If nothing else, the comments section might provide a few laughs, as I hope my contribution there will elicit.

A photographer can photograph anything he or she wants if it is an art project (ie, generally done out of one’s own desire to make the art). However, a wedding photographer is offering a service to the public, not unlike the restaurant analogy. After all, a professional chef is arguably an artist as well, is he or she not?

Services to the public cannot be discriminated. A restaurant cannot refuse to serve food, a cleaning service cannot refuse to clean a home, a plumber cannot refuse to unclog a drain, a department store cannot refuse to sell clothes, etc., based upon one’s race, gender, or sexual orientation.

I think that’s the key.

If it was a photographer that only does artistic photographs (not that wedding photos are not artistic — I mean an “art show” type of photographer), I would say he or she can refuse on any basis of what interests them, as they probably refuse projects for a wide variety of reasons. But a wedding photographer generally doesn’t pick who to photograph based on interest or art — it’s picked on availability and money. It fits the restaurant model much more closely than artist model.

I was leaning more towards the photographer, but after the restaurant analogy, I’m leaning much more towards the court decision now.

I do tend to agree with the general idea of your post — that the “religious right” or the “fundies” or whoever see attacks where there are none and that they often will distort the facts to promote their own agenda. The “War on Christmas” comes to mind here.

It’s just that in the case I brought up, I tended to agree that the Nevada Human Rights Commission was wrong in this case. One thing that interests me is that the defendants in this case didn’t also bring up “Freedom of Assembly/Association”. If one has the freedom to choose who one associates with, one must also have the freedom to choose who not to associate with. Again, I don’t agree with the photographers’ point-of-view. But in this country we can’t increase or decrease someone’s freedoms based on whether or not I approve of their thoughts or not. Though sometimes I wish it were that way.

You raise a good point of the restaurant refuse to “serve your kind” here. Though taking my thoughts to their logical conclusion and though such reasons are reprehensible, and at the risk of sounding like someone I’m not, I’ve got to say that I’m not convinced that a private establishment should be prevented from refusing to serve someone for those reasons. Even for reasons that you or I would find odious in the extreme. It’s part of the price of living in a free society — that people are free to make stupid choices.

Welcome. I’m glad to have you on board. Do you happen to remember what the Bad Astronomy link was? I don’t remember Phil linking to me in quite a while.

On the matter of the photographer, I share some of your reservations. I almost left that example out of my article, but comedy only works in threes. The reason I kept it in (besides the comic effect) was because of Tony Perkins’ (and most fundies in general) track record on facts. Most of Tony’s emails are filled with scare stories and other “facts” that seldom are exactly as described.

There’s a good discussion on Tony’s letter over at Pandagon (which I didn’t see until today when I went looking for more info about these cases). So, for example, in the first case:

• In Boston, a Christian adoption agency was shut down for refusing to place orphans with homosexual couples.

That implies that the government came in with their jack-booted thugs, closed the place down, and kicked the good Christians working there out onto the street. The facts are that the agency was run by the local Catholic church, who decided themselves to shut it down rather than comply with the law. The result is the same, but the events leading up to it are different.

The best example of inaccuracy is the opening quote:

If we lose, we go to jail.

Over at Good As You, they have the longer quote (from ONN, which I assumed was Onion News Network but is actually OneNewsNow. Same difference.):

“[If] we lose [the fight for Prop. 8], we go to jail. How soon I don’t know. But the fact is this is the kind of case where political correctness is bearing down,” the pastor contends. “If a pastor refuses to perform a homosexual wedding, if we lose on this, he will be or she will be so incredibly vulnerable at that time.”

This is so completely over the top it defies comprehension.

So against that backdrop, I was sure that the New Mexico photography case was not really as Tony describes it. After looking into it in the last few days, I see that, contrary to his track record, the case actually is mostly as described.

I can see both sides of this issue. I’m actually torn. Photography is an art, and forcing an artist, even a commercial one, to do something she’s opposed to doesn’t seem right. On the other side, though, how is this different from a restaurant saying “We don’t serve your kind in here”?

There’s a thoughtful discussion of this in depth over at The Volokh Conspiracy.

I have to say that I disagree with the ruling in the photography case. Even though I don’t agree with their ideas on marriage, it is their right as a private company to refuse service to someone they disagree with. (I also think it’s a bad business decision — were I looking for a wedding photographer in their area I would rule them out based on their choices in this case.)

If the photographers in question had attempted to prevent other photographers from providing their services, then I would agree that the couple had a case. But they didn’t and the couple clearly was able to obtain photographic services and suffered no real harm, other than some hurt feelings (which is not a violation of any right at all.)

Tony – you suck. I mean that literally.

Here’s a bit about her:

http://www.unm.edu/~hrinfo/pages/instructors/willock.htm