Maryland Company Ends Wedding-Related Service to Avoid Gay ‘Marriage’ Lawsuits
A company in Annapolis, Maryland has stopped offering wedding-related services to avoid facing lawsuits for refusing to serve same-sex “couples” under the new gay ‘marriage’ law there.
Discover Annapolis Tours, which runs old-fashioned trolley tours, will lose $50,000 a year in business as a result of their decision. The owner of the trolley tour company would rather lose that money each year than to compromise his moral beliefs under Maryland’s new same-sex marriage law in 2013.
Wedding vendors refusing to provide services to same-sex couples have faced discrimination lawsuits in the past – – and lost. Glendora Hughes, General Counsel for the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights said: “If they’re providing services to the public, they can’t discriminate who they provide their services to.”
Civil libertarians and homosexual activists in Maryland and elsewhere have argued legalizing same-sex “marriage” will have no harmful affect on non-adherents. However, granting a legal status to homosexual unions creates a weapon to use against Christians who want to honor the scriptural definition of marriage. Bible-believing businesses owners who serve the public will be the first to be persecuted under Maryland’s new law, which was upheld in the November election.
Baltimore Ravens All-Pro Center Matt Birk tried to warn voters about the threat same-sex marriage poses to freedom. In an online video produced by Maryland Marriage Alliance, Birk said, “Marylanders should not be fooled into thinking we can redefine marriage and still protect our religious liberty.”
Birk warned voters they weren’t being given all the facts on the new gay “marriage” law on the ballot. As an example, the supposed religious exemption does not apply if a church-run program or service receives any state or federal funds. He also warned religious protections did not extend to businesses or individuals.
Maryland voters upheld the same-sex ‘marriage’ law by a 52.4% to 47.6% margin.
Matthew 19:4-6
And [Jesus] answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”