This article is loaded with excellent information concerning the "game plan" of the Reich in regards to "religious freedom" and how they seriously are trying to make discrimination legal under the banner of "sincerely held religious belief." Media reports are calling these bits of legislation "Turn the Gays Away Bills" and presently they are being voted on in Idaho (H 426), Kansas (HB 2453), South Dakota (SB 128) and Tennessee (SB 2566). I believe there are two other states with similar legislation pending.
What I find troublesome, these bills by outward appearance (need to do a bit more research), are targeting specifically lesbian and gay individuals. But is a Pandora's box being opened in regards to civil rights in general? It is well known that some within the GOP/TP would like to repeal not only the 1965 Voting Rights Act but the 1964 Civil Rights Act as well. (Todd Akins and the Texas Republican Party come to mind.) IMHO, the entire purpose of these laws is to give CHRISTIANS and ONLY Christians protection to discriminate. It is a slippery slope heading in the direction of a theocratic form of government and a form of fascism implement by the Hitler regime.
Could I, as a secular business owner, refuse to serve conservative, anti-gay Christians on the same basis of religious belief? There will be much more to come as I look into each state and their legislation.
If a bill approved by the Kansas House Committee on Federal and State Affairs Thursday becomes law, businesses and government employees could legally refuse service to citizens because of their sexual orientation or marital status, claiming it violates their religious beliefs.
HB 2453, if passed, would permit “any individual or religious entity” to claim an exemption, based on religious views, from providing nearly any kind of services, and to be relieved from “treat(ing) any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union, or similar arrangement as valid.” Although the bill would require government agencies to make another employee available to provide the service if one employee objects, opponents of the bill say that arrangement could prove unworkable in small locales.
The Kansas measure is an extreme permutation of a wave of new bills in state legislatures that purport to bolster religious freedom, but that opponents say constitute a troubling new trend to craft a license to discriminate based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and marital or family status. The state efforts are apparently connected to a network with the Christian advocacy group Focus on the Family at its core.
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But conservative legislators are also reacting to the possibility of same-sex marriage bans being struck down, as federal cases decided in Utah and Oklahoma move through the courts — and Witt said the Kansas bill would give government employees the right to refuse service even if same-sex marriage were legal in the state.
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These mini-RFRAs, said Caroline Mala Corbin, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law, were “perfectly constitutional.” Under the federal RFRA, the plaintiff must prove that the law or state action in question imposes a “substantial burden” on religious exercise. But two states, Connecticut and Alabama, have replaced that test with merely a “burden” standard, and others are attempting such a change.
That’s problematic, Corbin said, because “it’s one thing to exempt people from a law that imposes a religious hardship” but “it’s quite another when it’s just a minor inconvenience.”
By taking out the “substantial” requirement, said Maggie Garrett, legislative counsel for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, these states are “making a completely different test,” as RFRA “was never meant to trump anti-discrimination and health and safety laws.”
In addition to taking the word “substantial” out of the statute, new proposals, including those in Idaho, Arizona, Ohio and Mississippi, would allow a twist not permitted under the federal RFRA or any of the original mini-RFRAs: suits against private parties, as opposed to the government, or as a defense in a suit brought by a private party.
In addition, a bill moving through the Arizona Senate specifically identifies corporations as parties with religious freedom to be protected — one of the issues the Supreme Court has been asked to take up in cases brought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood in their challenges to the contraception coverage.
Wave of new state bills: Religious freedom or license to discriminate? | Al Jazeera America
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