Christie defends Supreme Court LGBTQ ruling
GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie defended the Supreme Court's ruling that sided with a Christian wedding website designer who rejected servicing same-sex couples, contending that that the government does not have a right to tell a business how to use their expressive abilities.
"This business has no right not to serve people are protected class," Christie told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union." "But by the same token, the government doesn't have the right to tell a business, the nature of how they need to use their expressive abilities. And so the fact is that this, this business can't deny LGBTQ people, couples from coming in and trying to, you know, access this business. That's not the case at all."
Christie blasted Democrats for criticizing the Supreme Court decision Friday, which ruled that Colorado cannot require an evangelical Christian web designer to provide same-sex wedding websites because it violated her First Amendment rights.
"What concerns me the most is that for decades and decades, the Democratic Party cheered a Supreme Court that went outside the Constitution, made extra constitutional decisions in my opinion, because the decisions went in a philosophical direction that they liked," he said. "Now, when the court makes decisions that they don't like, all of a sudden the court is, you know, 'not normal court,' according to President Biden."
He also said that he did not think this ruling could be used to deny LGBTQ people their rights, adding that the ruling says that they cannot force a business owner to go against their religious beliefs.
“Look, what Sonia Sotomayor, the justice, Sotomayor, was saying in her opinion was that they could -- that this decision could be used to deny people of LGBTQ backgrounds the ability to access this business. That's simply not true. They can access this business. They can access this business. They just can't force the owner to do something that is against her personal religious beliefs," Christie said.