Exposing the Christian Right's New Strategy for Reversing Years of Progress on Gay Rights

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http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/exposing-christian-rights-new-strategy-reversing-decades-progress-gay-rights



With LGBT rights activists winning court victories in state after state, the Christian Right has opened a new battlefield in the nation’s cultural war, and they’re leaving nothing behind in their effort to enact Jim Crow-era laws against gay Americans.

Taking inspiration from the Hobby Lobby case — a case that threatens to allow a corporation to invoke religion to exempt itself from a law (contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act) it doesn’t like — Republican lawmakers have pushed a slew of bills under the guise of “religious freedom.” This means businesses or individuals would be granted not only the right to deny services or employment to LGBT American, but also immunity against prosecution for discrimination.

Last week, Republicans in Kansas’ lower house passed a bill that would have effectively allowed Christian business owners or employees the right to deny service to same-sex couples. Think segregated restaurants in the Deep South prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and you’re drawing a mental picture of what the Christian Right hoped to achieve in Kansas. The language of the bill would have allowed restaurants, for instance, to deny service to “any marriage, domestic partnership,” or “civil union” that “would be contrary to the sincerely held religious beliefs of the individual or religious entity regarding sex or gender.” Thankfully, the bill was killed in the Senate. But Kansas was merely the opening salvo.

Republicans in Arizona, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Idaho, Ohio, Mississippi, and Oklahoma have now introduced bills that would also grant religious zealots the right the segregate their businesses against LGBT Americans. Significantly, all of these bills were introduced this year.

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1. The thing is, I kinda hope more of these bills come up

These state republicans don't seem to be in touch with reality. Around 74% of ALL millennials support marriage equality and gays in general. They don't think it's right to discriminate against gays. So, let them pass these unconstitutional laws and let the backlash against the republican party happen. You have to wonder what actually happened in Kansas to put the brakes on this bill because it surely would have been passed and enacted. So, who was responsible for stopping it? I think it was the national republican party as well as large corporations based in Kansas. Those seem about the only things the republican party care about or listen to.