Wedding vendors will be forced to participate in gay ‘marriages’ under new N. Ireland law
A politician in Northern Ireland has pointed out that the new law legalizing same-sex “marriage” in the region will not allow civil registrars, hoteliers, florists, and wedding photographers to refuse their services for homosexual “weddings.” Same-sex “marriage” has been legal in the rest of the U.K. since 2013, but until last month had not been imposed on Northern Ireland.
The Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019, the same piece of legislation that introduced new abortion laws into the region, has also legalized same-sex “marriage,” effective from January 13 of this year.
‘This legislation is being used to send a message to wider society that no one will be allowed to dissent from the tenets of the sexual revolution,’ warned a Northern Ireland pro-life activist.
The issue of whether individuals working in wedding-related services would be forced to be involved in same-sex “weddings” has been contentious around the world. Last year a wedding photographer in Kentucky filed a lawsuit against a Louisville ordinance for trying to force her to lend her services to same-sex “wedding” ceremonies. Earlier in 2019, two calligraphers won a ruling at the Arizona Supreme Court that business owners have the right to choose not to provide certain products to same-sex “weddings.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Colorado baker Jack Phillips, who declined to create a cake celebrating a same-sex “wedding,” in June 2018. However, it ruled in favor of Phillips on the premise that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission hadn’t treated him fairly, and didn’t definitively settle the question of whether people can be forced to create art celebrating homosexual unions.
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