We’re familiar with the judicial blessing of the Colorado bakery that had the right to sell a cake for an LGBTQ wedding not because of hate or discrimination but because of religion (cough). A ministry whose current website proclaims “Gender confusion endangers freedom and destroys lives” was quite shocked to learn that Amazon’s designate a portion of your purchase price to go to charity did not include them because apparently discriminating against others who also were made in the divine’s own image is viewed as hate. When the district court explained that businesses could make their own decisions about who to support, the ministry petitioned a higher authority, who ruled quite tersely that the district court was right.
Coral Ridge Ministries v. Amazon is a case concerning what is now known as the D. James Kennedy Ministries. By way of context, but not mentioned in the decision, the current website (which you can find, I am not risking what algorithms might do if I link it here) makes a number of statements about the LGBTQ community. The home page alone contains such gems as
- Gender Confusion Culture. A radical assault is taking place in our nation and schools. It’s transgenderism, the notion that we can decide our sex—whether male, female, or any of a mushrooming list of gender options.
- We are witnesses today to an emerging cultural tragedy. Gender confusion endangers freedom and destroys lives. Find out how—and what you can do to protect your children, on this week’s Truths That Transform.
- Help your child or grandchild navigate a gender-confused culture! (Emphasis supplied.)
If you followed a link titled “Request Your Resources Today,” you’d learn more, such as:
- So how do we respond to all this, especially when the public school classroom sends our children unbiblical messages about gender identity, gender roles, same-sex attraction, and sexual fulfillment?
- To help you to steer the young people in your life to embrace their proper calling to godly womanhood or manhood, we have a highly readable, Biblically-based book we will gladly send you.
- [The book is] an essential tool that will . . . [s]how you how to empower children to respond to the gender fluidity confronting them; [e]nable children to respond to the gender-confused with Gospel grace and compassion; [and] [h]elp children to celebrate their God-given gender.
I did not read the rest of the website.
Amazon operates the “Amazon Smile” program, under which a customer can designate a charity for Amazon to donate 0.5% of any purchase price. (If you buy $100 from Amazon, $0.50 of that is donated by Amazon to the charity.) The charity has to register with Amazon to be part of the program. To register, a charity must not “engage in, support, encourage, or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering, or other illegal activities.” (Currently, the language is a little different.) The website stated that “hate” would be judged on the basis of the SCLC’s list of hate groups. Turns out that the folks running the website quoted above, they’ve been designated as haters for some reason.
No one likes being called a hater. The ministry sued because Amazon was discriminating against the ministry “because of its religious beliefs about LGBTQ conduct.” The ministry also explained that it “has never attacked or maligned anyone on the basis of engaging in homosexual conduct.” (I read it a couple of extra times but, no, the words “some of our best friends are gay” are not there.)
I’m focusing here on the portion of the opinion affirming the district court’s ruling that Amazon did not engage in religious discrimination against the ministry. The court first accepted that websites such as these are places of public accommodation, and moved immediately on to whether the giving program was a service/privilege/advantage. After quickly establishing that the program was Amazon donating money, and not the customer, the court emphasized that donation of money is expressive, and Amazon could not be forced to express itself by including all possible entities on its charities list.
My favorite part of this opinion is footnote 11, referencing the district court’s analogy to a “a closely held fast-food restaurant chain, whose owners are Christian and object to homosexuality based on their religious beliefs, initiates a “charity match” program.” (I guess they were too chicken to use a particular entity to fill a blank in the story.) The footnote explained that under the ministry’s interpretation of the law “the fast-food chain could be compelled—over their objection—to match donations to, for example, a church whose central mission is promoting the Christian acceptance of homosexuality; the Church of Satan . . ..” What’s good for the goose is good for the fried chicken sandwich, I guess.
What I find interesting about this case is that it manifests so much of what we are seeing in the political arena today. Positions are taken (by one side or the other) only on the basis of that particular battle, and not with respect to other positions taken by that side. Not going to get partisan about it, but I am sure you know what I mean.
GEORGIA LEGAL UPDATE 