Major religious groups, as well as nearly 1,300 individual Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders, signed on to briefs filed Monday with the Supreme Court, arguing that religious business owners should be required to serve same-sex couples.
"Personal religious views are entitled to the utmost respect, but do not provide a license to disregard neutral civil rights laws that do not directly and substantially burden actual religious exercise," reads an amicus, or friend-of-the-court, brief filed on behalf of the 1,300 clergy members.
The faith-related briefs were among an estimated 50 filed Monday opposing the Christian baker in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. Justices are scheduled to hear arguments Dec. 5 in the case that centers on whether cake decoration is a form of expression protected under the First Amendment. It's one of dozens of similar cases filed in the past two years aimed at protecting the rights of supporters of traditional marriage in the wake of the Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage.
A ruling against the gay couple would harm, not help religious freedom, argues a brief joined by the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Chicago Theological Seminary.
"Public accommodations laws like Colorado's generally promote religious liberty, by protecting individuals from discrimination on account of their religion. Such laws also promote human dignity, which is itself a religious value," it reads.
"It's important for the justices to know there is more than one set of beliefs around LGBTQ inclusion and welcome," said the Rev. Marie Alford-Harkey, president and CEO of the Religious Institute, one of the organizations that helped spearhead the brief from 1,300 faith leaders.
This simply is mirroring trends of Australians becoming less religious.
Hunter Edwards
Where are those muslim stats? How many muslim leaders want to bake cake?
Its sad that so many people are sucked into the love is love lie and dont know the real game is destroying marriage and family to end the west. But whatever. Enjoy forcing churches to marry you and hunting down christians to bake your cakes and if you do it right you can get oppression bux on gofundme and a sadface photo and story in the local rag.
Anthony Gray
...
Grayson King
Lol Mormons said no to your degeneracy again. Take the pederasty and HIV elsewhere.
Adam Barnes
Wrong!
More than 4 in 10 Mormons (42 percent) say they "strongly favor" or "favor" allowing a small business owner in their state to refuse to provide products or services to gay or lesbian people if doing so violates their religious beliefs, compared to 52 percent who "oppose" or "strongly oppose" this policy, according to data provided to the Deseret News.
Pic is Brigham Young's son.
Jace Collins
So faggots now can have their gay cake? Not politics
Angel Collins
That is DEFINITELY politics.
David Davis
Force me to bake the fags a cake, they'll just get a shitty cake.
