Gay Rights Trump 1st Amendment

Yesterday on this blog there was a post entitled Do Photographers Have Constitutional Rights? No, Says New Mexico. The subject was, of course, the New Mexico case where a Christian wedding photographer declined to photograph a lesbian commitment ceremony and ended up being ordered by the New Mexico Human Rights Commission to pay more than $7000 in legal fees to the offended couple. 

I was working on writing a post on this subject but was running into problems finding more information.  It seems that outside Christian circles, this story has hardly been reported at all.  The MSM doesn’t appear to believe this story is newsworthy.  Indeed, doing a Google news search for "Elane Photography," "Elaine Huguenin," and "Christian photographer" only turn up three results.  The blogosphere is, however, a different story.  There is no shortage of opinions on the subject

As mentioned in the previous post, Elaine Huguenin, co-owner of  Elane Photography, was charged before the New Mexico Human Rights Commission with discrimination against a lesbian couple for refusing to photograph their commitment ceremony.  Of note in the few pieces I’ve found on this is the fact that Mrs. Huguenin specified in an email to the potential clients why she would not photograph the ceremony.

New Mexico has an anti-discrimination law that includes sexual orientation as one of the categories of individuals that cannot be discriminated against.  The point has been made that had Mrs. Huguenin simply declined the request without giving a reason, she and her company would have been fine.  But because she specified that she was not willing to photograph the ceremony because it was a gay ceremony, she is guilty of discrimination.

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