Judge allows Kentucky T-shirt printer to refuse to make gay pride shirts

Judge allows Kentucky T-shirt printer to refuse to make gay pride shirts

The judge ultimately decided that the company objected to the message rather than discriminated specifically against homosexuals.

A Kentucky court has ruled that a Christian T-shirt company may choose not to print gay pride festival shirts, just one day before the Supreme Court was scheduled to hear oral arguments in deliberating on same-sex marriages.

Hands on Originals is a Christian T-shirt company in Lexington, Ky., that refused to print shirts for the Gay and Lesbian Services Organization (GLSO) for a 2012 pride festival, prompting GLSO to file a complaint with the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission, according to a Washington Post report.

The commission ruled in favor of GLSO, but Judge James D. Ishmael of the Fayette Circuit Court struck down that ruling, saying that while the commission is not at fault for wanting to make sure all people have equal access to services, “that is not what this case is all about,” he wrote in his decision according to the report.

Ishmael said it is different for a T-shirt company to refuse service because of a person’s sexual orientation and to refuse service because of a disagreement with the message to be printed.

The company’s website says it reserves the right to refuse an order that would prompt them to endorse a position that go against their convictions. The judge ruled that it was the message they objected to, not the people, and therefore there wasn’t any discrimination going on.

The court also pointed out that HOO had refused orders from a strip club and shirts that contain violent messages.

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