When the Supreme Court ruled against discrimination based on sex marriage: The example of a Web designer, an ordained minister, and a musician

Instead, Smith, a web designer who is opposed to same sex marriage, pre-emptively sued the state of Colorado, claiming that the state law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation violates her right of free speech.

There is not a lot of clarity as to whether the couple will have to change their plans after this. As The New Republic reported yesterday, Smith filed suit after getting a request for services from a couple named “Stewart” and “Mike,” but the Stewart in question says he’s already married to a woman and never actually made the request. The incident was seemingly crafted to let the conservative-heavy Supreme Court carve out protections for belief-based discrimination along the lines of the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

She added: “Around the country, there has been a backlash to the movement for liberty and equality for gender and sexual minorities. New forms of inclusion have been met with reactionary exclusion. This is very sad. Sadly, it is also familiar. When the civil rights and women’s rights movements sought equality in public life, some public establishments refused. Some even claimed, based on sincere religious beliefs, constitutional rights to discriminate. The brave Justices who once sat on this Court decisively rejected those claims.”

The new conservative supermajority reached out in a very aggressive manner, agreeing to decide a case in which nobody had yet filed a claim of discrimination.

Colorado and 29 other states have laws requiring businesses to be open to the public for everyone, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, gender or orientation, that could be affected by the court’s decision.

I have two moms, one a musician, the other a professor and ordained minister. My musician mom ran a music festival in the summer at my grandparents house, where I spent my formative years. There is a sign in the cafe that says Homosexuals will burn in hell. The cafe was owned by the Twelve Tribes, a fundamentalist group which teaches gay people that they should die. After seeing the sign, my mom was deeply shaken. My mom was angry. “Who are they to say we can’t be here?” She is able to remember thinking. It was very much a sense of invasion. I remember feeling scared when I was younger. We did not go back to that cafe.

I was called to law school to do my first major assignment and I wrote a mock brief defending the Anti-Discriminating Act as an attorney for Colorado. I thought the project might feel personal, but I didn’t expect it to bring up buried family memories.