Dakota Beacon

As predicted a month ago (“Coming soon - film commissars?” - Dakota Beacon, September 7, 2019), the couple who own a wedding video business in St. Cloud are about to be back in court, as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is not accepting the determination of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.  You may recall that Carl and Angel Larson prevailed at that stage in their effort to exercise their freedom not to produce a same sex wedding video which they found objectionable on religious grounds.  Unfortunately the 8th Circuit dropped the ball and did not uphold the Larsons “with prejudice”, which allowed the whole thing to begin again.  

Well, elections have consequences.  We have a militant anti-Christian Attorney General in office now and we will be dealing with a lot of this kind of thing.  Court cases also have consequences, so it will be important to follow this case. If the Larsons lose the next round they might end up back at the 8th Circuit.  Or not. It costs a lot of money to spend your time in court with lawyers, risking fines or worse, instead of doing your work and building your business. The people of Minnesota will have one less tax-paying productive business and a lot more public expense in prosecuting these people, and in the process lose something even more precious - our First Amendment right to freedom of expression.  At some point in the future, who knows? The tide may turn against same-sex couples or against Islam or both. If we have established that no one has a right to freedom of religion or expression or assembly the practitioners of today’s favored beliefs might find that they have lost the rights they denied the Larsons and other practicing Christians.  

It should be too obvious to restate, but it seems that too many don’t get it.  If we deny rights to some, we actually deny rights to all. Only in the equal application of the law can we be secure in our rights.  Shame on the voters of Minnesota. Everyone knew what Keith Ellison was. Don’t blame him for being him. His beliefs are centered on the destruction of western values.  He’s just doing what was expected of him. It is the fault of the voters who decided it was more important to elect a “minority” candidate who was openly against the majority in the name of - what? - generosity?  Virtue? Better-than-thou-ness? Whatever the reason, this is what we’ve got now and it will cost us in many ways.  

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