‘National Review’ Goes All in for Anti-Gay Discrimination
For months, National Review’s staff has worked to invent bogus justifications for anti-gay business discrimination, condemning non-discrimination efforts as a form of government overreach. Long before states like Kansas and Arizona sought to pass laws allowing business to refuse service to gay an d lesbian customers, National Review was championing business owners who had been sued for engaging in anti-gay discrimination.
In August, after the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled unanimously that photographer Elaine Huguenin violated the state’s Human Rights Act by refusing to photograph a same-sex couple’s commitment ceremony, National Review joined other right-wing media outlets in their howls of outrage. At National Review Online, NRO contributor and Heritage Fou ndation fellow Ryan T. Anderson blasted the ruling as a sign that social conservatives had been “driven to the margins of culture,” with “religious believers” and “the truth about marriage” under judicial assault.
NRO also took up the mantle of Colorado baker Jack Phillips, who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex couple. In a one-sided interview published under the headline “Let Him Bake Cake in Freedom,” NRO editor-at-large Kathryn Jean Lopez framed Phillips, whom a state judge ruled had violated Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, as a victim of anti-C hristian persecution. Lopez wondered what the “future of freedom” looked like in a world where businesses couldn’t turn away LGBT customers.
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