Consider these events: A wedding photographer in New Mexico refuses a job filming the commitment ceremony of two lesbians. A florist in the state of Washington declines to supply flowers for a same sex wedding and a bakery in Colorado refuses to cater a party celebrating the wedding of two gay men. In all three cases, the business owners said that their religious beliefs prevented them from supplying the requested services and, in all three cases, the owners were sued (Paulson and Santos, 2014). Before the passage of the Civil Rights law of 1964 (see Chapter 6), business owners in the South could refuse service to African Americans, consistent with the racist, Jim Crow laws of the day. Are the photographer, florist, and baker mentioned above practicing the same kind of discrimination? Or, were their acts justified by the demands of their religion? Do we need to balance the need for equal public treatment with the requirements of private moral codes?

pur-new-sol

Related Questions