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Post details: Religion Restricted Realistically.

08/19/08

10:25:12 pm, Categories: Announcements [A], 355 words

Religion Restricted Realistically.

Calif. Supreme Court: Religion Not a Shield for Discrimination

Mike McKee
08-19-2008

Three months after approving same-sex marriage, the California Supreme Court gave gay rights another boost Monday by unanimously ruling that doctors can't invoke religion to refuse treating homosexual patients.

"There's a great diversity of religious beliefs in California, and they're all protected," Jennifer Pizer, senior counsel in the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund's Los Angeles office, said in a prepared statement. "But not to the point where laws are violated and other people are hurt."

Coming on the heels of the marriage ruling in May, the opinion continued the California court's tradition of being sensitive to gay issues. In recent years, the justices have approved second-parent adoptions; strengthened non-biological parents' claims to parenthood in same-sex relationships; prevented businesses from discriminating against registered domestic partners; and approved municipal policies against doing business with groups that discriminate against gays.

Monday's case began in 2001 when Oceanside, Calif., lesbian Guadalupe Benitez sued Drs. Christine Brody and Douglas Fenton, who claimed their Christian faith prevented them from providing intrauterine insemination in some circumstances. The doctors, who worked at the North Coast Women's Care Medical Group in Vista, Calif., argued that they couldn't provide fertility treatments to Benitez because she wasn't married, but Benitez said they refused because of her sexual orientation.

Monday's ruling reversed San Diego's 4th District Court of Appeal, which held in 2006 that Brody and Fenton should have been able to use their religious objections as an affirmative defense at trial.

The Supreme Court's opinion, authored by Justice Joyce Kennard, said the doctors' actions violated the state's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which prohibits businesses from discriminating based on sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition or sexual orientation.

Kennard also pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court has never exempted individuals expressing religious objections from following "neutral and valid" laws of general applicability.

"The First Amendment's right to the free exercise of religion," she wrote, "does not exempt defendant physicians here from conforming their conduct to the [Unruh] act's anti-discrimination requirements even if compliance poses an incidental conflict with defendants' religious beliefs."

18 comments

Comments:

Comment from: UnGodly [Member] · http://aintnogod.com/

Justice has been served. Thanks to Imaginary Bearded Sky Daddy for not existing and therefore having no effect on this ruling.

Praise be to the California Supreme Court.

08/19/08 @ 23:36

Comment from: What [Member]

Fenton and Brody should be tarred, feathered and stripped of their licenses. Such a combination of supreme ignorance and arrogance should have been caught in their interviews for medical school and they should have been rejected.

08/20/08 @ 04:02

Comment from: brutelord [Member]

Hmm though I hate the government telling people they cant do something I do agree that it is a good thing. Physicians have an obligation to treat their patients regardless of sexual orientations, religion, or race.

08/20/08 @ 09:38

Comment from: What [Member]

Hmm though I hate the government telling people they cant do something ...

I presume that you are saying this because you don't want government to restrict rights anymore than what you deem necessary. But someone always losses and some always wins when a court decides a case. Isn't the question always "What is constitutional?". I bring this up because I have, for my entire life, heard people make anger-filled statements about the government telling them what to do as though "staying out of peoples lives" is more important to them than holding up the constitution.

08/20/08 @ 12:14

Comment from: What [Member]

holding up -> upholding

08/20/08 @ 12:16

Comment from: George Ricker [Member] · http://www.godlessinamerica.com

This is a good ruling. IMHO, health care professionals who insist they are unable to treat certain patients because the treatment conflicts with their religious beliefs have the option of working in places where such issues will not be raised or considering a different line of work. The third option is simply to do the job they signed on to do.

08/20/08 @ 13:09

Comment from: What [Member]

George Ricker

I agree. Every physician learns in medical school and residency over and over again that they will be treating people from "all walks of life" and that if they have a problem with that they can get out.

08/20/08 @ 13:29

Comment from: pixel [Member]

It's always interesting to me that people will object to treating/serving/renting to homosexuals, but they don't seem to have any problem dealing with adulterers or other sinners. Is homosexuality the worst "sin?"

08/20/08 @ 13:37

Comment from: reason [Member]

What
i agree upholding the constitution trumps staying out of peoples lives.
you will probably take issue with this but i am very uncomfortable about sperm/embryo donation in general.i fear we are turning the clock back to slavery when human life was just a commdity.

08/20/08 @ 14:34

Comment from: What [Member]

Reason

i am very uncomfortable about sperm/embryo donation in general. i fear we are turning the clock back to slavery when human life was just a commdity.

Sorry but I don't see the connection - at least not without making a bunch of guesses about what you mean. Maybe you could elaborate.

Plus human life in general wasn't a commodity during US slavery - it was a specific human lives.

08/20/08 @ 16:00

Comment from: alexatheist [Member]

It's always interesting to me that people will object to treating/serving/renting to homosexuals, but they don't seem to have any problem dealing with adulterers or other sinners.

I never understood this fixation on gays either considering that homosexuality is banned in the Old Testament Leviticus which also bans such practices as eating shrimp or wearing clothing made of more than one kind of material. Jesus never once spoke about homosexuality but he did condemn adultery and divorce by name but Christians seem to spend very little time trying to make life miserable for these people.

08/20/08 @ 17:24

Comment from: pixel [Member]

Alex--

I always like to point out that Jesus never talked about homosexuality, but talked a lot about helping the poor. I wish churches would focus more on helping the poor and focus less on harrassing gays.

08/20/08 @ 20:58

Comment from: alexatheist [Member]

Its almost as if xians are picking and choosing certain verses that reinforce their own bigotry while ignoring those that are inconvenient.

08/20/08 @ 23:05

Comment from: sam moore jr [Member]

I agree-- Drs Fenton and Brody should at least have their licenses suspended;possibly revoked for refusing to treat a homosexual person. Maybe even rejected from Medical College. What, you're a physician aren't you? Seems like I remember you writing that a few times.

08/21/08 @ 02:19

Comment from: What [Member]

Sam

Yes I am but I don't practice. I put my physics doctorate to work instead. My wife is a practicing physician.

In medical school we had a small and reclusive almost secretive xian medical students organization. They were widely ridiculed. Sometimes they would speak up during curriculum-related discussion groups and their concerns were always about abortion or homosexuals. They were usually appropriately "set straight" on their role as a physician not a judge, jury and possible executioner of patients. It was always nice to see one of the large number of out medical students take them to the mat with respect to their bigotry and arrogance.

08/21/08 @ 03:46

Comment from: reason [Member]

What
i will try to explain my concern more clearly.the child of a donor is in effect unwanted by that donor and is bound to understand that.yet people continue to sell or give away sperm/embryo without regard to the feelings/wellbeing of that child just as in slave days children were sold apart from mothers an were even bred for profit.it just seems to me to be part of a bigger problem of selfishness in our country its always about me my wants my desires.

08/21/08 @ 20:54

Comment from: What [Member]

reason

Well I now understand your point but I'm not buying it. I would be surprised to say the least if said child, raised by loving parents, suffered emotionally. I especially don't buy the comparison to slavery. I don't recall many stories of infant slaves taken into a home with the consent of both parents, nurtured for at least 18 years and then sent out into the world to make their way with the continued support of folks back home.

08/22/08 @ 03:01

Comment from: neowolfe [Member]

Reason,
You can relax. It's only a case of my wants and my desires if you have several hundred thousand dollars to give the fertility clinic. That eliminates enough of us to negate any meaningful statistic.
Now lets look in on an orphan from the cyclone in Myanmar. If the child is adopted by his two aunts, the only living relatives, is he destined to grow up a deviate? Don't be ridiculous.

And donors aren't radiating unwanted children. Come on man!!! They might be selling their sperm or eggs for money, but they are selling them to institutions who are raking in mega millions fertilizing baron women who otherwise would have been deleted by evolution.

Most free thinkers will get the point now without further explanation.

NeoWolfe

08/26/08 @ 20:24

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