The California Supreme Court has now ruled that the state can force healthcare professionals to provide services that may be against their religion. In an unanimous decision on Monday, California’s Supreme Court ruled that Christian doctors may not refuse to perform services like artificial insemination for homosexual patients.
This was a case where Christian doctors refused to perform artificial insemination on a lesbian patient, but they did refer her to another doctor who did perform the elective treatment. It wasn’t a case where the patient wasn’t able to get treatment.
Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, reacted to the ruling:
“This is a clear violation of the fundamental rights of individuals to live and practice their faith. Forcing doctors to have to choose between being a doctor and being a Christian in the State of California is an outrageous violation of the fundamental rights of every American to be able to practice their faith and not to have to leave their occupation because of it.”
“This is not about denying people services, this is, instead, about the ‘thought police’ attempting to censor Christian beliefs and Christian perspectives that don’t agree with homosexuality. We’re talking…about individuals being able to force doctors or other professionals to violate their faith in order to keep their job.”
The case is going to be appealed for sure, but in the mean time it calls into question a number of different professions that might be affected by this ruling according to Mr. Dacus:
“For example, lawyers who are engaging in marriage and family law can now be forced to [execute] documents for homosexuals adopting children, and individual with a wedding service, despite their Christian faith to the contrary, can now be forced to conduct wedding services and wedding preparations for lesbian or homosexual male couples.”
Response: Another case of judicial activism and a court out of control. This same California Supreme court recently ruled that the state must provide for same-sex marriages.
Now it seems that in California, homosexuality is deemed to have greater legal rights in the state than freedom of religion–even though religion is a right that is actually named in the constitution.