Republican presidential candidate and former Texas Rep. Will Hurd said that the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday that a Christian website designer cannot be required to provide wedding websites to same-sex couples was “uncomfortable” but the “right call.”
“This is a decision that makes me uncomfortable, but I think it was the right call, partly because we should protect expression and speech even if it makes us uncomfortable and we disagree with it,” Hurd said in an interview with MSNBC.
“I personally disagree with the anti-LGBTQ sentiments that were expressed in this case,” the moderate Republican candidate added.
While in Congress, Hurd was one of a handful of Republicans to vote in favor of legislation to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ Americans.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday that Colorado’s anti-discrimination law violated evangelical Christian web designer Lorie Smith’s free speech rights by requiring her to create wedding websites for both opposite-sex and same-sex couples, contrary to her religious beliefs.
“But, as this Court has long held, the opportunity to think for ourselves and to express those thoughts freely is among our most cherished liberties and part of what keeps our Republic strong,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion.
“Of course, abiding the Constitution’s commitment to the freedom of speech means all of us will encounter ideas we consider ‘unattractive,’” he added.
However, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in a biting dissent that the ruling could open the door to discrimination against other groups, suggesting that a website designer could refuse to create a wedding website for an interracial couple.
“How quickly we forget that opposition to interracial marriage was often because ‘Almighty God . . . did not intend for the races to mix,’” she said, quoting the court’s landmark decision in Loving v. Virginia that overturned state bans on interracial marriage.