Conservative media outlets are promoting the cause of an Idaho wedding chapel suing so it can deny services to gay couples, inaccurately portraying the chapel as a religious institution rather than as a for-profit business.
On October 17, the anti-gay legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a lawsuit against the city of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, on behalf of the chapel, which is called the Hitching Post. The lawsuit alleges that the city's non-discrimination ordinance would force owners Donald and Evelyn Knapp to violate their religious beliefs by performing same-sex weddings, despite the fact they had previously offered to officiate non-religious ceremonies without complaint.
With the help of ADF, the Hitching Post re-filed its business certificatelast month in order to support its claim that it's an explicitly religious corporation. The company also scrubbed its website of all references to "civil weddings" or "ceremonies of other faiths," replacing it with Christian-specific language that excludes other kinds of wedding ceremonies.
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http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/10/23/what-you- … dah/201288
For-Profit Wedding Chapel Suing to Avoid Having to Perform Same Sex Marriages
Well, I suppose if they want to go to all the trouble of re-certifying themselves as a religious institution, that's a way around it. It's not really the honest thing to do, but the Supreme Court gave them this out with the Hobby Lobby decision.
But, businesses where the public is invited to enter to purchase goods or services HAVE to abide by the laws that govern public places or gays, blacks, or short people will have no recourse if most of Main Street suddenly closes their doors to such people. It's the whole issue of civil rights all over again. Religious organizations are, and should be, exempt from performing same-sex marriages. But a civil servant who is authorized to marry people, such as a Justice of the Peace, should be duty bound to abide by the city, state or federal law concerning their job and concerning same-sex marriages. Yes, gay couples can easily walk by this time, but when the insurance company representative refuses to sell them insurance on their new home or the garbage collector refuses to pick up their garbage, then we are back in the dark ages where many in the Republican Party want us to be. There is now an organization worldwide that works to undo gay rights. It started in France and now has chapters in many European nations and in the U.S. They already have multi-million dollar funding. I fear that we are just beginning to feel the backlash against gay marriage and gay rights of all kinds.
My point of view -- They don't want to do gay marriages? Fine- Fuck em. Let them go broke for all I care. I don't imagine it'll make one bit of difference now to the gay population, because the Chapel has put their shit out for all to see. Yeah there will be some us that go there just to piss those people off, but for the most part gays will walk on by. My opinion only-