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defrogIf you have any kind of social media account, you know that state legislatures in North Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi are dithering over The Gayz.
The one in North Carolina is officially law. The one in Georgia was dropped after Gov Nathan Deal decided not to sign it when The Walking Dead team said it would film elsewhere. The one in Mississippi is pending, though Gov Phil Bryant seems pretty keen on it.
The first two are laws we’ve seen before. The NC bill basically says only the state govt can decide who gets protection under anti-discrimination laws (and BTW the LGBTs will never qualify as long the GOP runs the place). Tennessee passed a similar law five years ago (ostensibly in the name of pro-business workplace regulation consistency).
The GA bill was more like the Indiana “religious liberty” bill last year allowing business owners to refuse to cater gay weddings or refuse services to LGBTs, which Gov Mike Pence eventually amended to nullify that part.
I don’t have anything to add about the NC and GA bills that I haven’t already said about the TN and Indiana bills.
However, the MS bill is worth spending some extra time on because it goes further than the other bills mentioned above, not least in that it includes non-marital heterosex in its list of items you can legally discriminate against people for religious reasons. Which is odd because in Mississippi (and 27 other states, BTW), it's already legal to deny housing to an unmarried couple based on a landlord's religious objection to premarital sex. For that matter, it's already legal to do the same thing to LGBTs.
Consequently, I think it’s fair to say the MS bill has two main objectives for the GOP-led legislature: (1) make gay marriage illegal in MS despite the SCOTUS ruling, and (2) ensure the GOP is SEEN by their constituents fighting The LGBT Agenda™.
I suspect the second is the most important objective, as I’m sure at least some of the bill’s supporters know full well the law won’t survive a legal challenge – unless maybe they’re banking on Mitch McConnell keeping that ninth SCOTUS seat empty until Donald Trump wins the election.
Whatever the motivation, I think it’s a bad law for the same reason the other ones are bad laws.
To be clear, I fully understand that some Christians don’t want anything to do with gay marriage because they’re afraid that even so much as providing a cake or a DJ service some how endorses or legitimizes it. I’m just not convinced the solution to what is admittedly a complex problem is to pass a simplistic law that essentially declares religious beliefs are above secular law. There’s just so much that can go wrong there.
One other thought: the MS law states that churches can’t be forced to officiate gay marriages. This is something I actually support. There’s a big difference between the state handing out marriage licenses and a church performing them, and I do think pastors should have the right to refuse.
The thing is, I’m unaware that this is actually a problem. I may be out of touch, but I don’t know of any church that has been forced to officiate a gay marriage in MS (or anywhere else), or has been sued for refusing to do so. The latter might happen at some point, but I don’t think any gay couple who tried it would succeed, because there’s no legal basis for it – churches are not compelled under the SCOTUS ruling to perform gay marriages on demand. There would also be no point in suing the ones that refuse, since some US churches have already decided to support gay marriage. So if you have yr heart set on a church wedding, it is an option.
So in that sense, the MS bill – and most bills like these – are solutions in search of a problem, and as such are likely going to create more problems than they’re purported to solve.
None of which will stop Phil Bryant from signing it. And whether he does or doesn’t, this won't be the last bill like this we will see. As the POTUS elections have demonstrated, America is angry and freaking out about everything, and people on both sides are no longer interested in compromise – it’s become an all-or-nothing game. The same is true of the LGBT culture wars.
Go down swinging,
This is dF
The one in North Carolina is officially law. The one in Georgia was dropped after Gov Nathan Deal decided not to sign it when The Walking Dead team said it would film elsewhere. The one in Mississippi is pending, though Gov Phil Bryant seems pretty keen on it.
The first two are laws we’ve seen before. The NC bill basically says only the state govt can decide who gets protection under anti-discrimination laws (and BTW the LGBTs will never qualify as long the GOP runs the place). Tennessee passed a similar law five years ago (ostensibly in the name of pro-business workplace regulation consistency).
The GA bill was more like the Indiana “religious liberty” bill last year allowing business owners to refuse to cater gay weddings or refuse services to LGBTs, which Gov Mike Pence eventually amended to nullify that part.
I don’t have anything to add about the NC and GA bills that I haven’t already said about the TN and Indiana bills.
However, the MS bill is worth spending some extra time on because it goes further than the other bills mentioned above, not least in that it includes non-marital heterosex in its list of items you can legally discriminate against people for religious reasons. Which is odd because in Mississippi (and 27 other states, BTW), it's already legal to deny housing to an unmarried couple based on a landlord's religious objection to premarital sex. For that matter, it's already legal to do the same thing to LGBTs.
Consequently, I think it’s fair to say the MS bill has two main objectives for the GOP-led legislature: (1) make gay marriage illegal in MS despite the SCOTUS ruling, and (2) ensure the GOP is SEEN by their constituents fighting The LGBT Agenda™.
I suspect the second is the most important objective, as I’m sure at least some of the bill’s supporters know full well the law won’t survive a legal challenge – unless maybe they’re banking on Mitch McConnell keeping that ninth SCOTUS seat empty until Donald Trump wins the election.
Whatever the motivation, I think it’s a bad law for the same reason the other ones are bad laws.
To be clear, I fully understand that some Christians don’t want anything to do with gay marriage because they’re afraid that even so much as providing a cake or a DJ service some how endorses or legitimizes it. I’m just not convinced the solution to what is admittedly a complex problem is to pass a simplistic law that essentially declares religious beliefs are above secular law. There’s just so much that can go wrong there.
One other thought: the MS law states that churches can’t be forced to officiate gay marriages. This is something I actually support. There’s a big difference between the state handing out marriage licenses and a church performing them, and I do think pastors should have the right to refuse.
The thing is, I’m unaware that this is actually a problem. I may be out of touch, but I don’t know of any church that has been forced to officiate a gay marriage in MS (or anywhere else), or has been sued for refusing to do so. The latter might happen at some point, but I don’t think any gay couple who tried it would succeed, because there’s no legal basis for it – churches are not compelled under the SCOTUS ruling to perform gay marriages on demand. There would also be no point in suing the ones that refuse, since some US churches have already decided to support gay marriage. So if you have yr heart set on a church wedding, it is an option.
So in that sense, the MS bill – and most bills like these – are solutions in search of a problem, and as such are likely going to create more problems than they’re purported to solve.
None of which will stop Phil Bryant from signing it. And whether he does or doesn’t, this won't be the last bill like this we will see. As the POTUS elections have demonstrated, America is angry and freaking out about everything, and people on both sides are no longer interested in compromise – it’s become an all-or-nothing game. The same is true of the LGBT culture wars.
Go down swinging,
This is dF
