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Here We Go Again
Heard on the news today as I was leaving town, and as reported by Daily Signal, this is a family-run orchard that I used to take my kids to in the fall to gather fruit and drink apple cider:
A farmers market and Facebook posts have opened a new front in courtroom battles over religious freedom.
It started when Steve Tennes, who owns a 120-acre farm in Charlotte, Michigan, expressed his traditional view about marriage on the farm’s Facebook page.
This drew a warning from an official more than 20 miles away in East Lansing, Michigan, that if Tennes tried to sell his fruit at the city’s farmers market, it could incite protests.
No one showed up to protest that August day last summer, though, and Tennes continued selling organic apples, peaches, cherries, and pumpkins at the seasonal market until October, as he had done the six previous years.
Nevertheless, East Lansing moved earlier this year to ban Tennes’ farm, the Country Mill, from participating in the farmers market when it resumes June 4. The city cited its human relations ordinance, an anti-discrimination law that includes sexual orientation.
So Tennes and his wife sued the city for religious discrimination.
As a Marine veteran who is married to an Army veteran, Tennes told The Daily Signal, this was consistent with his philosophy of defending freedom:
“My wife Bridget and I volunteered to serve our country in the military to protect freedom, and that is why we feel we have to fight for freedom now, whether it’s Muslims’, Jews’, or Christians’ right to believe and live out those beliefs.
“The government shouldn’t be treating some people worse than others because they have different thoughts and ideas.”
In 2014, the Tennes turned down a lesbian couple requesting the orchard for a marriage ceremony, but referred them to another orchard that accommodated them in 2015. They discontinued marriages at their orchard, but recently resumed as a wedding venue. The farm is 22 miles away from East Lansing, and the Tennes are suing because they fall outside the Jurisdiction of the city. It would be interesting to find out if the city routinely applies virtue testing to all vendors.
Published in General
Marriages performed by truck drivers are good for the duration of the trip to the next truck stop only.
I have (happily) been ignoring these things. Can you summarize the dispute?
Prager: It’s a true civil war. Get in line to support the general (Trump) we have to save our civilization.
Goldberg: It’s only a culture war. We don’t have to get in line.
I don’t think one necessarily has to “get in line to support the general” to fight this civil war. I’m not even sure he’ll always be on the right side. But it’s definitely a civil war, albeit a cold one with occasional outbreaks of “hot war.”
I would refine Prager’s position a little. It’s not so much “get in line” as, “stop firing at our general and concentrate fire on the enemy!”
There’s something to that, but even Abraham Lincoln had a Union sergeant bark at him “get your head down, you damn fool” when he was touring a battlefield. Not only does Trump not pull his head down, he stands on the parapet waving a flag.
Trump makes the “damn fool” appellation fit too often.
Refreshing, innit? ;-)
More like nerve wracking.
Whoops. Wrong Thread.
Don’t you hate it when you have multiple tabs open and you think you’re in one part of Ricochet when you’re really in another?
Prager seems to think incidents like this mean we’re not allowed to say anything negative about
dear leaderthe President.These leftist are literally biting the hand that feeds them. Shutting down an organic apple farmer? Considering that most of the city dwelling leftist wouldn’t know how to plant an organic apple orchard if their life depended on it, perhaps they should think twice about trying to shut down a farmer because they are religious, because if they keep going down that road they may end up hungry.