Don't like "teh gaii"? Arizona's got your back! As long as you couch your bigotry in "religious freedom" terms, it's okay to refuse to do business with the LGBT community and treat gays like second-class citizens. The Bible tells these upstanding "Love Thy Neighbor Christianists" so!
"SB 1062 permits discrimination under the guise of religious freedom.
With the express consent of Republicans in this Legislature, many Arizonans will find themselves members of a separate and unequal class under this law because of their sexual orientation.
This bill may also open the door to discriminate based on race, familial status, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability.
"Legislation of this kind has been attempted this year in Kansas, South Dakota, Tennessee and Idaho. Each of those attempts failed after prominent members of the business community spoke against the measures. While our state continues to recover from the public relations nightmare of SB 1070, the Republican supporters of this bill are willing to elicit the inevitable backlash and boycotts that will result from its passage."
Remember when bigots used religion to defeat interracial marriage? How'd that work out?
"The Lovings were supported by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Japanese American Citizens League and a coalition of Catholic bishops.
In 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving had married in Washington, D.C. to evade Virginia's anti-miscegenation law (the Racial Integrity Act). Having returned to Virginia, they were arrested in their bedroom for living together as an interracial couple.
The judge suspended their sentence on the condition that the Lovings leave Virginia and not return for 25 years. In 1963, the Lovings, who had moved to Washington, D.C, decided to appeal this judgment. In 1965, Virginia trial court Judge Leon Bazile, who heard their original case, refused to reconsider his decision. Instead, he defended racial segregation, writing:
"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red, and placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend the races to mix."
The Lovings then took their case to the Supreme Court of Virginia, which invalidated the original sentence but upheld the state's Racial Integrity Act. Finally, the Lovings turned to the U.S Supreme Court. The court, which had previously avoided taking miscegenation cases, agreed to hear an appeal. In 1967, 84 years after Pace v. Alabama in 1883, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Loving v. Virginia that:
"Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not to marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."
The Supreme Court condemned Virginia's anti-miscegenation law as "designed to maintain White supremacy".
The bigots in the Republican Party of Arizona may have a small victory in their soon-to-be-passed law that codifies legal discrimination against a group of American citizens, but it will eventually be overturned as unConstitutional, and the GOP will look like the confused and misguided, hiding-behind-"religion" bigots that they truly are in this matter.
I hope a national movement to boycott Arizona as a state for conventions, vacations, sports, and other activities will be the result of this stupid unAmerican, unConstitutional law, should Tea Party GOP Governor Jan Brewer sign it into law. Maybe the citizens of Arizona will then face the consequences of their shameful bigotry.
However, I sincerely doubt it.
Thursday 2/20/14, 7:30pm EST: The Arizona House just passed this bill tonight. The fate of anti-LGBT segregation in Arizona now rests in the hands of the state's Tea Party Republican governor, Jan Brewer, who has five days to decide whether to sign or veto it.
I am glad to hear Kansas' law was ultimately rejected and very disheartened to see Arizona picking up the thread. It is beyond comprehension of decent human beings how those with legislative power can be so ignorant, hateful and cruel. These are fellow Americans they are trying to shut out. WTF?!? I am so tired of the ignorance, hate and violence that nearly half the people in this country continue to support and celebrate without any moral dilemma or concern.
ReplyDeletelast I heard the proposed Bill in Idaho has been met with mostly bipartisan rejection. Smacks of Alec throwing premade legislation to the Tea Baggers as a subterfuge to avoid serious subjects.....fertilizer makes things grow....bullshit kills.
ReplyDeleteNick Worner of Ohio's ACLU:
ReplyDelete“It’s not religious freedom when you’re using it to hurt someone else.”
For proponents of civil rights, the good news is that these proposals are faltering in nine states. The bad news is, a bill in Arizona’s Republican-led legislature actually passed yesterday.
The bill, approved by the Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday and the GOP-led House on Thursday, would bolster a business owner’s right to refuse service to gays and others if the owner believes doing so violates the practice and observance of his or her religion.
The state Senate passed it on a straight party-line vote, 17 to 13. The House followed suit, 33 to 27, with two Republicans joining all the Democrats in opposition.
This is no modest effort to accommodate religiously motivated discrimination.
While unquestionably unconstitutional, what I find most incomprehensible and reprehensible are the lawmakers who disregard the spirit and traditions of secular democracy.
ReplyDeleteAuthoritarian cultists of the Gee-Ohh-Pee see only two kinds of citizenship:
1. “Real citizenship” conferred only upon those who think like them, look like them, talk like them, pray like them, and vote for them; in short “Real Americans.”
2. “Name-only” citizenship for racial minorities, gays, intellectuals, liberals, Democrats, subversives, socialists, ragheads, and Feminazis; none of whom deserve civil rights, voting rights, or human rights.
Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas also supports a state-sanctioned bigotry bill similar to the one passed in Arizona. Here are the words of Brownback as reported in the Topeka Capital-Journal: “Americans have constitutional rights, among them the right to exercise their religious beliefs and the right for every human life to be treated with respect and dignity” [my bold]. You can always discern either extreme stupidity or extreme cupidity when the speaker is tone deaf to his own hypocrisy.
No food, no employment, no services, no accommodations, and no rights for if you happen to on the Brownback list or the Brewer list of “Un-American Americans” targeted for persecution.
What next? “No Irish need apply.” “Whites only.” “Juden raus!”
Pizzeria Reserves Right to Refuse Serving Arizona Lawmakers
ReplyDeleteThe Super Bowl is in Scottsdale Az. in 2015. Should Brewer not veto this despicable bill I hope the NFL takes the Super Bowl somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteActually, that possibility probably dooms this stupid piece of - - um - legislation and I'm sure the Guv has already been advised of that. It's worth mucho milliones of course and losing the Super Bowl could cause a revolution. Dare I dream of Tea running in the streets?
ReplyDeleteI do appreciate the irony of the kooks that demand freedom voting to deny the freedoms they demand to others.
ReplyDelete