Following up on Dale and Eugene’s posts, below, on the Arlington Human Rights Commission investigating a business owner who refused to duplicate gay rights videos, I wanted to point out a few other, similar cases I noted in You Can’t Say That! Some time agok, the Vermont chapter of the ACLU sued Catholic publisher Regal Arts Press for refusing a project from the abortion rights group Catholics for Free Choice. William A. Donohue, The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union 131 (Transaction 1985). With the help of the ACLU, a plaintiff forced the Christian Yellow Pages, a publication created by and for evangelicals, to accept ads from non-born again Christians. Pines v. W.R. Tomson, 206 Cal. Rptr. 866 (Cal. App. 1984).
Most directly on point, up North, after Toronto print shop owner Scott Brockie refused on religious grounds to print letterhead for a gay activist group, the local human rights commission ordered him to pay the group $5,000 print the requested material, and apologize to the group’s leaders. Brockie, who always accepted print jobs from individual gay customers, and even did pro bono work for a local AIDS group, is fighting the decision on religious freedom grounds. An appellate court has upheld the fine, though it did add that it would have ruled the other way had the material in question impinged more directly on Brockie’s “core beliefs,” such as a publication advocating homosexual behavior. Last I heard, another appeal was pending, with Brockie already having spent $100,000 Canadian in legal fees.