The Religious Right to Discriminate?

[cbayer]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shmuly-yanklowitz/religious-right-to-discriminate_b_4903282.html

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz
Educator, activist and writer

Posted: 03/05/2014 12:23 pm EST Updated: 03/05/2014 12:23 pm EST Print Article

There are many benefits to living in Arizona, but one of them is certainly not the recent bill that proposed to allow discrimination on the basis of religious freedom. Bill 1062, had it passed, would have allowed businesses to reject service to any customer based on the owners' religious beliefs. The bill included:

'Exercise of religion' means the practice or observance of religion, including the ability to act or refusal to act in a manner substantially motivated by a religious belief whether or not the exercise is compulsory or central to a larger system of religious belief.

Many considered this legislation a strategy to legalize discrimination against LGBT individuals. Senate Democratic Leader Anna Tovar stated:

SB 1062 permits discrimination under the guise of religious freedom. With the express consent of Republicans in this Legislature, many Arizonans will find themselves members of a separate and unequal class under this law because of their sexual orientation. This bill may also open the door to discriminate based on race, familial status, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability.

Thankfully there was great pressure put upon Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who has gained notoriety for her extreme comments and policies regarding undocumented immigrants, and she vetoed the bill. She vetoed a similar bill last year, largely because it would have undoubtedly hurt the state financially through boycotts and rerouting of conferences and conventions to other states -- a message that has not been lost on the state's business community. Even Republican Jeff Flake, one of Arizona's Senators and a staunch conservative, urged the governor to veto the bill.

This development may be seen as the latest in a series of extreme reactions that began with the election of President Barack Obama, the nation's first African-American President, in 2008, with opposition to virtually any legislation or policy moves taken by the administration, regardless of whether they were ideas promoted by either the Democratic or Republican party. Then last year, the Supreme Court overturned federal opposition to gay marriage, and the federal government subsequently recognized gay marriages in terms of government benefits. Since then, lawsuits have been filed in about three-quarters of the 33 states that currently ban gay marriage. The ban has already been overturned in Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia, and more are bound to follow in rapid succession. So far, Utah and Oklahoma have appealed the rulings overturning the marriage ban. Furthermore, within the past weeks, Americans were witness to the first openly gay professional basketball player and the first openly gay man trying to be drafted by a professional football team; undoubtedly, these historic achievements for gay athletes have severely shocked the traditional hyper-masculine and conservative athletic world.

more at link

[Warpy]

1. Religious liberty was always meant to apply to individuals

who, despite the requirements of their jobs, were entitled to their religious inner life, no matter what that life might entail. It does not belong to institutions of any type from small businesses serving the public at large to hospitals to large government institutions.

All this howling is just more evidence of institutions trying to usurp the right of individuals to their own beliefs and their right to be in the public sphere without having to conform to the beliefs of others.

[longship]

2. ^^THIS^^ is the core of the issue. nt

[cbayer]

3. Excellent point, though I think that religious liberty does also

apply to strictly religious groups like churches.

But I would agree that it certainly doesn't apply to businesses and is particularly egregious when applied to for profit organizations.