Last Tuesday, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed suit against Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts, a Richland florist business that refused to supply flowers for a same-sex wedding. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed were decade-long customers of the business.
I wrote last Friday (“Hobby Lobby: Free exercise of religion costs all”) about the Administration’s attempt to force David and Barbara Green, owners of Hobby Lobby, to purchase insurance covering abortion-inducing drugs for their employees. David Green made his case in an article published in USA Today last September:
(CCL Sarah C)
Religious liberty advocates just scored another provisional victory. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals told the Administration yesterday to keep its word and rewrite the healthcare contraception mandate to accommodate religious liberty.
Poor TriMet. Being forced against their will to permit free speech.
Oh, the Portland, Oregon, public transit agency supports free speech. I know because they said so. They just desperately want for it to happen some place else. Because, you know, free speech can get messy. Just like democracy. And God forbid that life should get messy for the good folks at TriMet. (Well, any messier than it already is.)
Ambassador Chris Stevens
From the President down, the Administration blamed the First Amendment for the September 11th attack on our consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others. It was, they said, all about a protest over an amateur film that had been on the internet since July.
Today, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee opened a hearing into our diplomatic security in Libya.
It’s probably just coincidence that the State Department suddenly claimed yesterday that it had “never concluded” that the September 11th attack that killed Stevens and three others was “a protest gone awry”.
Really?
(CCL Kim Davies)
Today is Constitution Day. I was planning to write today about the 225th anniversary of the signing of our nation’s foundational document. About the importance of the Constitution to you and me, now, in the 21st century.
So I will.
In an address last week commemorating 9/11, the President said that, in the 11 years since 9/11:
we’ve strengthened our alliances while improving our security here at home. . . . [O]ur country is stronger, safer and more respected in the world.
This is the third post in a series on same-sex marriage. The first two are here and here.
I keep reading that same-sex marriage presents absolutely no threat to freedom of religion. Here, for example, is an article from The Bilerico Project entitled “The ‘Religious Liberty’ Straw Man.” Rev. Emily C. Heath, arguing in defense of same-sex marriage, claims that:
. . . this whole religious liberty argument has been a straw man from the very start. A way to stir up public anger about a non-issue in order to thwart civil equality.
You can say anything you want, of course–the sky is polka-dotted, water is dry, the Cubs are gonna win the pennant–but that doesn’t make it true. And in this case, the facts paint a very different picture.