On August 22, the New Mexico Supreme Court handed down its decision that Elane Photography violated the state’s anti-discrimination law when its owners, the Huguenins, declined to photograph the commitment ceremony of a lesbian couple. The state bans sexual-orientation discrimination in public accommodations; Elane Photography, in serving the public, is subject to the public accommodations law; declining to photograph a same-sex ceremony when opposite-sex weddings are routinely photographed is a forbidden instance of sexual-orientation discrimination; and neither free speech nor religious freedom protections protect the wedding photographers’ act of discrimination. Thus the NM court.

The opinion rests on particular readings of past US Supreme Court decisions and disputable interpretations of matters such as religious exercise, equality, and dignity. Legal and constitutional experts will examining it closely. The decision may be appealed to the US Supreme Court.

The arguments in the short concurring opinion–really, a homily–by Justice Richard Bosson, on the other hand, are very plain. He writes:

“[T]his case provokes reflection on what this nation is all about, its promise of fairness, liberty, equality of opportunity, and justice. At its heart, this case teaches that at some point in our lives all of us must compromise, if only a little, to accommodate the contrasting values of others. A multicultural, pluralistic society, one of our nation’s strengths, demands no less.”

So what is the required accommodation, the “tolerance that lubricates the varied moving parts of us as a people”? It means that, while “[t]he Huguenins are free to think, to say, to believe, as they wish; they may pray to the God of their choice and follow those commandments in their personal lives wherever they lead,” once they operate out in the world of commerce they are no longer free to act according to their beliefs if those beliefs include the conviction that weddings and same-sex commitment ceremonies are not identical and that they ought not themselves help to celebrate the latter. So much for their “contrasting values.”

As to the “contrasting values” of the lesbian couple? They don’t have to “compromise, if only a little, to accommodate the contrasting values” of the Huguenins. They don’t even have to let their fingers do the walking to find another wedding photographer. Instead, on their behalf, the government will suppress the Huguenins’ values.

Is that really the what America’s constitutional values, its historic commitment to freedom and accommodation, requires?