Culture Friday - Time to settle the question

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Up next, Culture Friday. 

The Supreme Court this week agreed to take up a major religious liberty case from Colorado. It involves a web designer from the Denver area by the name of Lorie Smith. She calls her business “303 Creative.” She’s a Christian who is looking to expand that business into creating wedding websites. But—and you can probably guess where this is going—she’s wanting to make it clear she has Bible-based objections to same-sex weddings and plans to state plainly that she would refuse service.

And that of course is the clash.

BROWN: It is. The state of Colorado has an anti-discrimination law. And the way the state’s attorney general reads that law is that it requires wedding-based businesses to serve same-sex weddings. Lorie Smith’s lawyers claim the law unfairly targets dissenting views and creates a clear violation of First Amendment free speech and religious rights.

The Supreme Court plans to examine only whether a law that requires an artist to speak a particular message—or stay silent—violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment. The court is expected to hear arguments in the fall.

BUTLER: Let’s bring in John Stonestreet. He’s the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast and he joins us now. Morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

BUTLER: I know you’ve been following this one closely, John, and we’d like to get into the particulars of the new case in a moment. But first, explain why you think this case is even a live controversy wasn’t this already dealt with in the Jack Phillips case?

STONESTREET: Well, it’s a live controversy because the courts have made it a controversy. You go back to the penumbra that was found in the Supreme Court decision about us having the right to, you know, choose our own meaning of the universe and meaning of existence. All of that is the backdrop of this, as is a cultural shift in which sexuality went from being an issue of behavior to being an issue of identity on the same level as racial identification. Specifically, in Colorado, what you have is a very aggressive Civil Rights Commission and other very aggressive state forces willing to really drive home this non discrimination law.

What happened in the Jack Phillips Masterpiece Case at the Supreme Court was that the court was asked to really make a decision on, you know, whether religious freedom indeed has any sort of space left in corporate America and for private business owners. As we embrace this new thing that the Supreme Court also gave us, which is same sex marriage.

What they ended up deciding on instead, was that religious freedom, at least has to be respected. This goes to Justice Kennedy's—former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's—lifelong crusade, or at least the last part of his term against animus. He didn't want anybody to have animus against anybody else. So he promised us in the Obergefell decision that this could change America without animus. And then in this court case, trend to smack back the other way, he told the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that they were guilty of the animus.

And they were. I mean, they were clearly cruel to Jack, they clearly treated his religious convictions differently than they treated other concerns. So what was never addressed, was anything having to do with freedom of speech. And really the balancing out of religious convictions and this new embrace of sexual freedoms into civil rights law that deals with public accommodation. And that's what remains unaddressed.

BUTLER: So John, if the Phillips case decision was based primarily on the rough treatment by the State of Colorado, do you think that this time around the Court will have the courage to actually deal with the First Amendment question?

STONESTREET: Well, that's a great question. I mean, it’s not clear what the Supreme Court will do. They have shown themselves to be very, very hesitant to do any sort of settling of these big cultural debates. If there is a clause, or a nuance, or a technicality that can keep the ruling from being as dramatic as this issue now requires—and one thinks here, right at about this time of our friend, Baronelle Stutzman who was set up for this by the court and then the Court refused to hear a case, eventually they're gonna have to settle these issues.

These aren't issues that need to really exist, certainly didn't need to exist in the cultural war sort of way that the left now is waging on people who have sincerely held beliefs in marriage, and want to live their lives. There's not an issue of public accommodation where somebody can't find a hotel room or, you know, other service providers, as was the case when the civil rights law was passed in the 60s.

So the Supreme Court gave us this issue. They need to settle it. The upside here on the 303 case with Lorrie Smith is that web design has already been determined by plenty of court precedence that it fits into that category of speech.

And freedom of speech means, not only that I can say what I want—within reason—but I'm not forced to say things that I don't believe. I'm not forced to produce speech that I don't hold to. That was the case that the Alliance Defending Freedom folks made for Jack Phillips, that was the case that was attempted to be made with Baronelle Stutzman as well.

But it was a little bit more fuzzy when you're talking about cake artistry, or you're talking about flowers, just to what degree it counts as a message, it counts as speech. There's already legal tracks laid that web design counts as speech. And it's time for them to address it because unfortunately, there's been a lot of victims kind of lane along the way that have been run over by this new way of doing things and they haven't found legal recourse.

BUTLER: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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