a same-sex commitment ceremony communicates is not one I believe.”

But New Mexico’s highest court, deciding an appeal of the case, today agreed with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission and ruled against Elane Photography, concluding that neither protections of free speech nor free exercise of religion apply.

Elaine and her husband Jon, both committed Christians, run their small photography business in Albuquerque, N.M. In 2006, she declined the request to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony. In 2008, the New Mexico Human Rights Commission ruled that by declining to use its artistic and expressive skills to communicate what was said and what occurred at the ceremony, the business had engaged in illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation.

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