LGBTQ Rights on Trial: Why You Need to Care About What SCOTUS Did This Week

A Colorado baker’s case stood before the Supreme Court this week. Due to his view of religion, he felt compelled to reject a gay couple and their wedding cake order. Does he have the right to say no?  According to Shannon Price Minter, Legal Director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the action the Supreme Court could take would “open the floodgates to discrimination in employment, healthcare, schools, and other settings. Businesses and others can simply claim that their anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination isn’t about LGBTQ+ people, just their “conduct” of being married, partnered, sexually active, transitioning, or even just openly LGBTQ+. In short, there is no way to limit the impact of a negative ruling just to wedding cakes or bakers.” Tonight, I talk to Shannon Minter along with our distinguished board of journalists, Brody Levesque, Karen Ocamb and Dawn Ennis. We find out if anti-LGBTQ2 discrimination is about to be a sanctioned institution in the United States and what we can do about it. The award-winning Shannon Price Minter, Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), was lead counsel for same-sex couples in the landmark California marriage equality case which held that same-sex couples have the fundamental right to marry and that laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation are inherently discriminatory and subject to the highest level of constitutional scrutiny.