Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
A lesbian couple is suing the Catholic owners of a Vermont inn for refusing to host their fall wedding reception, a suit that could establish a dangerous precedent that will allow Christian business-owners to be forced to participate in events that are opposed to their religious beliefs.
The Associated Press is reporting that Jim and Mary O’Reilly, devout Catholics who own the Wildflower Inn in Lyndonville, Vermont, are being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of Kate Baker and Ming Linsley, a lesbian couple who wanted the Inn to host their fall wedding reception.
According to the suit, Channie Peters, mother of Ms. Linsley, spoke with the events coordinator at the Wildflower in October of last year and initially was able to book the event. However, the coordinator e-mailed her shortly after the arrangements were made to say that “due to their personal feelings”, the O’Reilly’s do not host gay receptions at their facility.
The ACLU contends that the O’Reilly’s are in violation of Vermont’s Fair Housing and Public Accommodations Act, which prohibits inns, hotels, motels and other establishments with five or more rooms from turning away patrons based on sexual orientation. The law makes an exemption for religious organizations.
“We have never refused rooms or dining or employment to gays or lesbians,” the O’Reillys said in a statement. “Many of our guests have been same-sex couples. We welcome and treat all people with respect and dignity. We do not however, feel that we can offer our personal services wholeheartedly to celebrate the marriage between same-sex couples because it goes against everything that we as Catholics believe in.”
Greg Johnson, a law professor at Vermont Law School, told The New York Times the case “could set an important precedent not only for Vermont but for other states with marriage equality.”
Johnson noted that even though same-sex marriage is legal in only six states and the District of Columbia, 21 states have public-accommodation laws similar to that of Vermont. Religious exemptions, such as those that were included in New York’s recently passed same-sex marriage laws, protect religious organizations from being forced to participate in same-sex weddings, but these exemptions typically offer no protection to individual believers.
As a result, states have ruled against individuals in similar situations in the past. For instance, in 2008, the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights ruled that the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, a Methodist group, violated the state’s fair-accommodation law by refusing to allow a lesbian couple to hold a civil union ceremony on its beachfront pavilion.
In the UK, similar suits are becoming common, with one showing evidence of being deliberately targeted by homosexual activists who deliberately sent a same-sex couple to an inn owned by Christians so they could sue after the innkeepers turned them away. The victim in that case was Hazelmary Bull from Cornwall, England who was successfully sued in January of this year for refusing to allow a same-sex couple to share a room on her premises.
She later remarked that the ruling showed “Christianity is being marginalized in Britain … Much is said about ‘equality and diversity,’ but it seems some people are more equal than others.”
Unless something is done to tighten up the laws in this country and afford protection to individual believers, we appear to be heading in the same direction.
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