Is Seeing Agreeing?

This morning I received a very interesting comment from someone called "Max Drax" to my previous post about Dallin Oaks' "example" of the New Mexico photographer who violated NM state non-discrimination laws by refusing based on religious objections to photograph a same-sex wedding. I thought the comment was thought-provoking enough that it deserved prominent placement and its own post for discussion, rather than burying it in a week-old comment string.

Max Drax thinks the New Mexico courts were wrong to draw the distinctions they did, and that it was wrong for the law to "force" the photographer "to witness and memorialize something that he fundamentally disagrees with." Apparently, to Max Drax, being forced to "witness and memorialize" something that one "fundamentally disagrees with" is enough to encroach on religious freedom.

I think Max Drax presents a viewpoint that many people hold, one which suggests a view of fundamental rights and liberties profoundly different than that held by many others, including, apparently, New Mexico judges. This time, rather than leading out myself, I'm going to invite readers to comment, and I may chime in at some point later. So here's Max Drax's full comment. Readers, I invite you to respond, and Max Drax, you too.

Now wait...as all good lawyers understand, just because a judge wrote it doesn't make it true (as judges are usually just mediocre lawyers).

The judge says that the photographer's religious views aren't compromised by having to photograph a lesbian wedding. That's nonsense. The photographer cannot photograph the wedding without attending and witnessing the wedding. And in photographing the wedding, she is memorializing the ceremony. Attending, witnessing, and memorializing an event will, in most cases, be seen by most people as supporting that event, and if a photographer is forced to support an event that she disagrees with on religious grounds, by sheer virtue of the fact that she decided to become a photographer, then her religious beliefs have most definitely been compromised.

Let's look at it another way. Say a group of young men want to torture and slaughter a pig. These fellas call up a local photographer, who also happens to belong to PETA, and ask him to take pictures that everyone will keep in order to remember the event.

You're going to say that the photographer's moral beliefs aren't being compromised by forcing her to take such pictures? Sure, he can still hold to her moral beliefs. His internal opinions about animal welfare aren't harmed. But he's still being forced to witness and memorialize something that he fundamentally disagrees with.

At a certain point, you have to ask whether the right to hold a belief gives you any rights at all to make any outward manifestation of that belief. If it doesn't, then the right to hold the belief isn't really a right to anything of worth. After all, it's not like the mind can be coerced anyway. The logical implication of the judge's statements is that the right to religious freedom is simply a right to think certain ways, without ever necessarily manifesting those beliefs in public. But that places no limit whatsoever on the government, because the government can't touch anyone's mind to begin with.

For heaven's sake, any good lawyer would have a field day with that judge's statements. Don't treat them as gospel.