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Related: About this forumGeorgia Legislators Admit It: “Religious Liberty” Bill Is About Anti-Gay Discrimination
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/03/27/georgia_legislators_admit_religious_liberty_bill_is_about_discrimination.htmlBy Mark Joseph Stern
Mark Joseph Stern is a writer for Slate. He covers science, the law, and LGBTQ issues.
MARCH 27 2015 12:20 PM
The guise collapses: Yes, "religious liberty" is now code for discrimination.
Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images
One of the most irritating aspects of the campaign to legalize anti-gay discrimination in the guise of religious liberty is the fact that anti-gay activists are so snidely mendacious about their true aims. Legislators from Arizona to Indiana have openly conceded that the intent of their bills is to protect business owners, like florists and bakers, from having to serve gay couples. Yet the right-wing media continues to sneeringly insist that anyone who detects discriminatory intent behind religious liberty legislation is, in one writers childish words, a complete idiot.
On Thursday, however, the façade fell away. During a Georgia House Judiciary Committee debate over the states new religious freedom bill, Rep. Mike Jacobsa Republican!called anti-gay legislators bluff. Jacobs proposed a simple amendment to the legislation clarifying that it must not be interpreted to legalize discrimination. Conservative representatives cried foul, asserting that an anti-discrimination amendment would defeat the purpose of the bill. When the amendment narrowly passed, conservatives quickly tabled the bill, postponing its consideration indefinitely. A religious freedom measure with an anti-discrimination provision, they decided, was not a real religious freedom measure at all.
This kerfuffle is both illuminating and, frankly, satisfying for those of us who have maintained that discrimination was the actual purpose of these bills all along. After the campaign to defeat Arizonas religious liberty bill succeeded, the Federalists Mollie Hemingway called those of us who viewed the measure as discriminatorythat would include meignorant, dumb, uneducated, and eager to deceive. Never mind the fact that Arizona legislators openly declared that the bills purpose was to let businesses turn away gay couples, baking discrimination into the measures legislative history in a way state courts cant ignore. In the topsy-turvy sophistry of the far right, heeding committee minutes qualified as ignorance, while ignoring the stated intent of a bill qualified as intelligence.
But if anti-gay conservatives have any intellectual integrity, Thursdays Georgia dispute should put an end to this charade. Jacobs, the representative who introduced the anti-discrimination amendment, is no flaming liberal; he is a moderate Republican who was legitimately concerned that a broad measure protecting businesses religious exercise could function as a license to discriminate. If Georgias religious freedom bill truly wasnt designed to legalize discrimination, this amendment would have been utterly uncontroversial. Instead, it spurred heated opposition from conservatives, who refused to support any religious liberty bill that explicitly forbade discrimination.
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Georgia Legislators Admit It: “Religious Liberty” Bill Is About Anti-Gay Discrimination (Original Post)
cbayer
Mar 2015
OP
Interesting that it was one of their fellow Republicans who exposed the lie for all to see.
stone space
Mar 2015
#2
stone space
(6,498 posts)1. oops...(nt)
stone space
(6,498 posts)2. Interesting that it was one of their fellow Republicans who exposed the lie for all to see.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)3. Agree. If there is division in the ranks in Georgia, there is hope.