Hate group will appeal after court refuses to support its preemptive strike against LGBTQ rights

Anti-LGBTQ hate group the Alliance Defending Freedom is continuing to wage war against our community via the courts:

From Westword:

Conservative Christians were among those thrilled last year when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jack Phillips, owner of Lakewood's Masterpiece Cakeshop, who had refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. 

Now, Alliance Defending Freedom, the national organization that backed Phillips, is hoping to expand on this victory by way of another Colorado-based case. This time around, the ADF is supporting Lorie Smith, a web designer and owner of 303 Creative, in her fight against what the organization describes as "a state law provision that gags creative professionals from talking about their beliefs when explaining their business decisions." 

The United States District Court in Colorado found against Smith in September 2019. But (in late October), the ADF appealed that decision, potentially setting the controversy on the same path taken by Phillips.

This particular case is a part of ADF's preemptive strike against anti-discrimination laws which benefit the LGBTQ community.  The group's argument is that anti-discrimination laws favoring our community are automatically religious discrimination because they force people to violate their religious beliefs, i.e.  someone wanting to go into business as wedding planners and such but don't want to have their services utilized by gay couples seeking to marry.

According to The Advocate:

Court documents from last Friday obtained by the Denver-based Westword show that Lorie Smith, of 303 Creative, does not actually make wedding websites yet, nor have any gay clients explicitly asked her to do so.

But in 2016, she filed suit claiming that she wanted to post a notice on her website saying that as a Christian, she “will not be able to create websites for same-sex marriages or any other marriage that is not between one man and one woman.”

Smith knew, however, that doing so would likely be a violation of Colorado’s statute banning anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Instead of waiting for the chance to deny services to a gay couple, Smith “decided to challenge the law in court before it was enforced against her," as her attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom write on the group's website.

Westword points out that the preemptive strategy has been successful for ADF in two cases - Telescope Media Group v. Lucero and Brush & Nib Studio v. City of Phoenix. However, it also points out that it was the preemptive strategy which doomed Smith's case. The court ruled that she had no standing against the law because no one had used it against her. Or as Westword put it:

The defendants in the case, including Colorado Civil Rights Commission head Aubrey Elenis and the panel's other members, plus Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, were granted summary judgment largely because the case was hypothetical: Smith filed suit before posting any statement, and no state body has punished her. The unstated subtext: The ADF wanted to pick a fight, and the court wasn't interested in participating.

So we will see if ADF will be successful in its appeal. But with its recent loss, we see that some courts are hip to the group's game and have no intention of playing ball.