LEXINGTON, Ky. — A Kentucky Court of Appeals ruling on May 14 affirmed a printer who objected to promoting a message for Lexington’s Gay and Lesbian Services Organization (GLSO) which conflicted with his sincerely held religious beliefs.
Hands On Originals’ managing owner, Blaine Adamson, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, refused to print T-shirts for the 2012 Lexington Pride Festival because he disagreed with the shirt’s message of “pride in being gay.”
Although he declined to print the shirts, he offered to refer the GLSO to another printer who would have made the shirts. Unsatisfied, the GLSO filed a complaint with the commission — despite eventually receiving the shirts for free from another printer. In 2014, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission ruled that Adamson of Hands On Originals must print messages that conflict with his faith when customers ask him to do so.
In a 2-to-1 decision, a panel of appeals judges affirmed an earlier decision by Fayette Circuit Judge James Ishmael that also sided with Hands On Originals, striking down a finding by the Lexington Human Rights Commission that the business had violated the city’s fairness ordinance.
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