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New Mexico Supreme Court rules that Christian photographer must affirm gay marriage

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Pastor Matt tweeted about this story from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a pro-religious liberty group.

Excerpt:

In 2006, Vanessa Willock asked Elaine Huguenin—co-owner with her husband, Jonathan, of Elane Photography in Albuquerque—to photograph a “commitment ceremony” that Willock and another woman wanted to hold in the town of Taos. Neither marriage nor civil unions are legal between members of the same sex in New Mexico. Huguenin declined because her and her husband’s Christian beliefs are in conflict with the message communicated by the ceremony, which Willock asked Huguenin to help her “celebrate.” Willock found another photographer for her ceremony, but nevertheless filed a complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission accusing Elane Photography of discrimination based on “sexual orientation.” The commission held a one-day trial in January 2008 and then issued an order several months later finding that Elane Photography engaged in “sexual orientation” discrimination prohibited under state law. The commission ordered Elane Photography to pay $6,637.94 in attorneys’ fees to the two women who filed the complaint. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys took the case to the New Mexico court system to appeal the commission’s ruling. The state’s Court of Appeals upheld the commission’s ruling, and Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys appealed it to the New Mexico Supreme Court.

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled Thursday against a photographer who declined to use her artistic expression to communicate the story of a same-sex ceremony. In a concurrence accompanying the opinion, one of the justices wrote that the photographer and her husband, Elaine and Jonathan Huguenin, “now are compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives,” adding “it is the price of citizenship.”

“The idea that free people can be ‘compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives’ as the ‘price of citizenship’ is a chilling and unprecedented attack on freedom,” said Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence. “Americans are now on notice that the price of doing business is their freedom. We are considering our next steps, including asking the U.S. Supreme Court to right this wrong.”

A Rasmussen poll last month found that “If a Christian wedding photographer who has deeply held religious beliefs opposing same-sex marriage is asked to work a same-sex wedding ceremony, 85% of American adults believe he has the right to say no.”

In other statements in the concurrence, Justice Richard C. Bosson wrote, “At its heart, this case teaches that at some point in our lives all of us must compromise, if only a little, to accommodate the contrasting values of others…. That compromise is part of the glue that holds us together as a nation, the tolerance that lubricates the varied moving parts of us as a people…. In short, I would say to the Huguenins, with the utmost respect: it is the price of citizenship.”

Compromising your beliefs to avoid offending unstable people who think that the world revolves around them is “the price of citizenship”.

I was always surprised, during the Supreme Court trial on gay marriage, to find lots of Christians who had changed their Facebook profile image to an equal sign, indicating their support for redefining the definition of marriage. I suspect that they did this because they imagined that Christianity had nothing to do with what the Bible said, but was instead about telling non-Christians nice things in order to be liked by them. Just tell people that God is anything they want God to be. Just tell them that God isn’t holy and doesn’t care how they act. Just tell them that whatever they do in order to feel happy is fine with God.

I wonder what the people who supported the redefinition of marriage will say to Christians who were prosecuted by gay rights activists on Judgement Day? Here’s a pro-tip for non-Christians. You want to avoid making it harder for other people to know God and to follow him. When you make it harder for other people to know God and follow him God is not happy with you for doing that. In fact, making it harder for Christians to know God and follow him is about the worst thing you can do to offend God. It’s a bad idea to use the government to take away someone’s basic human right to religious liberty just because they disagreed with you. Feeling offended is not a good justification for you to force your views on other people using the power of government.

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If you want to annoy the left, then raise your children to be like Texas senator Ted Cruz

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Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz
Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz

Here’s a profile in National Review of my one of my favorite senators.

Excerpt:

The party’s highest-profile Texans, George W. Bush and Rick Perry, tended to match inarticulateness with cowboy swagger and lend themselves to mockery as intellectual lightweights. Bush went to Yale and Harvard Business School, yet no one naturally thinks of him as an Ivy Leaguer. The two Lone Star State governors played into the Left’s stereotypes so nicely that if they didn’t exist, the New York Times editorial board would have had to invent them.

Cruz is different — a Princeton and Harvard man who not only matriculated at those fine institutions but excelled at them. Champion debater at Princeton. Magna cum laude graduate at Harvard. Supreme Court clerkship, on the way to Texas solicitor general and dozens of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cruz is from the intellectual elite, but not of it, a tea-party conservative whose politics are considered gauche at best at the storied universities where he studied. He is, to borrow the words of the 2008 H.W. Brands biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a traitor to his class.

Democrats and liberal pundits would surely dislike Cruz no matter where he went to school, but his pedigree adds an element of shocked disbelief to the disdain. “Princeton and Harvard should be disgraced,” former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell exclaimed on MSNBC, as if graduating a constitutionalist conservative who rises to national prominence is a violation of the schools’ mission statements.

[…]In a Washington Post column a year ago, Dana Milbank noted Cruz’s schooling and concluded that his tea-party politics must be a put-on, that he is, underneath it all, an “intellectually curious, liberal-arts conservative.” Note the insulting assumption that an interest in books and ideas immunizes someone from a certain kind of conservative politics.

One of the Left’s deepest prejudices is that its opponents are stupid, and Cruz tramples on it. At hearings, Cruz has the prosecutorial instincts of a . . . Harvard-trained lawyer. Watching Attorney General Eric Holder try to fend off Cruz’s questioning on the administration’s drone policy a few months ago was like seeing a mouse cornered by a very large cat.

Cruz hasn’t played by the Senate rules that freshmen should initially be seen and not heard. In fact, he joined the upper chamber with all the subtlety of a SWAT team knocking down a drug suspect’s front door.

For people who care about such things — almost all of them are senators — this is an unforgivable offense. At another hearing, as Cruz says that the highest commitment of senators should be to the Constitution, another senator can be heard muttering that he doesn’t like being lectured. Chairman Pat Leahy (probably the mutterer) eventually cuts him off and informs him he hasn’t been in the Senate very long.

Cruz lacks all defensiveness about his positions, another source of annoyance to his opponents, who are used to donning the mantle of both intellectual and moral superiority.

And here’s a quick review of where Ted Cruz came from:

Rafael Cruz, the father of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, invigorated the crowd during tonight’s FreedomWorks Free the People event.

Describing his own personal journey escaping Cuba and working hard to build a life for himself in the U.S., the elder Cruz noted comparisons that he believes exist between Fidel Castro’s governance and President Barack Obama’s executive actions.

Upon rising to power, he said that Castro, like Obama, spoke about hope and change. While the message sounded good at the time, it didn’t take long for socialism to take root in his home country. And he paid the price.

For his part in the revolution — one that many originally assumed would yield a more vibrant country — Cruz was punished while in Cuba.

“I was in prison,” he said. “I was tortured, but by the grace of God I was able to leave Cuba on a student VISA and came to the greatest country on the face of the earth.”

Cruz described his efforts working as a dishwasher in America and paying his own way through the University of Texas. From there, he built a life for himself — one that was filled with experiences that caused him to greatly appreciate the country that had given him so much.

His plight in Cuba colored his American experience

“You can’t understand a loss of rights unless you’ve experienced it,” Cruz told TheBlaze following the speech.

His unique perspective leaves Cruz with the ability, he argues, to see the troubling signs surrounding socialism. Young people in America today, he told TheBlaze, take for granted the rights and privileges that the U.S. has afforded them.

Fascinating.

Now people always complain when I say that I am trying to find a wife with the background, education, experience and temperment to raise effective, influential children. I have a whole list of influential people I want to clone, in fact. I want a William Lane Craig, a Wayne Grudem, a Michael Licona, a Guillermo Gonzales, an Ann Gauger, a Jennifer Roback Morse, a Scott Klusendorf, a Mark Regnerus, and… a Ted Cruz. And I’ve saved the money to be able to get at least a few of those, too. The truth is that I had some of the experiences that Cruz’s father had, and if he can make a Ted Cruz, then so should I be able to. They have to come from somewhere!

Now of course it’s hard to guarantee outcomes when it comes to raising children, but there are some things you can prepare for. You can study things you hate that are hard, and save your money for Ph.D tuition. You can go to grad school yourself and publish research. You can look for a wife who shows the ability to nurture people so that they get better and rise higher. And maybe, you might just raise the next Ted Cruz. I think the old adage “if you aim at nothing, then you will surely hit it” is a good saying for marriage. If you are going to put hundreds of thousands of dollars and decades of your life into a marriage, then you should aim at something. You might hit it. You’re not just there to make another person feel good – you’re there to make the marriage serve God. Raising influential, effective children is one way of doing that. But it doesn’t happen by accident. And it isn’t necessarily going to be “fun”.

By the way, my Canadian readers might like to know that Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta – the most conservative city in Canada. And it shows. You guys up north still have your Stephen Harper and your Ezra Levant, but we took your Ted Cruz and your Mark Steyn. We need them more than you do!

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Obama administration sues state of Texas for passing laws to prevent voter fraud

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From the Hill.

Excerpt:

The Justice Department will file a lawsuit against Texas on Thursday, arguing that the state’s voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act.

Attorney General Eric Holder vowed to fight state voting laws that the DOJ views as unfair or in violation of federal law, despite a recent Supreme Court decision striking down a key part of the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

[…]The Texas law requires voters to produce one of the following before casting a ballot: a driver’s license, a personal ID card, a military ID card, a citizenship certificate with a photograph, a U.S. passport or a license to carry a concealed handgun.

Opponents of the law argue that it unfairly discriminates against minority voters who might not have a photo ID and might not able to obtain one easily.

Many Republicans, especially the Texas delegation, have balked at the possibility of the DOJ’s lawsuit against Texas.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, blasted the DOJ’s decision to move against Texas.

The congressman said he talked with Holder and asked him to withdraw the lawsuit, arguing Congress should be the one to resolve discrepancies within the Voting Rights Act.

“I regret that the Department of Justice announced its intent to file a lawsuit against Texas’ Voter ID law citing Section 2 to the Voting Rights Act,” said Sensenbrenner in a statement. “Voter ID laws are an essential element in protecting the integrity of our electoral process and do not have a discriminatory intent or effect.

Some of my readers in other countries often ask me – “if Obama is such a bad President, then how come the majority of Americans voted for him”. Well, first of all, a lot of these people are simply voting for Obama in order to get a share of what their working neighbors earn. They want the government to give them money, in short. But a lot of the votes for Democrats are simply fraudulent votes. People voting twice in two different states, dead people’s names being used by fraudulent voters, etc. Voter fraud is a Democrat specialty. It’s so sacred to them that even Attorney General Eric Holder is suing anyone who tries to take away voter fraud. This is about what you would expect from an administration that facilitated the sale of weapons to drug cartels and covered up Benghazi by blaming a Youtube video.

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