Man Sues Anti-Gay Mississippi Funeral Home for Refusing to Cremate His Husband

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Shortly after Robert Huskey died at the age of 86, his husband and partner of 52 years received some shocking news: The Mississippi funeral home that they had paid to transport and cremate Huskey’s body now refused to do so—simply because he was gay.

That’s the allegation laid out in a lawsuit brought on behalf of Huskey’s husband, Jack Zawadski, as well as his nephew, John Gaspari, against Picayune Funeral Home. On Tuesday, Lambda Legal joined the suit, which seeks damages for breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation, and the intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. Zawadski and Gaspari aren’t suing the funeral home for engaging in anti-gay discrimination because Mississippi does not protect LGBTQ people from refusal of service. Indeed, the state’s notorious HB 1523 actually protects businesses’ right to turn away LGBTQ customers—though the courts have put that law on hold for now.

Initially, the nearby Picayune Funeral Home seemed like a perfect choice, and Gaspari paid the company $1,795 to transport and cremate Huskey’s body once he passed. But when Huskey died and the nursing home contacted the funeral home to pick up his body, it refused to do so. The funeral home had discovered that Huskey’s next-of-kin was his husband, and realizing Huskey was gay, informed the nursing home that it did not “deal with their kind.”

Fuck those people for not transporting him, but they are a private business. If they don't want to serve gay people their business will suffer in the long run. But again they're a private business, they don't have to serve anyone if they don't want to

They signed a contract though to cremate him before they denied him service. Also I can't see how cremating a dead gay guy could be widely construed as an endorsement of homosexuality nor a specific act in violation of religious beliefs.

Not that I agree with them in the slightest, but I would've thought they'd've been happy to put a gay in the oven

well he's already dead

If they signed a contract then they're obligated to. This is a rare instance where I'd use the term bigot. The guys already dead, fuck off.

left wing loser, being black is better than being gay

Basically the issue here is whether Mississippi's religious freedom bill applies here. It was temporarily put on hold by a judge but could technically apply here and would vindicate the funeral parlor, even (I guess) if they were in breach of contract, which is what the suit is about since MS does not have any LGBT discrimination provisions and the federal courts are divided between whether the "sex" protected class of the Civil Rights act includes gays (7th Circuit says yes, 11th says no) and the Supreme Court has yet to rule if sincerely held religious beliefs are a valid grounds for businesses refusing to serve LGBT clients.

If this were a case where they had refused to cremate a Black person, this would be a lot bigger issue. The issue for me is the double standard that some people are to be protected due to their identity and others are not because of religion, and that the courts have yet to rule on this in a unifying way.

Legally speaking this is a really interesting question because where do you draw the line.

On one hand if businesses are completely free to discriminate you can see an emergence of "no colored people allowed" kind of bars

On the other businesses are privately owned and shouldn't just be compelled to do things, after all they are losing out on money and if they wish to do so, why not? The practical argument could of course be that a similar business does not exist in a reasonable vicinity.

Either way you begin to encroach on a legal gray area where you can't really define a truly just doctrine.

tfw stuck living near there

thank God I'm a straight white male

>Be christian
>Don't want to torch a faggot

The issue is more specifically if refusing to serve LGBT people can be justified by sincerely held religious beliefs, or if such laws are unfairly preferential to Christians, which the Supreme Court here has as of yet refused to rule on.

Why would they cremate him when he's already a flammer

Religious rights should be subserviant to equality rights since religion is by definition chosen but you don't choose your sex/race/ethnicity/sexuality...

you should be able to refuse whoever you want for whatever reason. private business is not the federal government.

religious freedom is in the constitution, gay freedom isn't, it's a made up right. we cannot accept that behaving unnaturally is a human right.

Team fag on this one. I usually would support their right to refuse, but if the funeral home didn't do their full due diligence BEFORE they took that tasty $$$, fuck 'em. They should finish the job they agreed to do.

Well they cannot refuse to serve on certain grounds covered by the existing Civil Rights Act and around 20 states have anti-LGBT discrimination provisions but the main questions are whether the part of the Civil Rights Act that says businesses may not discriminate by sex covers sexual orientation and also whether religious freedom laws allowing people to refuse service based on sincerely held religious beliefs are constitutional. You may say that businesses may refuse to refuse service for whatever reason they wish, but that hasn't been true for many decades.

That the federal government cannot make laws favoring a particular religion is in the Constitution. That religious people may discriminate as a consequence against particular groups is not enshrined in the Constitution.

Yeah, if they signed a contract without checking, fuck 'em. Plus, shouldn't they WANT to incinerate faggots? Inconsistent! Bad!

lol exactly

Those laws literally do not work on Muslims.
smart people would rebrand their bakeries and crematoriums as Mohammed brand.

Well I think the issue here is more whether Mississippi's religious freedom law applies here (and would apply to an already signed contract). Being free to refuse to uphold contracts due to religious beliefs seems like a previously unexplored position AFAIK.

Muslims (theoretically at least) are required to follow the law as much as anyone else. I don't think saying that Muslims will not be held to the law is an excuse for Christians to not be held to it. I feel like this case is just discrimination for discrimination's sake. They did it just because they could.

Thanks for your actually thoughtful responses btw

bump

Hey, man. I don't call people on the right losers. Relax, people are allowed to have different opinions than mine and not be retarded.