The government should not be allowed to force Christian business owners to provide services to gay couples if doing so would conflict with their religious beliefs, according to likely Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush.
"This is more about the vendor issue as it relates to do they want to provide a service for same-sex weddings," David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network said to Bush in an interview Saturday. "Are you okay if they don't provide those types of services?" Brody asked.
"Yes, absolutely," Bush responded. "If it's based on a religious belief."
If business owners feel that providing a service violates their religious rights, choosing to not provide that service doesn't count as discrimination, the former Florida governor explained.
"A big country, a tolerant country, ought to be able to figure out the difference between discriminating someone because of their sexual orientation and not forcing someone to participate in a wedding that they find goes against their moral beliefs," he said. "This should not be that complicated. Gosh, it is right now."
The issue made headlines in March, when Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law, which essentially allows businesses to cite religious rights as a reason for refusing to serve homosexuals, or anyone for that matter. Some Christian business owners in other states, including Oregon and Washington, began refusing bakery, floral and wedding photography services to gay couples who were planning their marriage ceremonies.
While Pence was eventually forced to sign a revised version of the law saying that businesses could not discriminate against customers on the basis of sexual orientation, gay rights advocates maintain that it did little to change the original law and left ample room for interpretation and discrimination.
Bush commented on the law in March, saying on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, "This is simply allowing people of faith to be able to express their beliefs, to have, to be able to be people of conscience. Once the facts are established, people aren't going to see this as discriminatory at all."
During Saturday's interview, Bush also spoke of his opposition to marriage equality.
"Marriage is not a constitutional right," Bush said, adding that "we need to be stalwart supporters of traditional marriage."
"I think traditional marriage is a sacrament," Bush told Brody. "It's talking about being formed by one's faith, it's at the core of the Catholic faith and to imagine how we are going to succeed in our country unless we have committed family life, committed child-centered family system is hard to imagine."
