Resurrected

In the midst of that amazing time in my life came the worst, and that was when my friends just started dropping dead. They were sick today and dead tomorrow. And when you would go to the hospital to look for you friend they would be out in the hallway on a gurney pushed up against a wall dying for help, dying for love, dying to be saved. And some of them with that sign on their gurney that said "do not touch". And they suffered, and people wanted to act like they weren't good people, kind people, wonderful people, somebody's son, somebody's daughter, somebody. // SHERYL LEE RALPH receiving the Human Rights Campaign's National Ally for Equality Award 2022. (x)

In this latest case, there is no website and no wedding—just an argument from an anti-LGBTQ group in search of the court’s favor... No person has hired Smith to create a wedding website. In fact, Smith has never designed a wedding website, according to her petition to the court. As such, there is no client Smith has told she is rejecting due to her stated religious beliefs that marriage is only allowed between one man and one woman. In the absence of all that, ADF has, instead, fashioned Smith as the victim of an injury that has never occurred.   So who has hypothetically victimized Smith? A Colorado anti-discrimination law, which, since 2008, has included protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. ADF claims Smith’s desire “to bring glory to God by creating unique expression that shares her religious beliefs of creating wedding websites” is thwarted by this law “because she only wants to make websites that comport with her values that same-sex marriage is illegitimate.” Were Smith to get into the wedding website business, the anti-discrimination law “would force me to say things about marriage I disagree with,” Smith wrote in an opinion piece for The Washington Times, when her case was argued at the Supreme Court last December...