The Non-Prophets

The Non-Prophets, Episode 22.28.1 featuring Kelley Laughlin, Kara Griffin, Helen Greene and Teo el Ateo

The Supreme Court rules for a designer who doesn’t want to make wedding websites for gay couples, AP News, By Jessica Gresko, June 30, 2023 https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-gay-rights-website-designer-aa529361bc939c837ec2ece216b296d5


Question abound, how did such a contrived scenario get to the U.S. Supreme Court in the first place? It seems only for the purpose of allowing it to rule that you don't have to make a website for a gay couple when no one had even asked for one.
Lori Smith does not even build websites yet. She said she wants to do so but her Christian faith would keep her from creating websites celebrating same-sex marriages.
Things got heated up when concerns about Lori Smith’s claims of supposed clients proved fruitful. One person doesn’t seem to exist, and another claims to have been happily married already for well over ten years.
Many predicted that this outcome based on the makeup of this court and there were a lot of people who voted in the previous presidential election specifically because they were want to roll back women and LGBTQIA+ rights and other marginalized groups.
Are we seeing that effort coming to fruition? Is it okay for businesses to decide whether or not they want to provide a particular service based on their whim? It reminds one of Jim Crow laws, what else is going to be rolled back in this spiral of looking to the past for the wrong answers. Could we see religion and race used to deny services again?
Justice Gorsuch who wrote in the majority opinion that the First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish not as the government demands. The statement is really telling about the narrative that is being spun. People are claiming that the government is trying to force them to tolerate the existence of queer people and this conflicts with their religious beliefs.
In dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote “Today is a sad day in American constitutional law and in the lives of LGBT people. ... the immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status.”
The real issue is a large group of people in the United States think queer people are gross and that the opinion they hold is more important than anyone else's rights or legal protections. And that is very concerning