Religous Freedom or sanctioned hatred

With the veto of the “religious Protection” bill, the conservatives need to admit, they may like to talk about the US Constitution, but they’ve never read it.

For those of you in the dark, earlier this week, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the bill which would have allowed discrimination against same sex couples, by allowing businesses to cite “religious confliction”.  This all stems from a wedding photographer who declined to shoot the wedding of a same sex couple, citing her religious beliefs.

Now, the very first amendment says, and I quote “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Take a moment, and re-read that if need. Right now, we’re going to skip to the 10^th amendment, because it connects with what we are talking about.

Amendment X reads: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

It is quite clear within the framework of those two amendments to the US Constitution that any law that allows a business to hide behind the skirt of religious beliefs is not constitutional! Seeing how the first amendment has already established that not a single law can be made to favor one religion over another, it’s clear that the issue is not left up to the states; the question has already been answered!

Did Governor Brewer make the right decision in vetoing the bill, yes she did, but let’s not cast her as some kind of hero. Coca-Cola, Home Depot, The NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA all laid pressure for her to kill the bill. The NFL said that if the bill wasn’t vetoed, that they would pull the Super Bowl from Arizona. By the way, that would have marked the second time the NFL yanked the Super Bowl from the state of Arizona. The first occurred when the NFL expressed concern over the state refusing to acknowledge Martin Luther King JR. Day as a Federal holiday. The NFL was given a resounding middle finger by the state. So the NFL yanked the Super Bowl, and the dye was cast to show that Arizona was perhaps the least tolerant state west of the Mississippi. And it’s an image that Arizona has actually done its best to cling hard to.

The very notion of a company having the ability to decline to serve someone based on the sexual orientation is nothing but 21^st century Jim Crow laws, it is has simple as that. To claim otherwise is simply being intellectually disingenuous. For centuries, segregating whites and blacks was viewed as a religious rite. One would think that we’d have evolved since then, but shocker, we haven’t.

Anyone who’s seen my Facebook page, seen my twitter page knows that I wholeheartedly support gay rights.  I found the very notion of the law that Arizona attempted to pass offensive. And I will not allow anyone to hide behind their excuse of “it will conflict with my religious beliefs if I provide a business service to a same sex couple”. I wonder really love to test these people. See how many of them keep the Sabbath holy, and refrain from eating meat on a certain day. I’d love to see how many of them actually follow the doctrine that they so claim to cherish. I’ll bet the farm that 100% would fail badly if such test was administered.  

Let’s be blunt, and call it what it really is: Religious sanctioned hatred. Bottom line, that’s all it really is folks. A bunch of people upset over the way others lead their lives because a book of fairy tales told them to be upset.

I worked retail for nearly a decade, and I dealt with some pretty shady customers. I bit the bullet, understood that I worked in a position that dealt with the public. I never refused service to anyone. I did so because I was a professional at what I did. If my EBay business was a brick and mortar store, I still would never refuse serve anyone based on their sexual orientation, religious dogma bottom line.

To quickly round back to an earlier point, I mentioned the 10^th amendment earlier for a reason. It clearly states that if a question or right hasn’t been explored. Since the first amendment clearly address the issue of favoring one religion over another, you cannot have a law enacted by a state that favors one religion over another.  In short, religious freedom laws like what Arizona tried to enact, are in violation of the US Constitution.

So, in closing, I hope that everyone can see past the “Protect religious freedom” crap that the right is trying to fling around. This is just another attempt to make it okay to discriminate against a group of people. Just another attempt to make them seem less than human, so whatever we make them endure doesn’t seem wrong. In reality, the only thing these “religious freedom” laws are missing is the ghost of Roger Taney saying that gays aren’t a full citizen of the US.