5 ms·

Bad headline is bad. The court ruled that creating a website was considered speech. The government cannot force you to produce speech you are against. The st

by kyrra 3y ago

Bad headline is bad. The court ruled that creating a website was considered speech. The government cannot force you to produce speech you are against. The state stipulated (agreed with) the following: > Ms. Smith is “willing to work with all people regardless of classifications such as race, creed, sexual orientation, and gender,” and she “will gladly create custom graphics and websites” for clients of any sexual orientation. > She will not produce content that “contradicts biblical truth” regardless of who orders it. This would also protect a Muslim artist from being forced to produce a drawing of Muhammad if requested by a client.

flufferstutter 3y ago
It seems like that could be used to justify all sorts of questionable refusals?
ec109685 3y ago
LGBT is a protected class, just like race. The desire to have Muhammad drawn isn’t protected in anyway, so it’s not at all equivalent.
- jaywalk 3y ago
  What you're saying is nonsense. How is the desire to have something drawn for you all that different from the desire to have a website created for you? It's essentially the same.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - 49531 3y ago
    Because producing an image of Muhammad is an explicit prohibition in Islam. Providing services to same-sex couples is not a prohibition in Christianity.
    - tivert 3y ago
      > Because producing an image of Muhammad is an explicit prohibition in Islam. Providing services to same-sex couples is not a prohibition in Christianity. Is a distinction like that even relevant? I don't think the US court system is going to wade into determining who is correctly practicing their religion or not. That itself would be a glaring First Amendment violation.
    - za3faran 3y ago
      We Muslims cannot draw or make statues of any prophet or messenger as well, and anything with a soul as well.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Did you completely miss the part > Ms. Smith is “willing to work with all people regardless of classifications such as race, creed, sexual orientation, and gender.” To your credit, it appears you are far from alone in missing this. No less than a Supreme Court Justices apparently missed this fact: "Today is a sad day in American constitutional law and in the lives of LGBT people. The Supreme Court of the United States declares that a particular kind of business, though open to the public, has a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class. The Court does so for the first time in its history." - Justice Sotomayor :/
  - jaywalk 3y ago
    Par for the course with Sotomayor.
  - ec109685 3y ago
    She refuses to offer the same website creation services for gay couples. So she is not willing to work with anyone on their websites.
    - KMag 3y ago
      I believe the point is that she would also refuse to create a same-sex wedding site for a hetero customer and would be willing to make a hetero wedding site for a same-sex customer. It's a subtle but important distinction. Of course, it gets very messy because in the case of wedding sites, the correlation between content and customer is 0.999999999.
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      You mistake the product for the customer. She will make straight websites for gay customers. And she won't make gay websites for straight customers. It is the content of the request, not the sexual orientation of the requester. If you were a freelance developer, would there be projects that you would be morally opposed to working on?
      - ec109685 3y ago
49531 3y ago
> This would also protect a Muslim artist from being forced to produce a drawing of Muhammad if requested by a client. I think there is a difference here. It is not a prohibition in Christianity to create a website for a same sex couple, whereas producing an image of Muhammad is a prohibition in Islam. I'd also argue that a wedding website for same-sex couples is not something that "contradicts biblical truth"; there is plenty of homosexuality in the bible.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Believe it or not, websites are not a major subject in the Bible. But religion =/= holy text.
Brybry 3y ago
And yet this never actually happened, right? This was purely hypothetical if she were to enter the wedding website creation business and a gay couple were to ask her to create a site for them and she declined and if she were to get in trouble with the Colorado government because of it? And Colorado argued that she would not get in trouble and only have to sell the same site templates she already made for hetero-couples to same-sex couples, not make new products for them? [1] And the counter argument was that each theoretical website would be completely unique[2] but this whole situation seems weird and not like one the court should have even heard (yet) because it never happened? [1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/12/303-creative-gay-rights-free-speech-supreme-court.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/12/303-creative-gay... [2] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-476_c185.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-476_c185.pdf [PDF p.22 / Opinion p.16]
- orwin 3y ago
  It's probably a fake case anyxay: https://newrepublic.com/article/173987/mysterious-case-fake-gay-marriage-website-real-straight-man-supreme-court https://newrepublic.com/article/173987/mysterious-case-fake-...

by kyrra 3y ago

flufferstutter 3y ago

It seems like that could be used to justify all sorts of questionable refusals?

ec109685 3y ago

LGBT is a protected class, just like race. The desire to have Muhammad drawn isn’t protected in anyway, so it’s not at all equivalent.

jaywalk 3y ago
What you're saying is nonsense. How is the desire to have something drawn for you all that different from the desire to have a website created for you? It's essentially the same.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 49531 3y ago
  Because producing an image of Muhammad is an explicit prohibition in Islam. Providing services to same-sex couples is not a prohibition in Christianity.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > Because producing an image of Muhammad is an explicit prohibition in Islam. Providing services to same-sex couples is not a prohibition in Christianity. Is a distinction like that even relevant? I don't think the US court system is going to wade into determining who is correctly practicing their religion or not. That itself would be a glaring First Amendment violation.
  - za3faran 3y ago
    We Muslims cannot draw or make statues of any prophet or messenger as well, and anything with a soul as well.
paulddraper 3y ago
Did you completely miss the part > Ms. Smith is “willing to work with all people regardless of classifications such as race, creed, sexual orientation, and gender.” To your credit, it appears you are far from alone in missing this. No less than a Supreme Court Justices apparently missed this fact: "Today is a sad day in American constitutional law and in the lives of LGBT people. The Supreme Court of the United States declares that a particular kind of business, though open to the public, has a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class. The Court does so for the first time in its history." - Justice Sotomayor :/
- jaywalk 3y ago
  Par for the course with Sotomayor.
- ec109685 3y ago
  She refuses to offer the same website creation services for gay couples. So she is not willing to work with anyone on their websites.
  - KMag 3y ago
    I believe the point is that she would also refuse to create a same-sex wedding site for a hetero customer and would be willing to make a hetero wedding site for a same-sex customer. It's a subtle but important distinction. Of course, it gets very messy because in the case of wedding sites, the correlation between content and customer is 0.999999999.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    You mistake the product for the customer. She will make straight websites for gay customers. And she won't make gay websites for straight customers. It is the content of the request, not the sexual orientation of the requester. If you were a freelance developer, would there be projects that you would be morally opposed to working on?
    - ec109685 3y ago

49531 3y ago

> This would also protect a Muslim artist from being forced to produce a drawing of Muhammad if requested by a client. I think there is a difference here. It is not a prohibition in Christianity to create a website for a same sex couple, whereas producing an image of Muhammad is a prohibition in Islam. I'd also argue that a wedding website for same-sex couples is not something that "contradicts biblical truth"; there is plenty of homosexuality in the bible.

paulddraper 3y ago
Believe it or not, websites are not a major subject in the Bible. But religion =/= holy text.

Brybry 3y ago

And yet this never actually happened, right? This was purely hypothetical if she were to enter the wedding website creation business and a gay couple were to ask her to create a site for them and she declined and if she were to get in trouble with the Colorado government because of it? And Colorado argued that she would not get in trouble and only have to sell the same site templates she already made for hetero-couples to same-sex couples, not make new products for them? [1] And the counter argument was that each theoretical website would be completely unique[2] but this whole situation seems weird and not like one the court should have even heard (yet) because it never happened? [1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/12/303-creative-gay-rights-free-speech-supreme-court.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/12/303-creative-gay... [2] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-476_c185.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-476_c185.pdf [PDF p.22 / Opinion p.16]

orwin 3y ago
It's probably a fake case anyxay: https://newrepublic.com/article/173987/mysterious-case-fake-gay-marriage-website-real-straight-man-supreme-court https://newrepublic.com/article/173987/mysterious-case-fake-...