Lansing, Mich., Jun 1, 2017 / 08:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic farmer Steve Tennes says the city of East Lansing, Mich. illegally barred his family-run farm from the city farmer’s market because of his family’s religious beliefs about marriage.
“We have attended the City of East Lansing Farmer’s Market for the past seven years. We have always lovingly provided everything we grow and make at our farm to customers of all beliefs and backgrounds,” Tennes’ Country Mill Farms said on its Facebook page May 31.
“We enjoyed a great working relationship with the City of East Lansing up until 2016 when city officials learned about our family’s religious beliefs that we stated on our Facebook page.”
The farm, based outside the city in Charlotte, Mich., charged that city officials’ new policy bars them from the market “solely because we publicly stated beliefs that they do not like.”
Tennes’ farm has filed a lawsuit against the city in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Michigan with the aid of the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.
Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, explained the complaint.
“This lawsuit simply asks the court to uphold that freedom for a Catholic farmer, who should be free to sell his produce without coercion, discrimination, or intimidation by the government because of his beliefs about marriage,” Tedesco said.
“The city must respect Steve’s constitutionally protected freedom to express his religious beliefs on social media sites without being forced to surrender his right to participate in the marketplace.”
The lawsuit charged that the city policy violated free speech, freedom of religion and equal protection. It asks the federal court to halt the policy and award nominal and compensatory damages.
The farm has hosted wedding ceremonies in its orchard, but reconsidered its policy last year. On Aug. 24, 2016, Tennes posted on the farm’s Facebook page saying that due to the owners’ personal religious beliefs any requests to celebrate he would refer any requests for a same-sex ceremony to another nearby orchard.
After an East Lansing official saw the post, officials told Country Mill Farms they did not want it to be present at the farmer’s market scheduled the following Sunday. According to the lawsuit, officials said that they had received complaints about Tennes’ post and that protests against the market would occur. They urged the farm to withdraw from the market immediately.
Tennes nonetheless took his farm’s produce to the market. There were no protests.
Another Facebook post in December 2016 said that wedding ceremonies would resume at the farm’s orchard, explaining: “It remains our deeply held religious belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and Country Mill has the First Amendment Right to express and act upon its beliefs. For this reason, Country Mill reserves the right to deny a request for services that would require it to communicate, engage in, or host expression that violates the owners’ sincerely held religious beliefs and conscience.”
The message also said its religious beliefs include that all people should be treated with respect and dignity.
That post caused East Lansing officials to think Tennes’ views conflicted with the city’s view of marriage and sexual orientation, expressed in its Human Relations Ordinance. The ordinance could not be enforced against the farms. According to Alliance Defending Freedom, officials then made a new policy requiring vendors to comply with the ordinance and anti-discrimination policy “while at the market and as a general business practice.”
The new policy bars making a statement that “indicates that an individual’s patronage or presence at a place of public accommodation” is “unwelcome or acceptable” for certain classes, including sexual orientation or gender identity.
When Country Mill Farms applied to participate in the 2017 farmer’s market, a city official sent a letter telling Tennes that he was prohibited from participating because he was not in compliance with the new policy. It included an attachment of his December Facebook post.
In a May 31 statement responding to the lawsuit, the City of East Lansing said Country Mill Farms “advertised that their business practice is to prohibit same-sex couples from holding weddings at their orchard,” in violation of the city policy.
“Their business practices violate the City of East Lansing’s long-standing ordinance that protects sexual orientation as well as the Supreme Court’s ruling that grants the right for same-sex couples to be married,” the city claimed.
Alliance Defending Freedom charged that the new policy exceeded the city’s jurisdiction and did not define “discrimination” or any key terms relevant for enforcement.
“All Steve wants to do is sell his food to anyone who wants to buy it, but the city isn’t letting him,” said Kate Anderson, legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom.
“People of faith, like the Tennes family, should be free to live and work according to their deeply held beliefs without fear of losing their livelihood. If the government can shut down a family farmer just because of the religious views he expresses on Facebook – by denying him a license to do business and serve fresh produce to all people – then no American is free.”
[…]
There is no such thing as transgender.
No one, not even the most powerful judge, the most gifted surgeon nor the most persuasive politician can physically remove the Y-chromosomes from a man and turn that man into a woman. Nor can any of the above inject Y-chromosomes into a woman to make her into a man.
Anything beyond that is mere pretense.
That being said, there is no constitutional verbiage anywhere that protects or can be presumed to protect the notion or concept of a publicly, all encompassing judicially enforced pretense.
Law is law, and make believe is make believe. Never presume to confuse the one with the other.
Otherwise, these mid-level judiciaries will be seen for what they are – a collective bunch of emperors parading around in their new clothes, to the amusement of all.
Judge Hurson is certainly an advocate for LGBT ideology and not an impartial advocate for justice. Nor does he pay regard to the overwhelming findings of studies here and abroad, Sweden and Finland among the early advocates of trans surgery who have now radically changed their position based on facts that are counter to his bias.
Following by analogy the Apostle in response to the circumcisers, Hurson, if convinced of the need for confused children to be sexually mutilated justified by the plight of adult homosexuals should castrate himself.
Dark humor aside, that perhaps judge Hurson make an extravagant gesture of support we’re within a moment of an entirely new paradigm, within which opposites have become conventional. Wherein Harry became Sally, Black White, Catholic Christianity the Church of martyrs an innocuous discussion club. What will save us Lord? Certainly the Eucharist.
That answer is increasingly manifest in new structures within the Church although not structured as adjuncts of the Church. These are among several such, the Catholic website. Not your average discussion club. Certainly not a mime of the Synod. Men of women mostly with faith some searching some skeptics worldwide when at best seeking understanding supportive drawing visions ideas solutions. A living Church within the Church that has lost its raison d’etre.