New Arizona Supreme Court decision shows it’s time for gay and trans activists to rethink their approach

It’s the follow-up to the famous cake-baking case. Today, the Arizona Supreme Court handed down a ruling in Brush & Nib Studio v. City of Phoenix, laying down a landmark decision in favor of free speech and free association.

(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Brush & Nib is another compelled-speech case, this time concerning an art studio owned by two religious women in Phoenix. The studio regularly creates invitations and print products, including wedding invitations. However, their faith-based decision to not produce written invitations for same-sex weddings puts them in direct conflict with Phoenix anti-discrimination law, and that’s how they wound up in court. The local ordinance threatened them with thousands in fines and even jail time, so they preemptively sought out legal recourse.

On Sept. 16, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled 4 to 3 in favor of the business owners, according to the Arizona Capitol Times. The court wrote that “the enduring strength of the First Amendment is that it allows people to speak their minds and express their beliefs without government interference. But here, the City effectively cuts off Plaintiffs’ right to express their beliefs about same–sex marriage by telling them what they can and cannot say.”

However, it’s a narrow decision in scope, one that rightly does not grant the business the right to broadly refuse service to gay people. Rather, it permits them to avoid providing certain services that constitute acts of compelled speech, such as writing invitations for a gay wedding, that directly contradict their religious beliefs. For the record, the business owners are both perfectly willing and legally required to sell their pre-prepared invitations and nonmarriage-related products to same-sex couples. This ruling certainly won’t lead to a “no gays allowed” sign going up in anyone’s window.

This is the right compromise, and it’s a shame that LGBT activists continue to seek to use the law to attempt to crush religious dissenters.

The left-wing activist organization Human Rights Campaign said in a press release the court “issued a license to discriminate against Arizona’s LGBTQ community in an alarming decision that puts the state’s people, reputation, and economy at risk,” and other liberals and leftists were quickly up in arms over the decision. Arizona Democratic Party Vice Chairwoman Brianna Westbrook misrepresented the decision on Twitter and said it “opens the door for other bigoted owners to outright discriminate against LGBTQ people.”

Critics are missing the point. The Brush & Nib outcome is best for all involved, as a ruling in favor of the LGBT claim would have had serious consequences.

For one, you don’t win people over by using the state to crush their deeply held religious beliefs. If these activists really want to pursue wider gay and transgender acceptance, they ought to do so through argument and private sector activism. Tolerance cannot be achieved via government mandate, and efforts to do so often lead to more hostility.

Additionally, the LGBT movement’s misguided effort to undermine First Amendment protections will inevitably come back to bite them. After all, if a Christian business owner doesn’t have the right to decline a service that violates his or her conscience, then a gay or lesbian business owner doesn’t have that right either. If gay business owners want the right to refuse to print invitations for an anti-gay political event, for example, well, they must extend those rights to their political opponents.

The Brush & Nib ruling protects core conscience rights. Activists forget that these rights protect us all, not just Christians.

It’s highly likely that liberal legal groups will appeal this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hopefully stand up for the First Amendment and issue a landmark ruling finally settling this matter once and for all. Maybe then the activists will finally rethink their woefully misguided efforts.