A printing shop in Israel has been fined after its owners refused to serve an LGBTQ rights group.
Members of the Ben Gurion University Chapter of Aguda Association for LGBT Equality filed suit three years ago after they were turned away from a Beersheba printing firm named Rainbow Color, reported The Times of Israel.
The group sought to have posters printed at the company, but its owners responded, “We do not deal with abomination materials. We are Jews!”
The Beersheba Magistrate’s Court ruled in late April that the firm had violated a 2000 Israeli law called the Prohibition of Discrimination in Products, Services and Entry into Places of Entertainment and Public Places Law Act. Judge Orit Lipshitz fined Rainbow Color about $14,000 plus court expenses.
“When their beliefs conflict with a necessity of providing service to all in a public space, the last value holds superior,” Lipshitz wrote.
The leaders of a right-wing legal group called Honenu blasted the decision as “secular coercion” and added, “If in the State of Israel a religious Jew cannot run a business according to his lifestyle, [then] where can he?”
