Former Texas GOP Rep. Will Hurd, the latest candidate to enter the 2024 Republican presidential race, expressed “uncomfortable” support for the Supreme Court ruling in favor of a Christian web designer in Colorado who refused to give service to LGBT weddings due to religious objections.
“This is a decision that makes me uncomfortable,” Hurd said in an interview with MSNBC on Friday. “But I think it was the right call partly because we should protect expression and speech, even if it makes us uncomfortable when we disagree with it.”
GOP SHIFT FROM FREE TRADE IS IRREVERSIBLE, ACCORDING TO TRUMP’S TOP TRADE REPRESENTATIVE
Hurd said he disagrees “with the anti-LGBTQ sentiments” demonstrated in the case but that “we should be protecting the ability to have speech and say the government can’t tell you what to do even if you don’t agree with what that speech is.”
In a 6-3 vote, the conservative majority Supreme Court sided with a Denver-area web designer, ruling against Colorado’s law because it would force the designer to create speech that she does not believe due to her Christian beliefs.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the ruling that the Colorado measure violated the First Amendment, writing, “All persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands.”
Hurd is a former CIA officer and was elected to the Texas House in 2014, where he served three terms in Congress and opted not to seek reelection in 2020.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
A longtime critic of former President Donald Trump, Hurd jumped into the presidential race last Thursday. He’s hoping to tackle issues of immigration, rising homelessness, inflation, and crime, among others, noting in his campaign launch that “Republicans deserve better.”
Hurd noted that this Supreme Court ruling protects LGBT website designers from having to produce “content or provide a website that has anti-gay content.”
