DOJ Sides With Hate Group On LGBT Rights Ordinance

The Associated Press reports:

The U.S. Department of Justice has weighed in on a lawsuit filed by a Kentucky wedding photographer who is challenging a city ordinance banning businesses from discriminating against gay customers.

The Justice Department filed a “statement of interest” this week in federal court saying that the photographer, Chelsey Nelson, is likely to succeed on her claim. Nelson sued Louisville city officials in November, arguing that the city’s ordinance violated the First Amendment.

She has written about her business that she “can’t photograph anything that conflicts with my religious conviction that marriage is a covenant relationship before God between one man and one woman,” according to court records.

As I reported in November, this is a “pre-enforcement challenge” – meaning that no same-sex couple has attempted to hire the photographer. This is a tactic that her representatives, Alliance Defending Freedom, has used in other lawsuits, in at least one case using a business that some believe was created specifically to challenge a local LGBT rights ordinance. As for this photographer, she boasts on her website that she met her husband on Christian Mingle.

NOTE: For those unaware, Alliance Defending Freedom has advocated for criminalizing homosexuality in the United States and has aided such efforts in several foreign nations.