The photographer who refused to provide service to a gay wedding because it went against his religious beliefs lost again, this time with an appeal to the Supreme Court.
This has some religious people quite upset, because they believe — try to follow this logic — that laws that prevent cruelty to and discrimination against other human beings violates their rights. Their right to deny rights to others.
I know, right?
The law in that particular state prohibited this exact kind of discrimination, so the photographer thought that there should be an exemption for those who disagree with the law. You know, in the same way that there are exceptions in other laws that allow you to disobey them if you don’t like them. In the same way some religious folks were able to ignore laws that struck down interracial marriage back in the ’60s.
Oh, right, I remember now. That never happened.
Republican leader Mike Huckabee thinks this decision is just terrible. After all, the Bible is against this and our laws should do whatever the Bible says. Which means that not only should we be stoning gays to death, we should also bring back slavery.
As Huckabee stated, “unless God re-writes it, edits it, sends it down with His signature on it, it’s not my book to change.” I wonder how many gays Huckabee stoned to death this week?
Here in this place called the United States, we have a Constitution in which the Founding Fathers said, in the very first amendment, that our government would not promote a religion in any way (the “establishment clause.”) There are other parts of the Constitution that prohibit any sort of religious test be given to anyone in our government, too.
Is it all that surprising that people like Mike Huckabee pick and choose what parts of the Constitution they think should apply to them in the same way they do with the Bible?