Another day, another Colorado businessman who decides that providing professional services to a wedding he doesn’t approve of should let him ignore state anti-discrimination law. In this case, it’s a photographer / videographer deciding not to take pictures at a legal wedding between two women.
“He asked, ‘What’s your fiancée’s name?’ And I said, ‘Amanda.’ And I could tell he kind of paused on the phone, but I thought he was maybe jotting down notes,” said Suhyda. “Then I l got to work and looked at my email.”
The email from Media Mansion stated, “Unfortunately, at this time, we are not serving the LGBTQ community!”
“With an exclamation point,” said Suhyda. “Kind of like a punch in the gut.”
First off, class act turning them down by email. With an odd “Unfortunately” (why “unfortunately” when it’s your decision?), and phrasing it as some sort of tribal group thing (they weren’t asking him to serve their “community,” but them as individuals).
To make matters worse, on Media Mansion’s Facebook page, the owner posted a letter stating the company would by happy to work with the LGBTQ community on business videos, but not film “gay ceremonies or engagements,” citing “personal religious beliefs.”
I guess it’s okay to help them make money to support their sinful lifestyle, just not to take pictures of their wedding.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Hostetter, the owner of Media Mansion, said he is not discriminating against anyone, but has turned down more than one gay couple.
Um … isn’t that sort of the definition of “discriminating”?
“It really like just kind of exploded, and everyone just kind of assumed that we hate gay people, which is sad,” said Hostetter.
Yeah, I mean, what could possibly make them think you hate them?
“I have friends who are gay, and if they want to hang out and me to do a video for them, it’s totally cool. But specifically doing a project that would be against my beliefs in anything regardless of what the specifics of it is not something I want to engage in.”
They aren’t asking you to get married to a same-sex individual, Benjamin. They aren’t even asking you to officiate. They’re asking you to take pictures.
Identifying himself as Christian, he said he is not judging anyone, …
Uh, yeah, you kind of are.
… but he is writing a book about “family, covenant, sex and marriage” and has strong beliefs about the covenant of marriage. “I believe it has to do with family and producing healthy families,” said Hostetter. “I don’t think there’s a lot of good evidence out there that two men or two women can come together and have a really amazing effective family that is good and is everlasting.”
So, first off, yes, that sounds exactly like both “judging” and “discriminating.”
Second, one has to wonder how much you grill the opposite-sex couples who come to you to get married. Do you have a checklist of things you go over with them to make sure that they are treating the “covenant of marriage” as seriously as you are? Are you a pre-marriage counselor to them? Do you talk with their pastors? How are you confirming that when Bob and Sue come in that there is any evidence that they will have “a really amazing effective family that is good and is everlasting” so that you can feel religiously okay about taking pictures at their wedding?
And who else should be allowed to make that judgment? If someone believes that, say, black marriages are more transitory because of [fill in stereotypes about black men and black women here], and so doesn’t believe that a marriage between two black people is likely to be “good and everlasting” and properly “covenential” — do they get to discriminate against black customers, too?
I don’t doubt your religious sincerity, Benjamin — but I’m really not sure how you draw a line here that lets you say that your particular religious beliefs get to trump the law, but any other zany beliefs from the bad old days of legal racial discrimination, religious discrimination, gender discrimination, age discrimination, etc., don’t get to do so as well.
Let’s hope the state board that reviews these violations of the anti-discrimination law does a bit better job this time of providing a non-hostile atmosphere in doing so, since that was the primary objection in the SCOTUS ruling in the Masterpiece Bakery. I wish them luck, because it’s difficult for me to hear these kind of arguments without feeling sort of hostile about it myself.
