Law Christian couple can sue over Minnesota same-sex marriage video law

Lord Coke

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I posted about this in the lounge before any news article were written because iIve learned that the forum will not read court opinions. Now that one is out i hope it is okay that I open it up for general discussion in the main forum. I think the opinon says it all. What's next making a muslim iman conduct a gay marriage?
https://kelo.com/news/articles/2019...minnesota-same-sex-marriage-video-law/930327/

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Friday revived a lawsuit by a Minnesota couple challenging a state law requiring that their video production company film same-sex weddings, which they say violates their Christian beliefs.

In a 2-1 decision, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Paul, Minnesota, said Angel and Carl Larsen can try to show that the law violates their rights to free speech and to freely exercise their religious beliefs under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Circuit Judge David Stras, an appointee of President Donald Trump, called videos by the St. Cloud, Minnesota, couple "a medium for the communication of ideas about marriage," and said the state's law "is targeting speech itself."

The court ordered U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in Minneapolis to decide whether the Larsens and their Telescope Media Group deserve a preliminary injunction against the law, which subjects violators to fines and possible jail time. Tunheim had dismissed the lawsuit in September 2017.

"With this perversion of the First Amendment, the majority sanctions a policy of 'No gays allowed,'" Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat who defended the law, said in a statement.

He pledged to respond in the "strongest and most strategic way possible" to the decision.

"Angel and I serve everyone," Carl Larsen said, in a statement provided by his lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom. "We just can't produce films promoting every message."

The case is among several in recent years where private business owners or individuals invoked their religious beliefs to deny services to same-sex couples.

In June, for example, the Washington Supreme Court ruled for a second time against a Christian florist for refusing to sell flowers to a same-sex couple for their wedding, setting up a potential clash at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis in 2015 cited her religious beliefs in refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Same-sex marriage became legal in Minnesota in 2013, and nationwide in 2015.

The Larsens said they wanted to use their talents to honor God, including by producing wedding videos promoting marriage as a "sacrificial covenant between one man and one woman."

Minnesota objected, saying the Larsens had to produce videos of same-sex weddings as well as opposite-sex weddings, or else produce none.

But in Friday's decision, Stras said the Larsens could try to show that Minnesota law interfered with their message "by requiring them to say something they otherwise would not."

He distinguished antidiscrimination laws targeting conduct and only incidentally affecting speech, calling it "unquestionably" acceptable to require an employer to remove a "White Applicants Only" sign.

Circuit Judge Jane Kelly dissented, saying the majority's approach could support treating customers differently based on sex, race, religion and disability.

"Nothing stops a business owner from using today's decision to justify new forms of discrimination tomorrow," she wrote. "In this country's long and difficult journey to combat all forms of discrimination, the court's ruling represents a major step backward."

The case is Telescope Media Group et al v Lucero, 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 17-3352.

Court opinion

 
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Take their money and then give them the most jittery, fucked up, out of focus wedding video of all time.
Problem solved.
 
I posted about this in the lounge before any news article were written because iIve learned that the forum will not read court opinions. Now that one is out i hope it is okay that I open it up for general discussion in the main forum. I think the opinon says it all. What's next making a muslim iman conduct a gay marriage?
https://kelo.com/news/articles/2019...minnesota-same-sex-marriage-video-law/930327/

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Friday revived a lawsuit by a Minnesota couple challenging a state law requiring that their video production company film same-sex weddings, which they say violates their Christian beliefs.

In a 2-1 decision, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Paul, Minnesota, said Angel and Carl Larsen can try to show that the law violates their rights to free speech and to freely exercise their religious beliefs under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Circuit Judge David Stras, an appointee of President Donald Trump, called videos by the St. Cloud, Minnesota, couple "a medium for the communication of ideas about marriage," and said the state's law "is targeting speech itself."

The court ordered U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in Minneapolis to decide whether the Larsens and their Telescope Media Group deserve a preliminary injunction against the law, which subjects violators to fines and possible jail time. Tunheim had dismissed the lawsuit in September 2017.

"With this perversion of the First Amendment, the majority sanctions a policy of 'No gays allowed,'" Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat who defended the law, said in a statement.

He pledged to respond in the "strongest and most strategic way possible" to the decision.

"Angel and I serve everyone," Carl Larsen said, in a statement provided by his lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom. "We just can't produce films promoting every message."

The case is among several in recent years where private business owners or individuals invoked their religious beliefs to deny services to same-sex couples.

In June, for example, the Washington Supreme Court ruled for a second time against a Christian florist for refusing to sell flowers to a same-sex couple for their wedding, setting up a potential clash at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis in 2015 cited her religious beliefs in refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Same-sex marriage became legal in Minnesota in 2013, and nationwide in 2015.

The Larsens said they wanted to use their talents to honor God, including by producing wedding videos promoting marriage as a "sacrificial covenant between one man and one woman."

Minnesota objected, saying the Larsens had to produce videos of same-sex weddings as well as opposite-sex weddings, or else produce none.

But in Friday's decision, Stras said the Larsens could try to show that Minnesota law interfered with their message "by requiring them to say something they otherwise would not."

He distinguished antidiscrimination laws targeting conduct and only incidentally affecting speech, calling it "unquestionably" acceptable to require an employer to remove a "White Applicants Only" sign.

Circuit Judge Jane Kelly dissented, saying the majority's approach could support treating customers differently based on sex, race, religion and disability.

"Nothing stops a business owner from using today's decision to justify new forms of discrimination tomorrow," she wrote. "In this country's long and difficult journey to combat all forms of discrimination, the court's ruling represents a major step backward."

The case is Telescope Media Group et al v Lucero, 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 17-3352.

I don't see this as cut and dry either way.

I do support business being forced to serve black people during the civil Rights era, despite some reservations about precedent.

I support this, because their was a real world need that demanded this.

That this prejudice was institutionalized, and required a institutional solution.

I can't say the same thing about gays being discriminated against. I think it happens, but not on a institutional level.

For this reasoning, I defer to private and religious liberty here.

This is one of those issues, where I feel like the politicians are taking ideological positions to activate voters on both sides, showing the R's and D's are both Marxists.
 
@Lord Coke

I have looked through the court opinions a few times you have posted them.

Don't get discouraged on that.

Most won't, but you are performing a public service by doing so.
 
I can't say the same thing about gays being discriminated against. I think it happens, but not on a institutional level.

For some reason the name Kim Davis keeps popping into my head not sure why I am connecting that to something on an institutional level ? How long have gays been allowed to get married ? Dont some states still have sodomy laws ?

@NoDak I think I might need some help in regards to gays and things on an institutional level. You got any facts that can help me flesh out this idea im trying to form here ?
 
For some reason the name Kim Davis keeps popping into my head not sure why I am connecting that to something on an institutional level ? How long have gays been allowed to get married ? Dont some states still have sodomy laws ?

@NoDak I think I might need some help in regards to gays and things on an institutional level. You got any facts that can help me flesh out this idea im trying to form here ?

she's the woman that refused to hand out marriage lisences
 
For some reason the name Kim Davis keeps popping into my head not sure why I am connecting that to something on an institutional level ? How long have gays been allowed to get married ? Dont some states still have sodomy laws ?

@NoDak I think I might need some help in regards to gays and things on an institutional level. You got any facts that can help me flesh out this idea im trying to form here ?

Right, but as a government official, there was no need for a court ruling saying she couldn't do this. She was removed from her job, pretty quickly.

What we are talking about is private institutionalized discrimination.

Look at the case in Western Washington state. Do you really think that person was facing institutionalized discrimination?

Because I think they had to find a person that wouldn't make them a cake.
 
I don’t understand the same sex couples mindset in these situations.


Who wants someone to be at one of the most important moments in their life, that disapproves of that marriage? It’s like inviting a serious ex girlfriend to the wedding.


I make music, am I going to hire a guy who hates jazz to play in a jazz group?


It’s just so weird...


Btw, the Christians are idiots. Take their money, donate some to starving children. Jesus will give you a pass.
 
Let the gays go to a video company that wants to film their wedding. Business should be allowed to do what they want. This is not the 1900’s where there were very few options for people.
 
Look at the case in Western Washington state. Do you really think that person was facing institutionalized discrimination?

If the cake maker can refuse and the government backs it yea I think thats exactly what it is.
 
I don't think something is institutionalized if you go to 100 cake makers, and 1 refuses.

What is something if it is backed up by laws and government ?

I agree they were being pests but it looks to me like they had a point to prove .
 
What is something if it is backed up by laws and government ?

I agree they were being pests but it looks to me like they had a point to prove .

But you have competing liberties here.

You have the right of a gay person to engage in commerce, but you also have the right of a religious person to engage in commerce without having to abandon their beliefs.

Either way you will have the government trampling on someone's liberty.

Hence why I think the deciding factor, is the scope of the problem.
 
remember this is not we will not serve gays. The issue is we will not make stuff that endorses gay marriage.
 
I don’t understand the same sex couples mindset in these situations.


Who wants someone to be at one of the most important moments in their life, that disapproves of that marriage? It’s like inviting a serious ex girlfriend to the wedding.


I make music, am I going to hire a guy who hates jazz to play in a jazz group?


It’s just so weird...


Btw, the Christians are idiots. Take their money, donate some to starving children. Jesus will give you a pass.
No better way to get a substandard product than to force someone against their will to do a job. It is known.

So how do we balance out unjustified discrimination vs freedom of conscience? No matter what, I have a really tough time with accepting mandated actions, whereas prohibited and unrestricted (freedom of) action can be used to balance each other out. Bit of a clumsy sentence, but gets my point across well enough. Same idea goes for speech.
 
Any business should be able to decline doing this if they wish without getting sued because of it.
 
I don’t understand the same sex couples mindset in these situations.

Neither do I, but I'm pretty meh on the whole provision of goods and services with private businesses thing. The last thing I'd want to do is insist some cuntbags take my money, I'd just go elsewhere and tell people they do awful work.

institutionalized discrimination?
Dont some states still have sodomy laws? @NoDak I think I might need some help in regards to gays and things on an institutional level. You got any facts that can help me flesh out this idea im trying to form here ?

They do, and state legislatures actually vote to keep them on the books even after the SCOTUS ruling in 2003 knocked the teeth out and rendered them virtually unenforceable nationwide. It's less institutionalized discrimination and more a general lack of protections left to the discretion of state law(s), if that makes sense.

The federally protected classes are race, color, religion, sex, national origin and disability; sexual orientation is not one of them. Trump isn't lying here, for example. It's kind of messed up considering he just got an official LCR endorsement literally days ago but these dudes can't take a fucking hint that they're hated.


 
btw this is as close to trash talking you are going to see in a court opinion

The dissent is a moving target. At certain points, it seems to assume that theLarsens’ speech is protected, at least in some form.See postat 43; United States v.O’Brien
, 391 U.S. 367, 376 (1968) (“[W]hen ‘speech’ and ‘nonspeech’ elements arecombined in the same course of conduct, a sufficiently important governmentalinterest in regulating the nonspeech element can justify incidental limitations onFirst amendment freedoms.”). At others, the dissent suggests that the videos are notspeech at all, primarily because the Larsens are telling someone else’s story as partof a for-profit service.
The dissent’s scattershot approach may be due to the fact that neither of these theories (or any of its others) finds support inSupreme Court precedent or opinions of this court
 
Neither do I, but I'm pretty meh on the whole provision of goods and services with private businesses thing. The last thing I'd want to do is insist some cuntbags take my money, I'd just go elsewhere and tell people they do awful work.




They do, and state legislatures actually vote to keep them on the books even after the SCOTUS ruling in 2003 knocked the teeth out and rendered them virtually unenforceable nationwide. It's less institutionalized discrimination and more a general lack of protections left to the discretion of state law(s), if that makes sense.

The federally protected classes are race, color, religion, sex, national origin and disability; sexual orientation is not one of them. Trump isn't lying here, for example. It's kind of messed up considering he just got an official LCR endorsement literally days ago but these dudes can't take a fucking hint that they're hated.




I am torn on this. The more I think about don't ask, don't tell, the more it makes sense to me.

Can we pass a law that says discussing your sexuality in public is a reason you can be terminated, whether gay, straight, or somewhere in-between.

Can we all agree that bedroom shit, belongs in the bedroom?

I'm not trying to shame anyone, but can we all agree that some things, specifically sexuality, should be a private matter, and that when you make them public, you open yourself to public scrutiny?
 
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