Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDSA Christian business owner has been ordered into a "diversity training" (read re-education) program for refusing to produce t-shirts for a gay pride parade.
Fox News' Todd Starnes is reporting on the disturbing decision handed down by the Human Rights Commission in Lexington, Kentucky which essentially tells Christian business owners to leave their religion at home.
The case involved Blaine Adamson of Hands On Originals who declined to print shirts promoting the Lexington Pride Festival in 2012. The Gay and Lesbian Services Organization subsequently filed a complaint. The Commission ruled that Adamson violated a local ordinance against sexual-orientation discrimination.
“It was a landmark decision,” said the Commission's Executive Director, Raymond Sexton. “This is a very important ruling for us.”
According to Sexton, the law is the law, and it's against the law in Lexington to discriminate against the LGBT community regardless of religious beliefs.
“We’re not telling someone how to feel with respect to religion," Sexton told Starnes, "but the law is pretty clear that if you operate a business to the public, you need to provide your services to people regardless of race, color, sex and in this case sexual orientation.”
As punishment, Adamson is being compelled to attend "diversity training" conducted by the Lexington Human Rights Commission.
"Take just a moment and let that sink in," Starnes writes. "A Christian business owner is being ordered to attend diversity training – because of his religious beliefs. That’s a pretty frightening concept and a mighty dangerous precedent . . . In essence, the Human Rights Commission is telling Christian business owners they have to change their religious beliefs. It’s the idea that the government knows best and Christians must reorient their beliefs."
Sexton says he's a Christian who is just upholding the law.
“The law in Lexington is pretty clear,” he said. “You cannot discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Regardless of what your religious beliefs are – if you have a public business – then that’s how you have to operate.”
Alliance Defending Freedom, a law firm that specializes in religious liberty cases, who represented Adamson, disagrees.
“No one should be forced by the government or by another citizen to endorse or promote ideas with which they disagree,” said ADF attorney Jim Campbell. “Blaine declined to the request to print the shirts not because of any characteristic of the people who asked for them, but because of the message that the shirts would communicate.”
He described Adamson's punishment of being forced into a government-run re-education program a dangerous precedent.
" . . . (F)or the government to step in and order (what is essentially) a re-education of its citizens - that’s a dangerous precedent for the government to engage in.”
Adamson is one of many Christian business owners who are being victimized by LGBT activists who are using anti-discrimination laws designed by "progressive" lawmakers to target the faithful and drive them out of the public square. These laws are so flawed that they discourage the discrimination of one class of people by allowing other classes of people to be discriminated against.
"It seems to me if a Christian business owner does not want to do business with an LGBT organization – that should be their right," Starnes opines. "And should an LGBT business choose not to do business with a church that should be their right, as well."
But let's face it, the "new tolerance" has nothing to do with fairness and true diversity when it comes to Christians or anyone else who refuses to cow-tow to the dictatorship of political correctness.
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