On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a Colorado based web designer could refuse to design a website for same-sex couples opening the door to give businesses a license to discriminate against the LGBTQ persons as well as other communities. The plaintiff, Lorie Smith who owns a company called 303 Creative, claimed a gay couple named Stewart and Mike wanted her to create a website for the forthcoming wedding and that doing so would violate her religious beliefs.
Yet just prior to the Court's ruling, an article written by Melissa Gira Grant in The New Republic, indicates the case is a fake. Grant contacted Stewart who informed her he was unaware that he was part of the case, is not gay, is also a web designer and did not ask Smith to create a website for him:
According to court filings from the plaintiff, Stewart contacted Smith in September 2016 about his wedding to Mike “early next year.” He wrote that they “would love some design work done for our invites, placenames etc. We might also stretch to a website.” Stewart included his phone number, email address, and the URL of his own website—he was a designer too, the site showed.
This week, I decided to call Stewart and ask him about his inquiry....It took just a few minutes to reach him. I assumed at least some reporters over the years had contacted him about his website inquiry to 303 Creative—his contact information wasn’t redacted in the filing. But my call, he said, was “the very first time I’ve heard of it.”
Yes, that was his name, phone number, email address, and website on the inquiry form. But he never sent this form, he said, and at the time it was sent, he was married to a woman. “If somebody’s pulled my information, as some kind of supporting information or documentation, somebody’s falsified that,” Stewart explained. (Stewart’s last name is not included in the filing, so we will be referring to him by his first name throughout this story.)
“I wouldn’t want anybody to … make me a wedding website?” he continued, sounding a bit puzzled but good-natured about the whole thing. “I’m married, I have a child—I’m not really sure where that came from? But somebody’s using false information in a Supreme Court filing document.”
Grant was interviewed on MSNBC by former RNC Chair Michael Steele along with former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal who said the Colorado Attorney General should file an emergency motion with the Supreme Court to vacate the decision.
The Supreme Court had better vacate this decision because what they have done is take away rights from the LGBTQ community and other minority communities under false pretenses. Failure to vacate this decision will give businesses license to discriminate against the LGBTQ community under the guise of religious freedom.
This decision will also affect other minorities. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in her dissent, “The decision’s logic cannot be limited to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The decision threatens to balkanize the market and to allow the exclusion of other groups from many services. Sotomayor added, “a website designer could equally refuse to create a wedding website for an interracial couple, for example.”
It would also allow for a Lester Maddox like person to open a restaurant and refuse to serve African-Americans. The late, former Georgia Governor refused to serve African-Americans in part because it violated his religious beliefs. Maddox considered integration to be "unGodly, unChristian and unAmerican." Sadly, it seems many Americans define their religious beliefs not through service to Christ or to God but against those who they deem to be unGodly and unChristian.
Should the Supreme Court be unprepared to make amends it will simply demonstrate the conservative majority has an anti-LGBTQ agenda as demonstrated by Justice Clarence Thomas' remarks a year ago that the Court should revisit same-sex marriage after overturning Roe v. Wade. It will also demonstrate that the conservative majority on the Court doesn't care if they advance their anti-LGBTQ agenda based on a lie.
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