Idaho’s New Anti-Gay Bill: Doctors and Teachers Can Turn Away Gays

[theHandpuppet]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/02/19/idaho_anti_gay_segregation_discrimination_against_gays_will_be_legal.html?wpisrc=burger_bar

Idaho’s New Anti-Gay Bill: Doctors and Teachers Can Turn Away Gays
By Mark Joseph Stern

(excerpt)
The first of Idaho’s anti-gay bills is a close copy of Kansas’. Under the guise of “free exercise of religion,” any private employer or business may refuse service to gay people—not just gay couples, but any individual whom a business owner suspects to be gay. As in Kansas’ bill, the law applies to both private employers and government workers. A restaurant, a hotel, or a movie theater will be permitted to turn away gay people—or perhaps simply put out a sign stating “No Gays Allowed”—as will a DMV, a county clerk, or a police station. Individuals need only state that serving gays violates their “sincerely held religious beliefs,” and they will be exempt from any lawsuits. And, as in Kansas’ bill, a gay person who does bring suit will not only lose but be forced to pay his opponent’s attorney fees.

But the second proposed bill goes much, much further than that. First, it outlaws any ENDA-style LGBT protections in the state of Idaho, which might seem superfluous since Idaho provides absolutely no anti-discrimination protections for gay people on the state level. But several municipalities have passed LGBT anti-discrimination statutes—and this, it seems, is too much for Republicans in the statehouse. The new bill explicitly revokes any municipal LGBT anti-discrimination statutes by allowing individuals with “sincerely held religious beliefs” to simply ignore them with impunity. A city ordinance banning housing or employment discrimination for gays, the bill holds, would be void, for it would “burden a person’s exercise of religion.”

Then comes the second bill’s sledgehammer, the section that could bring Idaho deep into a realm of discrimination not seen in the United States since the darkest days of racial segregation. Again in the name of “free exercise of religion,” the bill forbids any “occupational licensing board or government subdivision” to “deny, revoke or suspend a person’s professional or occupational license” for denying service to gay people.

This measure might seem mild on its face, but its true scope is absolutely jaw-dropping. Under the bill, a doctor may refuse to treat gay people and be protected from losing his license—even if the American Medical Association requires nondiscriminatory treatment. (The bill’s language is so broad, in fact, that a doctor could also legally deny treatment to single mothers.) A schoolteacher or college professor can openly order gays out of her classroom—even if her school has a policy of equality. Banks and law firms will be forbidden from requiring LGBT inclusiveness. The bills meddle with basic principles of free association, ripping from private organizations the ability to write their own rules. Under the proposed law, not a single group in the state of Idaho will be permitted to require the equal treatment of gays.... MORE

[jsr]

1. They forgot to include separate drinking fountains

[Behind the Aegis]

2. Disgusting!

[kiranon]

3. They forgot the "equal protection under the law" clause of the 14th Amendment.

Apparently, they can't read/comprehend any further than the Second Amendment "right to bear arms". And they purposefully misunderstand the establishment/prohibition clause of the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of and FROM religion. My adopted autistic teenage son and daughter could easily be mistaken as a gay person as many autistic teens present as agender - exhibiting characteristics of both. I foresee many disability rights lawsuits in the future and these states and businesses deserve them and they won't even see them coming until they hit. Many people with many different disabilities will file suit and hopefully bankrupt the idiots who support these laws. Freedom from lawsuits - I don't think so. The law is also unconstitutional on its face under the First and 14th Amendments but additional lawsuits from another direction will help to bury these types of laws.