Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
A Testimony of Conscience and Conviction in the Workplace
A Testimony of Conscience and Conviction in the Workplace
Jan 15, 2026 9:19 AM

Hands On Originals is a small pany in Lexington, Kentucky, that, up until recently, had very few problems when they declined to print a certain message.

Last year, however, the owner, Blaine Adamson, was found guilty of discrimination by a Lexington human mission for refusing to print T-shirts for a local gay pride festival. missioners ordered that Adamson must violate his conscience, and further, must participate in diversity training to be conducted by mission.

Fortunately, this story has a happier ending than that of the baker and florist, as the Fayette Circuit Court ended up reversing mission’s decision. “It is their constitutional right to hold dearly and to not pelled to be part of an advocacy message opposed to their sincerely held Christian beliefs,” Judge James Ishmael wrote in his decision.

Watch below for more of Blaine’s testimony:

When this first happened and it hit the papers, businesses began to pull their business from us. Right and left we were losing customers. There came a point where I was so broken. I went home, I just laid in bed with lights out and began to cry out to the Lord, and just say, “God, I will stand no matter what the cost will be.” Because we are the ones at the end of the day that have to print that on a shirt, and it speaks a message the second es off the press. And for me, I’m accountable to that. I’m accountable to that first to God —of what I put on a shirt to promote.

But we did wrestle with the reality in this that we may lose our business…Why would I as a business owner —who, our business has grown year after year — want to bring this on pany? If anything, I would want to stay as far away from it as possible. But there is a cost. There is something that calls out to me that says, “I’ve got to speak truth.”

HT Joseph Williams

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
What’s So ‘Awesome’ About Those Shareholder Activist Nuns?
For some, the one quality most important for those pursuing a religious vocation is awesomeness. It matters not whether clergy, nuns and other religious adhere to the actual doctrines of their faith, whether they advocate for the poor and powerless and spread the Word of God. Specifically, Jo Piazza, author of the absurdly titled If Nuns Ruled the World, authored an advertisement disguised as a Time opinion piece for her recently released book. The Vatican, according to Piazza, doesn’t fairly...
Get Out And Vote
I live in a small town. Small enough that everyone votes in the same place. Small enough that you see at least half a dozen people you know when you vote at 7 a.m. As I was waiting for the people ahead of me to get their ballots, it struck me that I was truly seeing America. There were farmers, greasy-nailed mechanics, women in business attire. There were moms toting babies in car seats, and dads voting before heading into...
How to Be a Better Guesstimater
Is the murder rate in the U.S. increasing or decreasing? What percentage of teen girls will give birth this year? What percentage of Americans are Christian or Muslim? What percentage are immigrants? If you guess wrong, you’re not alone. A new global survey, building on work in the UK last year for the Royal Statistical Society, finds that most people in the countries surveyed were wildly wrong. For instance, Americans guess wrong on each of the following questions: • What...
United by Our Differences: Electoral Politics in an Age of Choice
I can choose between 350 channels on my television, 170 stations on my satellite radio, 10,000 books at my local bookstore, and millions of websites on the Internet. But on my ballot I have only two real choices. I can vote for a Democrat or I can vote for a Republican. In an age when even ice es in 31 flavors, having only two choices in electoral politics seems anachronistic. But the limitation has an ironically beneficial effect. For as...
Mr. President: You Underestimate Americans
On Friday, President Obama was speaking at Rhode Island College. There was a lot of press given to his remarks about women who choose to stay at home to raise their children (it was a doofus remark), but I believe his entire speech was one in which he underestimates Americans. I know that many of you are working while you go to school. Some of you are helping support your parents or siblings. Well, yes, Mr. President, that’s what we...
Graceful Marketing in a Broken World
In his reflections on art mon grace, Abraham Kuyper affirmed that “theworld of beauty that does in fact exist can have originated nowhere else than in the creation of God.The world of beauty was thus conceived by God, determined by his decree, called into being by him,and is maintained by him.” Beauty is, in this deep sense, a creational good, and even though beauty is oftenpressed into the service of evil, beauty, like all good things, is a creation of...
Audio: Ron Blue, Gerard Lameiro at the Acton Lecture Series
We’ve developed a bit of a backlog of audio to release over the course of the summer and fall, so today we begin the process of shortening that list by sharing some recent lectures from the 2014 Acton Lecture Series with you. On August 26, Acton was pleased to e Ron Blue to Grand Rapids for an address entitled “Persistent Generosity.”Ron has spent almost 50 years in the financial services world and the last 35 working almost exclusively with Christian...
Vote For Thomas Jefferson Because John Adams Is A Blind, Bald, Crippled, Toothless Man
On Wednesday our country will celebrate one of our most cherished civic holidays: the beginning of the 18-month moratorium on political advertising. Although almost everyone hates such ads, every election season we are inundated with political advertising that mocks our intelligence and tests our credulity as politicians trash their opponents. But we can at least be thankful modern electioneering pared to the nineteenth century, downright polite. Even the rudest campaign ads of the 2014 midterm elections can’t match the nasty,...
Does My Vote Even Matter?
Tomorrow millions of Americans will to the polls to cast their votes. And many other millions of Americans will not. Why bother voting when no individual vote makes a difference in any election or political decision? Why bother casting a vote that has no meaning? ​Micah Watson, director of the Center for Politics and Religion and associate professor of political science at Union University, provides an answer: The first thing to say about such an objection is that it’s a...
Audio: What is Fasting?
About a week ago, I had the opportunity to be a guest on a radio show, The Ride Home with John & Kathy, on 101.5 WORD Radio, Pittsburgh. The interview was prompted by a little post titled “What is Fasting?” that I wrote for my personal blog, Everyday Asceticism. Of interest to PowerBlog readers, I was able to share the experience of my first Great Lent as an Orthodox Christian and how fasting transformed my perspective on abundance and consumerism....
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved