Donald and Evelyn Knapp, owners of the Hitching Post wedding chapel in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, are supposedly facing jail time and fines for refusing to marry same-sex couples.
Supposedly, conservative nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom is representing the Knapps in the file of a lawsuit against Coeur d’Alene, claiming the couple shouldn’t have to perform same-sex marriages because the practice is “contrary to their faith,” as stated by ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco.
But the Hitching Post chapel is not a church. It’s a for-profit chapel. They don’t hold church services. They simply perform wedding ceremonies and get paid for them.
Thus, they should be subject to the same local non-discriminatory regulations as other for-profit businesses.
But this is not the end of the story. Tuesday, thenewcivilrightsmovement.com published an article stating that most of what we’ve been hearing about the case from the ADF is lies.
Let’s learn a little more about the ADF, shall we? They brought you notorious anti-gay groups such as the American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Campus Crusade for Christ, a chapter of which is at IU, and more.
The ADF’s lawsuit claims the Knapps face up to 180 days in jail time and a $1,000 fine each day until they perform the ceremony.
The city ordinance actually states the fine is $100 to $1,000 for each instance they refuse to perform a same-sex wedding, not each day until they do perform the wedding. And it’s not even a guarantee the city is going to impose that fine at all.
But what is most disparaging in this whole situation is that the Hitching Post chapel hasn’t even received a complaint from a same-sex couple wishing to hold its wedding at the chapel.
The ADF is blatantly lying.
It made up this whole story to push its anti-gay agenda and add more fuel to the fire of hate that is the religious right.
“We have never threatened to jail them or take legal action of any kind,” City Spokesman Keith Erickson said in an article published in the Couer d’Alene Press.
And, on top of that, in the same article Don Knapp said he didn’t even know of the ADF lawyer contacting the city.
How did this story literally built on lies even come to be? Because the religious right or, really, the GOP as a whole, thrives on public ignorance.
They took this non-story and shaped it to fit into their neat little anti-anything-besides-God-and-guns slot that’s getting a little too full these days.
They bash the freedom to marry, public education and the “intelligentsia” of college campuses. They’re against everything that makes for a better and more educated populace.
We shove homosexuality down their throats? They’ve been shoving this same BS down our throats for centuries, and I’m sick of it.
The headlines of these stories are all the same: “Two Ministers Ordered To Perform Same-Sex Wedding Face Jail, Fines,” “City Arrests Pastors For Refusing To Perform Gay Weddings” and more lies.
People read these headlines on Facebook or Twitter, most of them don’t even read the article, and then they share them with their friends, adding some idiotic comment about the “downfall of our once great nation” or something like that.
The lies spread, feeding off of people’s ignorance and apathy. Who wants to read a news article when there are cat videos to be watched?
We aren’t this stupid. Please tell me we aren’t this stupid.
Maybe some of us are just a little too impressionable.
zipperr@indiana.edu
