IPFS News Link • Business/ Commerce
Ending Property Rights: What "Add the Words" Really Means
• http://www.lewrockwell.com,By William Norman GriggSix years earlier, New Mexico resident Elaine Huguenin, who runs a
photography business, declined a request to photograph a commitment
ceremony between two women. In doing so, Mrs. Huguenin broke no
contract, violated no promise, and didn’t defraud anybody.
Like Darden, Mrs. Huguenin exercised her absolute property right as a
business owner, which includes the unqualified freedom to accept or
reject clients at her sole discretion. Darden was publicly praised for his decision. Huguenin was prosecuted.
Rather than simply finding another photographer willing to take their
business, the aggrieved women who had contacted Huguenin filed a
complaint with a bureaucratic body calling itself the Human Rights Commission,
which is more accurately described as the state’s Social Relations
Soviet. The agency ruled that Huguenin had committed an act of “sexual
orientation discrimination” and imposed a fine of nearly $7,000. Part of
that sum went to the plaintiffs. By then they had who found another
photographer willing to make a record of their ceremony, which was
performed by a female cleric in Taos. 
