Getting Married!  Whooooo!!!

IS THIS REAL or an EXAGERRATION?

The Pennsylvania Family Institute is opposed to HB 300, amending the Human
Relations Act to add sexual orientation and gender-identity. The problems with adding this
language to the Human Relations Act extend far beyond the inadequate exceptions for religious
institutions. Instead, the addition of this language puts decisions implicating homosexual
behavior on the same level with racial bigotry.
Adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the Human Relations Act is going to
get a lot of reasonable institutions and individuals in significant trouble:
• What if a religious school expelled students for homosexual sex? That could constitute a
violation based on denial of a public accommodation. Someone may argue against this
example in that Human Relations Act protects mere “status” and nothing more.
However, regardless of the wording of such laws, their application has moved well
beyond mere status. In fact, this is a real life example from California where a religious
school ran afoul of a law preventing discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation”
after expelling two students for that exact reason.
• What if a photographer refused to photograph a same-sex “wedding” ceremony? That
could violate the public accommodation provision. In New Mexico a photographer was
fined $6,600 after she refused to do so. To be clear, she did not refuse to serve
homosexual clients, but merely wished to avoid photographing such a ceremony. She
was still found her guilty of discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation”.
• What if a religious landowner did not want to use its property to facilitate such a
ceremony? That, too, could violate the public accommodation provision. The Ocean
Grove Camp Meeting Association of the United Methodist Church was preliminarily
found guilty of discrimination after it refused to allow its property to be used for a civil
union ceremony. Again, it was not prohibiting entry by homosexuals, it just refused to
have its property used for such a ceremony. As a result, prosecution continues, it may
face a fine, and it has lost part of its tax exempt status.
• What if a physician declines to perform in vitro fertilization on a lesbian patient when it
violates the physician’s moral beliefs to bring a child into a non-married relationship? A
California court found this choice was a violation of the law against discrimination on
the basis of “sexual orientation.”
• What if a religious adoption placement agency refuses to place children into a
homosexual relationship? Catholic Charities in Massachusetts abandoned its adoption
placement ministry for religious reasons rather than comply with a similar law in MA.

I am doomed to get thumbs-down from pretty much everybody who reads this, but oh, well …

The way I see it, there’s no reason to deny people the right to marry, regardless of their sex. The opposition is almost always rooted in religious belief, but this isn’t a theocracy, and we don’t deny civil rights to people based on personal religious views.

On the other hand, forcing people in private business to support something they morally oppose is unacceptable. If a photographer doesn’t want to shoot a gay wedding, or a doctor doesn’t want to help a lesbian couple get pregnant, they should have the right to decline. There are plenty of other photographers and doctors to pick from who will be happy to oblige. Free enterprise doesn’t exist if people aren’t free to pick their clientele.