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One of the conservative talking points in opposition to same-sex marriage is that the courts shouldn’t redefine marriage. They claim it has always been between a man and a woman. The problem is marriage has been redefined before, several times. A recent redefinition even contradicts some religious conservative beliefs.
We are on the cusp of probably seeing same-sex marriage bans joining school mandated prayer in the dust bin of history. The road from DC is looking like an end to religious privilege. The war has instead moved to the state houses around the country where the right-wing is doing all it can to deny basic human dignity and worth by forcing Christianity on the residents of their states.
In a Salon article, Evan McMurry, from AlterNet, detailed at least four areas the right-wing religious conservatives are flexing what muscles they have left:
Indiana and Arkansas have changed their state Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) to make it more explicit that it not be used by businesses to discriminate against LGBTs or others of different beliefs. RFRAs were originally created to protect minority religious beliefs from government overreach, like peyote use by Native Americans, and not to allow the majority religions to selectively honor the civil rights of others.
Josh Marshall over at Talkingpointsmemo.com had a great essay on the how RFRAs were perverted by the religious majority:
In a previous post, I used the title ‘Indiana Ends Fair And Equal Treatment‘ in response to Governor Pence signing a Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. RFRA’s have opened the door to discrimination since the federal version was used in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision back in June.
After my post went up I had a person on twitter try to claim that since the United States Supreme Court had ruled the federal RFRA constitutional and Indiana’s version is an exact copy of the federal version then there is no end to fair and equal treatment. That claim isn’t supported by the facts.
I was going to write a long winded post about the ‘Religious Freedom’ law signed by Indiana’s Governor Mike Pence today but I decided Brandan Robertson, on his blog Revangelical, made the kind of point I would be making. Basically, laws like Indiana’s ‘Religious Freedom’ law makes a mockery out of ideals of fair and equal treatment that evolved from the civil rights struggle.
Here is an official photo of the private signing ceremony. Governor Pence is seated at the desk. We know Catholics are well represented but where are the atheists and Muslims?
It was reported today (March 9th), that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that due to speech content restrictions the Missouri House of Worship Protection Act (2012) was unconstiutional.
