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Christian Group Gets SCOTUS to Agree to Review Its Anti-Gay Baker’s Case. Now They’re Trying for Their Anti-Gay Florist.

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Group Has Support of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Who Addressed Them in a Private Speech Behind Closed Doors Last Week

Alliance Defending Freedom late last month successfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to agree to review the case of a Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Having finally gotten SCOTUS to accept the case of Jack Phillips, owner of the Masterpiece Cake Shop, the ADF is now petitioning the Supreme Court to accept another, similar case: a Washington state florist who refused to do provide a floral arrangement for a same-sex couple’s wedding.

The two cases are very similar. Both Jack Phillips and Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Washington, claim they aren’t anti-gay, while insisting they have a First Amendment right to refuse service to gay people based on their deeply-held religious beliefs and artistic expression. Both have lost every case along the way. And both are represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a far right Christian legal firm that appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-gay hate groups.

And as the embedded photo above proves, ADF’s business model is turning in to collecting bakers and florists and others who refuse to serve same-sex couples or have exhibited anti-gay bias and taking their cases as far as they can, while fundraising off them.

RELATED: ‘I Don’t Believe Jesus Would Have Made the Cake’: Christian Baker Whose Case Is at Supreme Court Speaks on ‘The View’

The Barronelle Stutzman case borders on the absurd, and the ADF and their attorney handling the case have not been shy about playing loose with the facts, while mounting a full-fledged fundraising campaign as they failed at every turn.

“We need 1 million brave people to stand with us by donating $24 today,” reads a fundraising appeal on ADF’s website. “If 1 million people each give $24, we can match the amount that the ACLU just added to their funds, which they use to sue people of faith like Barronelle. And thanks be to God, generous Ministry Friends have given a $2 million matching grant to help provide a strong legal defense for Barronelle and other Christians like her. Please stand with us … and with Barronelle by making a tax-deductible gift, that will be matched dollar for dollar, today.”

Barronelle Stutzman’s continuing struggle to save her religious freedom should have every Christian in America deeply concerned,” reads yet another fundraiser on the ADF site. (Why do they single out “Christians”?) “But today there is good news that could impact Barronelle’s case and others like it across the country. A generous Christian family has just given a $1.5 million matching grant to help provide a strong legal defense for religious freedom.”

In a statement published by The Washington Blade, which reported on the news ADF is petitioning the Supreme Court, Stutzman explained her refusal to sell flowers to her long-time customer, Rob Ingersoll.

“There was never an issue with his being gay, just as there hasn’t been with any of my other customers or employees. He just enjoyed my custom floral designs, and I loved creating them for him. But now the state is trying to use this case to force me to create artistic expression that violates my deepest beliefs and take away my life’s work and savings, which will also harm those who I employ. I’m not asking for anything that our Constitution hasn’t promised me and every other American: the right to create freely, and to live out my faith without fear of government punishment or interference.”

Notice Stutzman’s statement claims losing the case will “take away my life’s work and savings.”

WATCH: Top Anti-LGBT Attorney Says ‘No Evidence’ Gays or Lesbians ‘Have Been Denied Service’

That’s at best an inaccurate statement, one that ADF attorney Kristen Waggoner and the ADF have repeated countless times.

In 2015 Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson offered to settle with Stutzman for that $2000. She refused.

“Your offer reveals that you don’t really understand me or what this conflict is all about,” Stutzman wrote in her response to State Attorney General Bob Ferguson. “It’s about freedom, not money. I certainly don’t relish the idea of losing my business, my home, and everything else that your lawsuit threatens to take from my family, but my freedom to honor God in doing what I do best is more important.”

Attorney General Ferguson made clear he wasn’t out to bankrupt Stutzman, as NCRM reported. 

“My primary goal has always been to bring about an end to the Defendants’ unlawful conduct and to make clear that I will not tolerate discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation,” AG Ferguson said in a statement.

The case escalated. She was then offered an even better deal: $1001.

She refused.

But along the way, Waggoner has repeatedly made statements like this – which the right wing media has been only too happy to repeat.

Here she is in an ADF video:

Fox News, in 2016: “The 70-year-old Stutzman is now at risk of not only losing her business but also losing her life savings and personal retirement assets.”

“Barronelle Stutzman is now going to lose her business, her life savings, and possibly her own home for putting her faith into practice,” Fox News’ Erick Erickson claimed, incorrectly, in 2015.

In a 2015 Christian Post article, Waggoner made a similar claim:

“The lesson from the court’s decisions is that you put your home, your family business, and your life at risk by daring to defy a government mandate that forces you to promote views you believe are wrong,” Waggoner, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a statement.

And in a memo advising against a Pennsylvania ordinance, ADF claimed “the government seeks to punish Barronelle because she declined to violate her religious beliefs about marriage. Now she might lose her businesses, her life-savings, and everything she owns simply because she believes that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and that her faith forbids her from celebrating any other view of marriage. Indeed, if she does not prevail in the lawsuit brought against her, Barronelle will be forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to the attorneys who have been prosecuting her.”

It’s absurd to claim “a government mandate” will force Stutzman to “lose her businesses, her life-savings, and everything she owns simply because she believes that marriage is the union of a man and a woman,” when she was repeatedly offered options – or she could have shuttered or altered her business to comply with laws and ordinances of the state she chose to license her business in.

This same “religious freedom” argument was used to convince people there was nothing wrong with refusing service to Black people. 

Have we not learned?

RELATED STORIES:

Anti-Gay Florist Pens Washington Post Op-Ed, Gets Totally Panned In Comments Section

Watch: ADF Attorney Tells Christian Conference Matthew Shepard’s Murder Wasn’t A Hate Crime

Florist Baronelle Stutzman Refuses To Settle Discrimination Case Against Her

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OPINION

‘Have to Get Back to Law and Order’: Trump Declares at NYPD Officer’s Wake

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Donald Trump attended the wake of the slain New York City police officer who was shot and killed while conducting a traffic stop this week. The four-times indicted ex-president demanded America “get back to law and order,” barely days after a New York judge imposed a gag order in the case where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony counts for “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election,” according to the New York District Attorney.

That damaging information included hush money payments to several women including an adult film actress.

“We have to stop it,” Trump said Thursday, speaking before the cameras about crime as he stood under an umbrella in front of police officers. “We have to stop, we have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently because this is not working. This is happening too often.”

“Police are the greatest people we have. There’s nothing and there’s nobody like them. And this should never happen,” Trump said as he lamented how repeat offenders “don’t learn because they don’t respect.”

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“We’ve got to toughen it up. We’ve got to strengthen it up. It should never be allowed things like they shouldn’t take place and to take place so often,” said Trump, who is out on bail and currently faces 88 felony charges after three were dropped.

The Trump campaign announced that the ex-president had been invited to attend the wake.

“President Trump is moved by the invitation to join NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller’s family and colleagues as they deal with his senseless and tragic death,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, according to The Daily Beast.

The Associated Press added that “Trump has deplored crime in heavily Democratic cities, called for shoplifters to be shot immediately and wants to immunize police officers from lawsuits for potential misconduct. But he’s also demonized local prosecutors, the FBI and the Department of Justice over the criminal prosecutions he faces and the investigation while he was president into his first campaign’s interactions with Russia.”

“He has also embraced those imprisoned for their roles on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of his angry supporters overran police lines and Capitol and local police officers were attacked and beaten.”

Earlier on Thursday NBC News reported on Trump’s mischaracterizations of crime.

“Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and ‘migrant crime,'” the network noted. “Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.”

READ MORE: ‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

“But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels,” NBC added. “FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.”

Watch Trump’s remarks below or at this link.

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OPINION

‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

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The backlash from NBC News’ hiring of Ronna McDaniel is not over. New reporting from Puck, CNN, and The Washington Post reveals the considerable efforts from top NBC and MSNBC brass to recruit, hire, and support the former RNC chair who promoted false election claims, was allegedly involved in helping Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and refused to say Joe Biden had been elected fairly.

Staffers at NBC News and MSNBC were outraged at McDaniel’s hiring, but new details about behind-the-scenes efforts reportedly have increased that outrage.

Some critics are either calling for resignations of NBC News and MSNBC  leadership, or questioning how long they can ride out the mess.

“What is Brian Roberts going to do?” CNN‘s Oliver Darcy asks. “The Comcast boss is watching an unceasing five-alarm fire rage at 30 Rock, scarring the reputation of NBC News and threatening to consume multiple parts of the Cesar Conde-run NBC Universal News Group.”

“Conde has lost control of his organization, prompting industry insiders to wonder how he continues to remain in his role as chairman of the NBC News Group. In the words of one veteran media executive I spoke to Wednesday, ‘It’s inconceivable that he should,'” Darcy writes, saying Conde’s actions and those of his top executives have “hosed gasoline” on the scandal.

READ MORE: Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

That scandal involves these revelations from Puck’s Dylan Byers, who reports, “bringing McDaniel to 30 Rock had been part of a nearly two-month-long effort that was spearheaded by Budoff Brown and her boss, NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein, with buy-in from Conde and his deputies at both NBC News and MSNBC.”

“Rashida Jones,” he adds, “the president of MSNBC, was very interested in having McDaniel appear as a contributor on her network, as well.”

But this bombshell has drawn a good deal of attention. Noting how Chuck Todd led off the very public pushback against the hiring of McDaniel, Byers reports, “On Sunday, Budoff Brown reached out to McDaniel’s aide and former chief of staff at the R.N.C., Richard Walters, to see if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak up on her behalf.”

“The two sides also discussed having these folks call attention to what they saw as a double standard—after all, this was the same network that was turning Psaki, a former Biden White House Press Secretary, into a Maddow-adjacent prime time star. Walters later assured Budoff Brown that they’d been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against Todd, specifically, and that this might give NBC News some cover, for which Budoff Brown thanked him.”

CNN, pointing to those details, adds, “staffers inside NBC News are enraged at the fact an executive would have engaged in such behavior.”

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacobs, who now writes about politics and the media, called for the firing of Jones, Blumenstein, and Budoff Brown.

Other critics are expressing concerns on multiple fronts.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“It’s like the hunger games at @NBCNews. Every day new, horrible stories of journalism & corporate malpractice. Every single one of these managers must go,” observed Jennifer Schulze, a media critic who was a Chicago Sun-Times executive producer, WGN news director, and adjunct college professor of journalism.

She also highlights a Washington Post report that ropes NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt into the mess.

“Every @NBCNews exec who thought hiring a reputed liar & phony elector co-[conspirator] needs to resign or be fired,” Schulze says.

“The @NBCNews managers who recruited & signed an election denier should be out the door, too,” she adds. “Not only was it downright offensive to hire Ronna, it was journalism AND corporate malpractice.”

Pointing to his newsletter, former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer writes, “NBC’s ill-fated decision to hire Ronna McDaniel is a story of a media outlet unwilling to accept the ways Trump changed politics, but it’s also one of the best arguments for Dems need to build our media ecosystem ASAP.”

READ MORE: Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

He calls McDaniel’s hiring “evidence” the media has “yet to accept the reality that this is not a normal election between a Republican and a Democrat.” And adds, “An [industry] that prizes objectivity above all else, is incapable of accurately covering an election where one candidate is a normal politician and the other is an insurrectionist. Many in the media would rather stumble into autocracy than take a side.”

Veteran journalist and Sirius XM host Michelangelo Signorile observes, “We couldn’t have asked for a better situation to shine a bright light on the corruption of the corporate media—and its impulse to legitimize MAGA extremism and lawbreakers for profit—than NBC’s hiring former RNC chair, election denier, and Trump enabler Ronna McDaniel.”

And he warns, “The forces that made the coup-plotting former RNC chair a paid contributor are still shaping news and information about this pivotal election.”

 

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News

Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

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Michigan MAGA Republican state Rep. Matt Maddock is under fire after claiming three buses were “loaded up with illegal invaders.” The buses, according to multiple reports, were actually loaded with the Gonzaga University basketball team arriving for March Madness.

“Happening right now. Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?” Rep. Maddock wrote on social media Wednesday evening, tagging far-right former U.S. Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands under Donald Trump and is now the state’s Republican Party chair.

Informed of his error on social media, Rep. Maddock doubled down, and attacked.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“Probably teams for the NCAA Mens Sweet 16 playing at LCA on Friday and Sunday,” a user on X wrote.

“Sure kommie. Good talking point,” Maddock quickly shot back.

ABC affiliate WXYZ executive producer Maxwell White, responding to the Maddock’s original post wrote: “Just to be clear, this was the Gonzaga basketball team. Photos show Gonzaga getting on an Allegiant plane to Detroit for the Sweet 16, and Flight Radar shows a plane from GEG to DTW landed at 7:25 p.m., around the time this photo was posted.”

“This is a wild tweet,” White added, before adding more evidence.

Hoekstra, who was accused of using racism and xenophobia to win his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat (he lost), did not respond directly to Maddock but did repost the apparently false claim.

Michigan State Senate Democratic Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow denounced Maddock’s claim as “dangerous.”

Maddock’s remark also made the national stage when U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell responded.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“Hey Einstein,” the California Democrat wrote, “your state is hosting the Sweet 16. Could it be a team bus? If it is, will you resign for your spectacular stupidity?”

In 2021 The Washington Post reported, “Michigan state Rep. Matt Maddock and his wife, Michigan Republican Party co-chair Meshawn Maddock, have repeatedly been called out by fact-checking journalists for promoting baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and falsely suggesting that covid-19 is comparable to the flu.”

See the social media posts above 0r at this link.

 

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