UPDATED: Idaho’s New Anti-Gay Bill: Doctors and Teachers Can Turn Away Gays
Source: Slate
By Mark Joseph Stern
Kansas’ odious bill legalizing homophobic discrimination may have died a surprising death last Thursday, but the threat of anti-gay segregation is far from over. This month, Idaho lawmakers will consider two bills that go even further than Kansas’ in writing homophobia into every aspect of state law. The bills have already passed out of committee—unanimously—and barring another Kansas-style retreat, they stand good chance of passing the strongly Republican Idaho Legislature. If they do, the state will instantly become the new face of segregation in America.
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.
Read more: http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/02/19/idaho_anti_gay_segregation_discrimination_against_gays_will_be_legal.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content&mc_cid=6a76003429&mc_eid=7a8b58c8c3
UPDATE:
Idaho GOPer responds to outcry, pulls two virulently anti-gay laws from consideration
Rep. Lynn Luker says his legislation has been "misinterpreted" and he reserves the right to reintroduce it later
ELIAS ISQUITH
In the face of an overwhelming amount of criticism, it appears that the Kansas state legislature has — at least for now — abandoned its attempt to codify homophobia by allowing people in the private and public sphere to refuse to provide services to LGBT people if they suspect them of being in a same-sex marriage.
Now, in Idaho, a very similar process has taken place, with state Rep. Lynn Luker withdrawing two bills he proposed, both of which are ostensibly about religious freedom but would in effect turn LGBT Idahoans into second-class citizens.
Before Luker’s move, lawmakers in Idaho were set to deliberate over the two anti-gay bills. If the bills had passed, writes Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, Idaho would have “instantly become the new face of segregation in America.”
Stern describes the first of the two bills as “a close copy” of the dead Kansas bill. It would have allowed any private employer or business to deny services to someone if they suspect them of being gay. The law would have applied to public workers, too, meaning that a police officer or ambulance driver could have refused to do their jobs as long as they said their refusal was premised on their religious beliefs. Underlining the fundamentally hostile relationship Luker wanted to create between Idaho and its LGBT residents, the bill would have — like Kansas’ — forced any gay person who brought suit over acts of discrimination to pay their opponents’ legal fees if they lost (as the law all but guaranteed they would).
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