Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Lorie Smith is a web designer in Colorado. She especially likes designing sites for weddings. Smith is a Christian who believes that marriage is the God-ordained union between one man and one woman. Though she serves all kinds of customers, she will not provide services for homosexual “weddings.”
Under Colorado law, artists like Smith must custom design sites and artwork for same-sex “weddings” if they provide the same for weddings, or they face fines and loss of livelihood. Smith filed a lawsuit against Colorado to stop enforcement and recently argued her case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The state acknowledges that she has had homosexual customers. She does not refuse to serve them, as required under the public accommodations law. So why do officials want to violate her rights under the First Amendment? Smith discriminates against the message of supporting same-sex “marriage,” which is her right, and not against homosexuals.
A restaurant in Richmond, Virginia, called the Metzger Bar and Butchery is doing exactly what the government accuses Smith and other Christians of doing: discriminating against a class of people. Federal law states the following:
“All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.”
Metzger Bar and Butchery canceled the Family Foundation’s reservation 90 minutes before an event because the group opposes same-sex “marriage.” The Family Foundation posted this on December 1:
About an hour and a half before the event was set to take place, one of the restaurant’s owners called our team to cancel the event. As our VP of Operations explained that guests were arriving at their restaurant shortly, she asked for an explanation. Sure enough, an employee looked up our organization, and their wait staff refused to serve us.
…
Not even 24 hours before our event was canceled, the U.S. Senate passed the “(Dis)Respect for Marriage Act” with the help of 12 Republicans who assured us that, even with this federal codification of same-sex marriage, the language in the act asserting that beliefs on marriage between a man and a woman are “based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises” and those that hold such beliefs “are due proper respect” would preserve, not diminish, religious liberty. It took less than a day for us to see how worthless that empty rhetoric is.
This is how the Metzger Bar and Butchery justified their decision to discriminate against a class of people based on religion:
We have always refused service to anyone for making our staff uncomfortable or unsafe and this was the driving force behind our decision. Many of our staff are women and/or members of the LGBTQ+ community. All of our staff are people with rights who deserve dignity and a safe work environment. We respect our staff’s established rights as humans and strive to create a work environment where they can do their jobs with dignity, comfort and safety.
Dignity, comfort, and safety? May we assume the owners also oppose “transgender” policies that allow boys pretending to be girls to violate the “dignity, comfort, and safety” of girls? And do you think the restaurant would have refused to serve a Muslim group?
Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation, said on Fox News that her group was “able to pivot to another restaurant” on short notice, and “there’s a lot of customers that are now going to pivot themselves to a restaurant that doesn’t have a litmus test at the door.” Other restaurants have invited the organization to hold events.
Are you a black pastor who opposes the profaning of marriage? If so, please sign up for our daily newsletter, and keep fighting for religious freedom!
