As reported here a few months ago a gay male couple in Iowa were turned away from the Gortz Haus art gallery wedding venue that they wanted to use for their own wedding because the owners said that homosexuality violated their Mennonite religious sensibilities.
In Iowa according to the states’s Civil Rights Acts the refusal of venue was illegal and a lawsuit was brought against the bigoted couple.
Now the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed an 11-count lawsuit against the Iowa Civil Rights Commission and wants the Commission to rule that the owners of Gortz Haus’ refusal to host a same-sex wedding in their public art gallery wedding venue was not a violation of the Iowa Civil Rights Act because of religious freedom. *yaaaawn*
A spokesperson for the Becket Fund claimed that they didn’t want to eliminate homosexuality as a protected class, just to allow the Mennonite beliefs of the Osgaards to supersede the civil rights of Lee Stafford and his fiancee.
“To our knowledge, no Iowa or Federal court has ever forced anyone to participate in a religious activity against their will. Doing so now would abandon Iowa’s history of being the vanguard of protecting individual freedom, and out of line with state and federal law.”
All state and federal laws have ruled that public venues and public services cannot discriminate based on orientation, and every venue outside Iowa that have discriminated have lost those legal battles
No comments:
Post a Comment