I wonder…and no legal scholar here…but if SSM isn’t legal in NM and it’s been currently making the rounds in NM politics and news…isn’t the ceremony itself an act of political speech? Still, no photographer just snaps shots and calls it a day.
Or - to flip this a little - it sounds like under the NM law, if someone, say, der trihs, were a graphic artist and he was solicited by the, I donno, Southern Baptist Chili Cookoff Commission to do their work, can he refuse? Could he argue that the SBCCC was a political entity as well as a religious one? Or does it not matter because the SBCCC isn’t a person, but a group?
Gaah. Political speech is protected in some states. It kind of worries me that as someone who always dreamed of having a bed and breakfast before I retire, I may be forced to house a Focus on the Family Save Our Sanctity to Marriage convention or something.
Yes. Think about this - you’re proposing that people can never say they’re busy and can’t take a job. What they can’t do is say “we don’t do photographs for Baptists/gays/black people” etc. You can refuse jobs but you can’t exclude a class. Sounds like an easy workaround in any case.
Those “sacred beliefs” are pure malice. Hatred for the sake of hatred.
Of course not; but if that was my job, that’s what I’m supposed to do. I find Christianity offensive, but if I was a photographer and some Christians asked me to photograph their wedding I’d do it anyway. And I expect that your deep concern over people being forced to photo things they find “immoral” would suddenly vanish in my case.
And I’m not “offended greatly” at things out of malice, so the two cases don’t compare anyway.
I really doubt Hebrews 13:4 says anything about a good-natured jibe about a typo, but if it does I’ma start readin’ the bible (runs off and checks—nope, not a word), and I see your Hebrews and I raise you a Hebrew who *might *be able to teach you to have a sense of humor.
I disagree. You do not welcome debate; you only welcome agreement with your claims. You are unable to entertain any idea that conflicts with your own view of the issues under discussion. If you are aware that a particular poster does not share your views in their entirety, you discount or ignore any statements that poster makes. You pick and choose bits and pieces of posts to respond to that reinforce your image of yourself as Jesus himself upon the cross, martyred by the demonic hordes on the SDMB. For evidence of this, one needs only perform a search for posts that include the word atheists by the poster GEEPERS. Go ahead; I’ll wait.
If you’d be so kind as to answer a direct question ;), what ilk am I? What do you know about me that makes you believe I will call your arguments “stupid and incoherent?” Why do you claim that I will refuse to demonstrate anything without backing support?
This is the heart of my contempt of your posting and “debating” style. You are completely blind to any color other than black or white. You cannot understand that opinion covers a spectrum ranging from slack-jawed apathy to frothing-at-the-mouth lunatic. You are totally unaware of the billions of people that fall somewhere outside of “what you believe” and “what some atheist believes.” You make irrational generalizations about people based on a label you apply to them without any knowledge of their actual thoughts or experiences. Your selective blindness precludes any real exchange of ideas, which is what most of us look for in conversation and debate.
Just my humble opinion, of course.
PS: I hope the way I presented GEEPERS’ quotes above is appropriate. I felt it was necessary to address his response in a certain order, but I’m aware I’m treading in alien soil here in GD, so please feel free to report my post and or hit me with a modhammer if necessary.
Edited to note that I reported my own post after seeing that Marley23 had posted regarding side issues. I’m a bad, bad bird.
Personally, I thinks it’s wonderful that as a society we have said that our personal biases should not result in certain protected groups that have been historically persecuted not having access to services that everyone else can enjoy.We’ve come so far, it’s easy to forget how bad it was.
I love that I can’t be kicked out of a store for wearing a star of David or that I didn’t have to check out venue after venue for the Bat mitzvah reception. Sure they could make some reason up, but if I could prove it was discrimination (revealing email, employee testimony, pattern of behavior) they would be punished. Our society says ‘no’, just do your job and don’t make personal what should be professional. So does that mean I have to then deal with protected groups I might find immoral? Sure, but it’s the price I’m willing to pay.
But she’s offering this “speech” up for sale to the general public, and photographing the particular things that her clients ask her to. In other words, she’s not exercising the editorial control that you describe over her speech. She picks the angles, lighting, and composition, but she freely hands off the selection of subject matter to her customer. I have a hard time seeing commercial photography for hire as the photographer’s free speech (I would be more inclined to call it free speech on the part of the client).
The ceremony itself is probably not “political speech.” However, interestingly enough, you can, I think, refuse service on the basis of 1st Amendment free speech principles when you are being asked to engage in conduct constituting as engaging in speech, whether by words or expression, or creating speech, which is the same as speaking, whether by words or expression. In my opinion, a professional photographer, or someone whose livelihood occupation is photographry, is creating expression by photographing wedding pictures and doing so constitutes as expressive conduct. Photographs, painting, songs, works of literature, newspapers, are all speech and protected by the 1st Amendment.
I hope you understand that my issue was about the law and people’s personal liberties. What does the law say? Apparently Bricker didn’t see the shining BatSignal.
Like I said before, in some states, political affiliation is protected, and that makes me uncomfortable. I feel like the law does allow for conscious objections in many areas, so I’m still struggling to connect all the dots that make the flag here.
At any rate, I’ve enjoyed this conversation. Not the OP himself, but the thought process that was applied to the case.
Your statement “she is not exercising editorial control” is at odds with language from the opinion. “Elane Photography does exercise some degree of control over the photographs it is hired to take, in that “it decides which pictures to take, which pictures to edit, and how to edit them.”
The photographer’s input, such as placement of people, objects, angles, lighting, and the editing process by the photographer, constitutes as the photographer’s speech, the photographer’s expressive conduct and the photographer’s expressive contribution. In other words, assuming, arguendo, it is speech of the client, it is not exclusively speech of the client but also speech of the photographer.
I do understand. I feel, reading the legal statutes someone posted earlier that there is no case that photographer should be allowed to bail out. Unless there is, because what the hell do I know about law. But our laws should reflect our values as a society, so to me, this not being legal makes perfect sense.
I was responding mostly to the scenarios you posed about your BB and der trihs, and why I think legally it makes sense that they couldn’t discriminate either.
You do not have, under the law, a “conscious objection” to laws which are neutral and of general applicability, including religious objections. She does not have a viable religious objection or a conscious objection to this law thanks to Justice Scalia’s rationale in the decision cited above.
That’s a much better way to put it than I did, and I agree with that (given your assumption arguendo). I think the free speech argument fails when the photographer offers her speech as a product for sale to the general public - at that point, it’s equivalent to a public accommodation and subject to the same discrimination laws as any other publicly offered service.
Just trying to explore the limits of this situation…
Imagine I run a horrible little church in Florida that really hates Muslims. I discover that a Muslim has set himself up running a graphic design company in my community, so I decide to give him shit. Specifically, I design “Mohammad is a demon!” t-shirts and hire his company to create the shirts. They feature a cartoon Mohammad sporting horns and a lascivious forked tongue. I make it very clear that this isn’t a jibe; this is my genuine belief.
To avoid hijacks, GEEPERS has been instructed to refrain from his “everybody hates Christians” schtick. For the same reason, you will refrain from your “all religious people are evulll” schtick in this thread.
The answer is it MIGHT. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court has never addressed this precise factual issue. In my opinion, based on my comments so far, I think under these facts, she is A.) Creating speech or expression and B.) Her taking the pictures, and what she does to take those pictures, including editorial control, results in the photographer, such as Elane, speaking or engaging in expressive conduct.
It isn’t much of a stretch to reach the conclusion she is creating speech/expression and indeed speaking or engaged in expressive conduct under these facts. If so, then this law cannot compel her to take these pictures as it would constitute as compelled speech.
There are, however, some rational counterarguments to this position.
My understanding is that protected religions are somehow recognized. You’d have to demonstrate that hatred of Muslim was a tenant of some established religion. Am I correct?
I didn’t say anything about all religious people; as others have pointed out millions of Christians don’t have those beliefs. I was asserting that a specific set of beliefs held by some Christians is in fact bigoted. Which those beliefs are, unless you want to argue that condemnation of homosexuality isn’t bigoted if it’s done in the name of religion. A relevant issue, since GEEPERS was asserting those those beliefs are automatically good because they are “sacred”.
I’m not going to get into sematic wrangling. Your statement was functionally the same as GEEPER’s–an unsupported generalization that someone with whom you disagree is doing bad things for bad reasons–and you will refrain from repeating that stuff in this thread.