Same-sex weddings: Supreme Court hears free-speech clash

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The Supreme Court hears arguments Monday about whether a conservative Christian business owner has a 1st Amendment right to refuse to work with same-sex couples planning to marry. At issue is a Colorado website designer claiming a free-speech right to ignore the state’s anti-discrimination law and turn away gay couples seeking her services from her.

Twenty-two states including California require businesses open to the public to provide full and equal service to all, without regard to race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. Although the high court has heard similar disputes in the past, it has not declared that business owners with strong religious convictions have a constitutional right to discriminate against same-sex weddings.

In recent years, the Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based advocacy group, backed a series of lawsuits on behalf of Christians who are in business but refuse to take any part in gay weddings. They include a baker of wedding cakes, a wedding photographer, a florist, and now, a website designer. Lorie Smith says she would like to expand her business designing websites to include weddings, but only if she can be assured she need not work with a same-sex couple. She sued seeking such a right and lost before a federal judge and the 10th Circuit Court in Denver.

Justices voted in February to hear her appeal from her in the case of 303 Creative vs. Elenis, and decide whether it violates the free-speech clause of the 1st amendment to “compel an artist to speak or stay silent.”
Her lawyers de ella argue she does not seek a right to discriminate against gay people in every instance, but instead only wants the right to avoid being required to — in her view de ella — express support for same-sex marriages that contradict her religion de she.

She “is willing to create custom websites for anyone, including those who identify as LGBT,” they wrote in their brief de ella, “provided their message de ella does not conflict with her religious views de ella. But she cannot create websites that promote messages contrary to her faith, such as messages that condone violence or promote sexual immorality, abortion, or same-sex marriage.”