Trump Administration Sides With Christian Photographer

LGBT, Religious Freedom, Rights of Conscience, , ,

We’ve heard time and again about Christian photographers, bakers, florists, and wedding chapel owners being dragged into court because they declined to take part in a same-sex wedding or ceremony.

Sometimes the Christian business owners win their cases. Other times they lose.

These court cases often center on local ordinances or state laws that give people special privileges or protections based on sexual-orientation or gender identity.

During the Obama Administration, we saw wave after wave of radical LGBT policies rolled out at the federal level.

However, we seem to be experiencing a little bit of a reprieve under the Trump Administration.

Recently the U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in a federal court in Kentucky arguing that the government cannot force a Christian photographer to photograph a same-sex wedding.

Alliance Defending Freedom is handling a lawsuit on behalf of photographer Chelsey Nelson over the Louisville-Jefferson County Metro “Fairness Ordinance.”

The ordinance grants special rights and privileges to people based on sexual-orientation and gender identity.

In the federal government’s statement about the lawsuit, the U.S. Attorney General’s office wrote,

The United States is committed to protecting the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, which include both the right to “the free exercise” of religion and “the freedom of speech.” . . . These freedoms lie at the heart of a free society and are the “effectual guardian of every other right.”

The statement goes on to say that forcing Chelsey Nelson to photograph a same-sex wedding would violate her First Amendment rights and that she probably would win any court case over the issue.

We have said before that religious liberty is a casualty of the radical efforts to redefine marriage.

Thankfully, the federal government is siding withe people of faith right now.

Hopefully this court case will result in better protections for the free exercise of religion in the future.

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State Still Dealing With Fallout From Bad U.S. Supreme Court Ruling

Family, Marriage, ,

According to recent news reports, the State of Arkansas is still dealing with fallout from a bad ruling the U.S. Supreme Court issued last summer.

In June the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the State of Arkansas must list two “mothers” on a child’s birth certificate if the child’s birth mother is legally married to another woman. The ruling overturned a good decision the Arkansas Supreme Court handed down last December.

The State is currently struggling to come up with a way to amend its laws and comply with the Supreme Court’s order.

As we said last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court is asking Arkansas to ignore basic facts about biology. Birth certificates exist to record that a child was born and who the child’s biological parents are presumed to be.

As the Arkansas Supreme Court correctly noted last year, no child can have two biological mothers, but the Arkansas Department of Health is being forced to operate as if that is possible.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling treats the names that appear on birth certificates like some sort of marriage benefit. Birth certificates are issued for the sake of children — not for the sake of adults. They are not simply pieces of paper. They are vital records that need to be accurate and deserve respect. We should not let them become mere political ploys in the ongoing debates about marriage.

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