DOMA unconstitutional (5-4); Court punts on gay marriage (no standing)

My brother got one of those "Covenent Marriages" after he had already been married for about 12 years. Biggest. Mistake. Ever. Unraveling that thing took over two years.
And I'm happy to live in a country where I can tell Michelle Bachmann that her (or any) God is of no relevance to me or the rule of law. At least for now that is true.

 

A photography business is a First Amendment protection? Where's the precedent for that?

 

quant, based on your own quote, a New Mexico business is either a public accommodation or a private club. Are you arguing the photographer is a private club?

 

So, a photographer can't refuse to shoot a wedding because the participants are gay, but someone could turn down a job because he/she disagreed with one's political views right? So, Elton John could have turned down Rush Limbaugh, and a photographer could turn down a neo-Nazi.

So, can the photographer object based on the couples political views, which support gay marriage?

 

Regardless of the letter of the law, I find the idea that an individual photographer not being allowed to discriminate however they feel like to be absurd.

 

I'm not, but then again I'm not arguing that the photographer is "an establishment" subject to these laws, either. Just because a photographer isn't a private club doesn't mean that he/she is a public accommodation.

 

The question isn't the legality of the law. It's whether the delicate balance between competing individual rights is being maintained in the best way possible.

When business owners across an entire region of the country conspire to keep an entire class of people outside of the economic community, then there's a big enough problem that their individual rights need to be trampled on. I don't see that in wedding photographers and weddings involving same-sex participants.

 

What I believe in my faith is that a man and a woman, when they get married, are performing something before God and it's not simply the two persons who are meeting.

 

That's nice, but your faith is completely irrelevant to a legal discussion.

 

No more than the photographer can object based on a couple's "political view" that it's OK for a black man to marry a white woman. You can't discriminate based on membership of a protected class, and you can't play games to suggest that that's not what you're doing.