SALT LAKE CITY — The LDS Church released a brief response Monday to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the state of Colorado failed to respect the religious rights of a baker who said his Christian faith prevented him for providing a cake for a same-sex wedding.
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints welcomes today’s Supreme Court decision,” church spokesman Eric Hawkins said. “The nation’s laws can protect both religious liberty and the rights of LGBT citizens. That is the meaning of fairness for all.”
In January 2015, LDS leaders announced a “fairness for all” approach to balancing religious and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. They said the church supports nondiscrimination legislation protecting gays against inequity in employment, housing and places of public accommodation like restaurants and hotels if ordinances and laws include language protecting religious liberty and specifying how to apply the First Amendment guarantees to the free exercise of religion in each case.
Last fall, the LDS Church filed a joint friend-of-the-court brief with seven other churches or organizations in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The brief argued that the Supreme Court, after protecting the right of same-sex couples to marry in 2015, “must hold that religious dissenters from same-sex marriage have the same liberty to live consistently with their identity.”
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