For some inexplicable reason, “The Sopranos” star Michael Imperioli imagines that a recent Supreme Court decision allows him to stop “bigots” and “homophobes” from seeing his movies.
Imperioli, most well-known for his role as mob boss Tony Soprano’s nephew, Chris, jumped to his Instagram account on Saturday to blast the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6 to 3 decision that prevents the State of Colorado from forcing a Christian graphic designer to make a wedding website for a gay couple, Fox News reported.
Apparently the actor strangely construed the decision as one that somehow “allows” him to “discriminate” against people he doesn’t like and prevent them from seeing his movies.
Mike seems to live the adage, “Don’t sit quietly by and let people think you’re a fool. Speak up and prove it to them.”
“I’ve decided to forbid bigots and homophobes from watching The Sopranos, The White Lotus, Goodfellas or any movie or tv show I’ve been in,” the virtue signaling Imperioli bloviated. “Thank you Supreme Court for allowing me to discriminate and exclude those who I don’t agree with and am opposed to. USA ! USA!”
“America is becoming dumber by the minute,” he continued in a comment.
The case, 303 Creative v. Elenis et al., was decided by 6-3 majority, with all of the court’s Republican appointees siding with the website designer, and the three Democrat appointees in opposition.
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The court’s decision ruled that the State of Colorado cannot force a website designer to create websites that celebrate gay marriage, an idea she says runs contrary to her religious beliefs. The court agreed that being forced to do so by the state violated her freedom of speech.
But it looks like Imperioli either isn’t smart enough to grasp the facts, or didn’t even bother to read the Court’s decision before indulging his left-wing rant because the decision even noted how it can impact his own profession of acting and film making by mentioning artists.
Per Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority decision: “[T]he First Amendment protects an individual’s right to speak his mind regardless of whether the government considers his speech sensible and well intentioned or deeply ‘misguided,’ … and likely to cause ‘anguish’ or ‘incalculable grief,’” Gorsuch wrote. “Generally, too, the government may not compel a person to speak its own preferred messages. … Nor does it matter whether the government seeks to compel a person to speak its message when he would prefer to remain silent or to force an individual to include other ideas with his own speech that he would prefer not to include. … All that offends the First Amendment just the same.”
The justice continued, saying:
“Consider what a contrary approach would mean. Under Colorado’s logic, the government may compel anyone who speaks for pay on a given topic to accept all commissions on that same topic — no matter the underlying message — if the topic somehow implicates a customer’s statutorily protected trait.
Taken seriously, that principle would allow the government to force all manner of artists, speechwriters, and others whose services involve speech to speak what they do not believe on pain of penalty. The government could require ‘an unwilling Muslim movie director to make a film with a Zionist message,’ or ‘an atheist muralist to accept a commission celebrating Evangelical zeal,’ so long as they would make films or murals for other members of the public with different messages. … Equally, the government could force a male website designer married to another man to design websites for an organization that advocates against same-sex marriage.”
In other words, this ruling protects Imperioli against a state that might try to force him to take an acting role that would celebrate those same “bigots” and “homophobes” he so hates.
Imperioli’s facile reasoning is further tarnished by his seeming assumption that anything he has appeared in is “his” and that people are flocking to such entertainment for his part in them and not because they want to see any of the other actors in any particular project.
Further, since he doesn’t own “The Sopranos” or any of the other films or shows he appears in, he’d have no power to prevent anyone from watching them, anyway.
Clearly, this anti-Christian actor hasn’t the first clue how the U.S. Constitution and the freedoms that protects his own profession actually work. But God bless him for speaking out and indulging his own free speech despite his lack of any knowledge about that which he speaks.
