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Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, has chosen Mike Pence, Indiana Governor, who has recently become an infamously-known political commodity by firing the first salvo in the war known as the “Religious Freedom Restoration” movement. He signed into law an act passed by his state legislature permitting businesses to refuse service to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans* people, and members of all other groups owners consider heretical to their beliefs, judgments, and precepts.
Since then, this expanding movement has gained support in state houses across the country as exemplified in Mississippi’s new “religious freedom” law patterned after Indiana. And North Carolina passed its HB 2, the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, which includes a section that prohibits trans* people the ability to enter a restroom facility that differs from the sex assigned to them on their birth certificate.
Through arduous and highly contested debates, the framers of our great Constitution endeavored to strike a prudent balance of powers, not only between the three branches of the federal government, but they also endeavored to lay the blue print for a system that would grant to the states that which they did not specifically accord to the centralized national government. Numerous Constitutional amendments and judicial decisions over the years have increasingly fine-tuned this system in ways and over issues the original framers could not have even imagined.
Over our history, individuals and entire political parties have broadcast clarion calls delivered from soap boxes and mountain tops to newspaper editorial pages for increased rights of the states to decide issues they see fit, even when these contrast significantly from Congressional legislation and judicial decisions.
Political operatives have cried “states’ rights” often utilizing so-called “religious” justifications over issues of slavery, interracial marriage, racial segregation, women’s enfranchisement and the rights of women to control their bodies, public schooling, rights to education and other services for people with disabilities, immigration status, voting rights, so-called “Blue Laws” prohibiting Sunday sales, and many other areas of public policy.
“States Rights” and “Religious Beliefs” have long served as the allied battle cry as well for state legislators to deny lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans* (LGBT) people the rights and privileges summarily granted to their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts. Today, no national laws require all states to protect residents from discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, counseling, insurance, and other areas based on sexual identity and gender identity and expression.
Currently only 22 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have passed non-discrimination laws in housing, for example, protecting people’s rights based on sexual orientation, and 19 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, on the basis of gender identity and expression.
So what can we infer from those religions that justify such discriminatory treatment of other human beings?
In terms of LGBT equality, I simply cannot comprehend the clear and undeniable contradiction between a religion’s expressed claims, in various forms, to love one’s neighbor as oneself, and how it is better to give than to receive, combined for example, with a baker’s refusal to bake a confectionery delight; a photographer’s refusal to preserve joyous moments; a caterer’s refusal to cook the pleasures of delectable sustenance; a florist’s refusal to arrange the beauties from the garden; a jeweler’s refusal of a band connecting human souls; a realtor’s refusal to show shelters signifying new chapters in one’s book of time, or a landlord’s refusal to rent; a shop owner’s refusal to sell the common and special objects supporting and enhancing life; a restauranteur’s refusal to provide anyone a time away from the kitchen; an employer’s refusal to hire a fully qualitied and committed employee, all these based solely on peoples social identities.
Therefore, we must see the “states’ rights” argument for what it really is: “States Rights to Discriminate.” And we must challenge the long-standing and deeply-held biases within some denominations that employ “religious” justifications that allow them the “religious freedom” to oppress.
Donald Trump, by choosing Mike Pence, has added LGBTQ people to his already long list of “the Others,” which includes Mexicans and all Central and South American-heritage people, Muslims, people with disabilities, all women, plus anyone who supports the “Black Lives Matter” movement. By choosing Mike Pence, Trump has double-downed in his attempts to divide and conquer the electorate by instilling fear in promising the bigoted the “freedom” to discriminate to the fullest extent of the law without the threat of prosecution.
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Source: 30dB.com – North Carolina and Bathroom and Law
“Despite North Carolina’s hope their bathroom bill would blow over social media has a long memory on this one, as does the NBA who moved the All Star Game from Charlotte. The Supreme Court will determine just how far States Rights reach but what a state can pass and what a state can get away with passing may be different under Social’s watch.” – Howard K. 30dB
Photo: Getty Images
The idea that must be must challenged is that the government can tell anyone what to do, or how to act, or who to do business with or whom to associate with.
Dictate by law who private businesses must do business with?
That’s oppression. Control.
We are born free and meant to be free. This idea of putting the world and others into boxes is born of fear and need for control.
We need less government, less control, less rules, more love.
Not unlike the feminist movement that had signed into law policies that allow “women only” businesses, clubs, organizations, buses, hotels to refuse services to men while at the same time deconstructing such that men once had? Perhaps in in the public sector where domestic violence services are denied male victims through the Violence against women” act, the denial of father’s rights to their children, profiling them a perpetrators (even on airline flights now), guilt before innocence? Even the right to bodily autonomy denied to men? Bias and denial are amazing concepts. They blind us to our own bigotry, and do… Read more »
“No one is clean …” is true but who are the ones being called out all the time? (Rhetorical question)
So, your idea is that non-discrimination in the area of sex/gender, etc., trumps my freedom of contract and freedom of association? That I am required by your laws to do business with and associate with everyone who approaches me?
Another slam against the religious, will it ever end?
Not the religious, only those who religious practices adversely affect certain preferred demographics. Muslims believe that a woman should be circumcised. That’s a terrible practice and must be outlawed. Circumcision of boys, well that’s just religious freedom and if you’re against it then you’re anti-semetic. Women only swim times because men shouldn’t see women partly naked, religious freedom. Men only transportation because the sexes shouldn’t be mixed, outrageous discrimination. Makes you wonder if all those people against conversion therapy would all of a sudden start demanding religious freedom if some sect decided that straight boys needed to become gay. It’s… Read more »
“Not the religious” … just some religious are a target. Every time articles like this come out the photo that’s used represents “Christians.” I guess some “religions” get a free pass.