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D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor

What Next on the Same-Sex Front?

July 19, 2015 --

The Wall Street Journal, in its lead editorial, June 27-28, "A More Perfect Union," wrote that same-sex "activists may not be satisfied until the force of government stamps out private values and practices they find deplorable."

The concluding sentence in the lead editorial in The New York Times, July 10, certainly does not refute that Journal suggestion. The Times editorial, "Defiance on Same-Sex Marriage," ended: "The Constitution's protection of religious freedom simply does not include the right to discriminate against others in the public sphere." The focus of that Times editorial was on officials who, as public employees, refused to grant licenses to same-sex couples -- or officiate at their weddings. The Times suggests that public employees who claim that getting involved in same-sex marriages "violates his or her religious beliefs {should] find another job...."

LPR has come to regard the Supreme Court ruling, in Obergefell v. Hodges -- the same-sex cases -- as a 5-4 decision that, essentially, overrules G-d on what marriage is all about.

If the Court has the power to overrule God on relations involving couples, is there any subject in the Bible on which the United States Supreme Court, by vote of five of its nine members, cannot overrule God?

What if a same-sex couple asks an orthodox Jewish caterer to cater their wedding reception -- and, further, asks the caterer to include ham and bacon and shrimp and lobster on the menu? Can God's dietary laws withstand discrimination claims from a same-sex couple? What if the same-sex couple tells the kosher caterer that it will hold the wedding reception on a Saturday afternoon?

Does the demand to cater on the seventh day trump God's command to refrain from working on the Sabbath? What if a couple -- same, or different,sex -- asks a kosher baker to put lard in a wedding cake? Does the wish trump religious observance?

The New York Times tells civil officials to find other work if they cannot, on religious grounds, act in some aspect of same-sex marriages. Will The New York Times, citing Obergefell v. Hodges, advise members of the clergy, who, on religious grounds, decline to officiate at same-sex weddings, "to find another job"?

The Wall Street Journal, in its June 27-28 editorial on the same-sex ruling concluded by indicating its hope that Justice Anthony Kennedy, author of the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, will, in future litigation, rule in favor of the religious freedom of those who disagree with the Obergefell ruling.

The Journal editorial, however, also took note of "[t]he unfortunate truth...that the political left is rarely magnanimous in victory...." And Justice Kennedy, by his decision in Obergefell, is now a member of the Supreme Court's left. If the case of the Kleins, Oregon bakers hit with a $135,000 penalty for declining to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, reaches the Supreme Court, LPR does not expect Justice Kennedy to lead a 5-4 Court in throwing out that penalty.

LPR also wonders -- do bakers now face penalties for refusing, on religious grounds, to bake sexually-suggestive cookies and cakes?

Indeed, now that the Court has ruled in Obergefell, what religious observance, if any, is not trumped by activist demands?