So, yeah, the Arizona House passed that bill last night. The New Civil Rights Movement reports.
The full Arizona House just passed a religious freedom license to discriminate bill that will allow anyone, for any reason, refuse to provide services to anyone if they claim it violates their religious beliefs. The Arizona Senate passed their version of the bill, SB 1062, just yesterday.
The legislation is now headed to Republican Governor Jan Brewer for her signature or veto.
After several hours of debate, the Republican-led Arizona House in an unrecorded voice vote sent HB 2153, an Act Relating To The Free Exercise Of Religion to the full House for a vote. That vote happened only minutes later. The final vote was 33-27.
The free exercise clause – I hate that clause. It shores up a lot of the worst kind of American exceptionalism. Exceptions that allow parents to refuse to vaccinate their children for religious reasons; that allow parents to refuse medical treatment for their children for religious reasons; that allow parents to yank their children out of school at 14 for religious reasons; that allow parents to “home school” with zero oversight or criteria for religious reasons; that allow religious institutions to refuse to employ women for religious reasons; that grant conscientious objector status for religious reasons and not philosophical reasons; and so on.
Rep. Chad Campbell, the Democratic Minority Leader, delivered a very passionate speech, telling his fellow House members, “this is state sanctioned discrimination.”
“If you are gay, don’t come to Arizona. That’s what we’re saying to the nation,” Rep. Campbell said. “This is a direct attack on a certain group of people — the LGBT community,” he noted.
Later, he noted, “there’s only one type of equality, and that’s equal.”
But of course that’s not how the other side sees it.
“I’m sick and tired of the majority being trampled on by the minority,” Rep. Steve Smith said. “I won’t stand for it. We’re the bad people. Why? Because I dare to wear my religion on my sleeve?”
No, actually. The answer to that question is No. That’s not why. It’s because you demand the “right” to deprive other people of their genuine rights for reasons of your own gut-level unreasonable ew-ick feelings, which you disguise as sleeve-religion.
Because you’re bigots and using your religion to excuse your bigotry.
Argle Bargle, and that concludes today’s episode of easy answers to easy questions. 🙂
We’re the bad people. Why? Because I dare to wear my religion on my sleeve?
No, because your religion is ugly. And you don’t want to wear it on your sleeve, you want everyone else to wear it.
Part of me would like to see the governor of AZ (whom I understand has vetoed similar proposed legislation before) sign this one, just so that, as is inevitable, cafes and stores and malls and all kinds of places will pop up advertising themselves as welcoming gay customers. And then we can inundate the state with gay and gay-friendly tourists, and just totally swamp the culture with gayness, and tell them they only brought it on themselves. We’ll turn AZ into a Rainbow State, and the bigots can try living on the bits of the economy left to them as we take all our business to the good guys across the street.
If only.
(Or maybe I’m just still high on the wave of good feeling from going to hear Armistead Maupin last week!)
You know, now that you mention it, that could happen even if she doesn’t sign it. It could be starting already. Caravans full of gayness forming to go to Rocco’s Pizzeria.
Even if religion isn’t just a “disguise” (or an “excuse”, a “rationalization”, an “alibi” etc.) , even if some people genuinely want to discriminate against gays (or women, infidels etc.) because they think (rightly IMO) it’s required by their religion, why should that make it any more worthy of respect? The fact that your religion requires you to be a bigot doesn’t legitimize your bigotry, but de-legitimizes your religion.
The whole idea that practicing one’s religion is a “right” that must be respected ultimately boils down to the proposition that attitudes and behaviors that would otherwise be universally condemned become worthy of our deepest respect if they’re based on believing spectacularly implausible things for impossibly shitty reasons (i.e. the only kind of reasons that exist for believing in any kind of god). It’s the ultimate case of “two wrongs make a right”. People like Steve Smith are essentially saying: “I have absolutely no reason for believing as I do, but I’m still going to act as if it was true and let the gays pay the price”. What’s so respectable about that?
I’m with Bjarte: doesn’t matter whether his bigotry actually comes from his sleeve-religion. It’s just like the talking point about fundamentalists distorting “the true meaning of Islam”. We should, as a matter of courtesy, accept that people’s religious beliefs are what they say they are, and that a religion’s true meaning is what the people practicing the religion mean by practicing it.
That shouldn’t stop us from saying that rep. Smith appears to have some shit on his sleeve, regardless of the exact nature and origins of said shit.