This week the court will take a closer look at gay rights and religious freedom.
 | By Eleanor Barkhorn Editor at Large, Opinion |
The case 303 Creative Ltd. vs. Elenis will be argued before the Supreme Court today. It involves a woman named Lorie Smith, a web designer in Colorado who wants to refuse to make wedding websites for same-sex couples. |
It's one of those cases that touches on some of the toughest issues we deal with as a country. What constitutes free speech? How far can the government go in telling people how to run their businesses? What happens when the rights of one group (in this case, gay couples who want to exercise their federal right to marry, enshrined by the 2015 Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges) seem to come in conflict with another group's (religious people who believe that marriage is only between a man and a woman and don't want to endorse weddings that fall outside that definition)? |
Two recent essays explore the big issues surfaced by the 303 Creative case. In one, David Cole — the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union and a lawyer who represented a gay couple in a similar Supreme Court case in 2018 — examines the legal matters. |
He urges readers to ask the right questions about this case. The question is not, as it may seem initially, "Can an artist be compelled to create a website with which she disagrees?" Instead, Cole writes, "The right question is whether someone who chooses to open a business to the public should have a right to turn away gay customers simply because the service provided is 'expressive' or 'artistic.'" |
Cole argues that this case is not really about the First Amendment, but instead about public accommodations laws, which ensure that "everyone has equal access to the public marketplace." He continues, "They don't trigger serious First Amendment concerns because they apply equally to all businesses, expressive or not, and are focused on the commercial conduct of discriminatorily denying service — not on controlling the content of anyone's speech." |
Tish Harrison Warren, an Anglican priest who writes a weekly newsletter for Times Opinion, steps back from the legal details of the case to probe the bigger social conflicts at play here. The clash of gay rights and religious freedom, she writes, threatens to become "a war of all against all." But it does not have to be this way. She calls on all of us, whatever our particular religious beliefs or ideas about marriage, to give each other space to disagree. |
She writes: "I think a majority of people — including many gay people and many theologically conservative religious people — want to live in a society where they and others, even those with whom they deeply disagree, can live the lives they desire and practice, proclaim and pass on what they believe." |
This, she concludes, is the promise of pluralism. "It is a promise worth keeping," she says. |
Taken together, these essays ask us to understand clearly what is at stake in this case — and to avoid the urge to demonize those who think differently than we do. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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