A bill that would allow people of faith to deny services to LGBTQ people was quietly reintroduced to the Illinois General Assembly earlier this year after stalling in committee in 2016.
Johnson pointed to language in SB 64 that would allow private businesses to refuse customers based on their belief that “sexual relations are properly reserved” to marriages between heterosexual couples. Such provisions in the bill amount to an “attack on women and unmarried people in sexual relationships,” he says.
“As a gay man, I could be denied an apartment because the person renting to me doesn’t support who and how I love,” he says. “Were I to be married, a hospital could deny my partner the ability to visit me because they’re religious and disagree with my sexual orientation. What’s insulting is that the people who are attempting to assault my freedoms as a queer man of color are doing it under the guise of Christianity. It’s a double betrayal.”
The Wathens won the suit last year. The Illinois Human Rights Commission fined Timber Creek $81,000 for the infraction, but the business has remained open.
If Stutzman intended to discriminate against Ingersoll because of his sexuality, Higgins argues, she never would have refused Ingersoll service prior to his engagement.
Wilson believes that’s very different from what SB 64 proposes.
