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Emergency unsolicited news analysis from Team Def Political Batshit Curator Lucky Bensonhurst
There is dithering in Kansas.
As you may have heard, the Kansas House of Representatives celebrated Valentine’s Day by passing a bill that essentially makes it legal for businesses to refuse to serve gay customers for moral/religious reasons. Moreover, it makes it legal for any employee to refuse to serve gays, even if the employer doesn’t object (in which case you’ll have to pass the gays onto one of yr heathen coworkers).
That includes govt employees. Which means, according to Slate:
Anti-gay proponents are trying to sell this, amusingly, as an anti-discrimination bill – which is to say, it combats discrimination against Christians. Because, as we all know, it’s not fair that Christians (which comprise at least 86% of the Kansas population) should be forced to do business with all five gay couples in that state. Because that’s oppression.
Ha ha.
As usual, the people who support the law haven’t really thought the idea through. For a start, we’ve already seen that laws intended to assert “religious freedom” tend to backfire due to lack of specificity and the assumption that it only applies to (fundamentalist) Christians and not, say, Muslims, Hindus and Satanists.
Also, proponents of the bill don’t seem to really understand the concept behind it. I’m sure they think it’s about opposing gay marriage in some vague way. But it’s really about aiding and abetting sin via commercial transactions. Like this: “If I sell a gay couple a car or a pizza or something, or if I fix their TV set, I am somehow condoning their gayness. Therefore, if I refuse them service, I am not complicit in their homosex.”
The logic is somewhat tortured (probably because the proponents didn’t bother with logic when they wrote it and/or voted for it), but that’s basically the idea being expressed here: Engaging in commercial transactions with gays = approval of gays.
And when you break that down, “gay” = “sin”. So if you can refuse to serve gay people because they’re sinners, by extension you can refuse to serve any sinner. And according to Scripture, we’re all sinners. Result: technically, you are pretty much unemployable, Jim. (Luckily, you can always run for office.)
Of course, as I said, none of the proponents of this bill have probably gotten that far in their thinking – it’s really just about “I’m SO afraid of gay people, and why should I be forced to deal with them at work just because it’s my job”. (Or, in some cases, it’s about “Ewwww I don't want gay all over me”.) But then most bad laws are the product of people who don’t put any real thought into them.
So it’s silly, yes. But like lots of silly legislation concerning gays oppressing the rights of Christian straight people by being allowed to be gay, it has a tendency to be overblown by people who want to turn this into a Authorized Republican Conspiracy to put gay people in re-education camps.
This is where I point out that the Kansas Senate leadership has already said they don’t support the bill. Please note – and I can’t stress this enough – that this is the Republican leadership we’re talking about here. The GOP controls both the state house and senate in Kansas, but the Republican-led senate isn’t having it.
And one reason, interestingly, is because the business sector doesn’t want it. Several Kansas business associations are opposed to the bill because it means you can’t fire an employee for refusing to do his/her job. Surprisingly, business owners don’t like being told by the govt how to handle their employees. (Who knew?) It also suggests that even if the law were passed, most businesses wouldn’t institute “No Gays Served” policies – at least not for long.
So the bill looks DOA. Which is good. And it’s probably as well, because – and I don't have the facts to back this up, BUT – I suspect the Repubs who came up with the bill aren’t all that serious about it. It looks like one of those bills that some self-righteous asshats wrote to make themselves look like they stand for morality. The point of such bills usually isn’t to get them signed into law – the point is to be seen voting on it. If it succeeds, fine. If it fails, you get to blame the Opposition for stopping it and causing all the problems in yr state.
So while it’s tempting to paint the bill’s passage as another example of Institutionalized Republican Bigotry, the bigger picture suggests that the GOP is at least trying to reign in the old OMGAY bugaboos that their batshit wing tends to deploy, if only for pro-business reasons. Which is, you know, better than letting the dingbats run the circus. (As John Boehner knows all too well.)
On the other hand, as Andrew Sullivan has pointed out, if the GOP really wants to shuck its batshit wing and be taken seriously as a party (especially by voters who are not Old White Guys) the last thing they should be doing is passing atavistic Jim Crow-style laws against the LGBTs. In fact, they probably shouldn’t even be introducing them on the floor in the first place.
But to be fair, it’s worth remembering here that both the GOP and the Democratic Party are complex beasts – what happens at the municipal and state level is going to vary widely from the federal level. Which means just because a bunch of Kansas house reps support a bill like this, it doesn’t follow that they’re taking their orders from John Boehner or Reince Priebus or whoever. It’s always possible Priebus is seeing all this from DC and thinking “Gawdamn it so MUCH, guys, we’re trying to IMPROVE THE TONE here …”
After all, party civil wars ain’t easy.
~ L. Bensonhurst
There is dithering in Kansas.
As you may have heard, the Kansas House of Representatives celebrated Valentine’s Day by passing a bill that essentially makes it legal for businesses to refuse to serve gay customers for moral/religious reasons. Moreover, it makes it legal for any employee to refuse to serve gays, even if the employer doesn’t object (in which case you’ll have to pass the gays onto one of yr heathen coworkers).
That includes govt employees. Which means, according to Slate:
Any government employee is given explicit permission to discriminate against gay couples—not just county clerks and DMV employees, but literally anyone who works for the state of Kansas. If a gay couple calls the police, an officer may refuse to help them if interacting with a gay couple violates his religious principles. State hospitals can turn away gay couples at the door and deny them treatment with impunity. Gay couples can be banned from public parks, public pools, anything that operates under the aegis of the Kansas state government.
Anti-gay proponents are trying to sell this, amusingly, as an anti-discrimination bill – which is to say, it combats discrimination against Christians. Because, as we all know, it’s not fair that Christians (which comprise at least 86% of the Kansas population) should be forced to do business with all five gay couples in that state. Because that’s oppression.
Ha ha.
As usual, the people who support the law haven’t really thought the idea through. For a start, we’ve already seen that laws intended to assert “religious freedom” tend to backfire due to lack of specificity and the assumption that it only applies to (fundamentalist) Christians and not, say, Muslims, Hindus and Satanists.
Also, proponents of the bill don’t seem to really understand the concept behind it. I’m sure they think it’s about opposing gay marriage in some vague way. But it’s really about aiding and abetting sin via commercial transactions. Like this: “If I sell a gay couple a car or a pizza or something, or if I fix their TV set, I am somehow condoning their gayness. Therefore, if I refuse them service, I am not complicit in their homosex.”
The logic is somewhat tortured (probably because the proponents didn’t bother with logic when they wrote it and/or voted for it), but that’s basically the idea being expressed here: Engaging in commercial transactions with gays = approval of gays.
And when you break that down, “gay” = “sin”. So if you can refuse to serve gay people because they’re sinners, by extension you can refuse to serve any sinner. And according to Scripture, we’re all sinners. Result: technically, you are pretty much unemployable, Jim. (Luckily, you can always run for office.)
Of course, as I said, none of the proponents of this bill have probably gotten that far in their thinking – it’s really just about “I’m SO afraid of gay people, and why should I be forced to deal with them at work just because it’s my job”. (Or, in some cases, it’s about “Ewwww I don't want gay all over me”.) But then most bad laws are the product of people who don’t put any real thought into them.
So it’s silly, yes. But like lots of silly legislation concerning gays oppressing the rights of Christian straight people by being allowed to be gay, it has a tendency to be overblown by people who want to turn this into a Authorized Republican Conspiracy to put gay people in re-education camps.
This is where I point out that the Kansas Senate leadership has already said they don’t support the bill. Please note – and I can’t stress this enough – that this is the Republican leadership we’re talking about here. The GOP controls both the state house and senate in Kansas, but the Republican-led senate isn’t having it.
And one reason, interestingly, is because the business sector doesn’t want it. Several Kansas business associations are opposed to the bill because it means you can’t fire an employee for refusing to do his/her job. Surprisingly, business owners don’t like being told by the govt how to handle their employees. (Who knew?) It also suggests that even if the law were passed, most businesses wouldn’t institute “No Gays Served” policies – at least not for long.
So the bill looks DOA. Which is good. And it’s probably as well, because – and I don't have the facts to back this up, BUT – I suspect the Repubs who came up with the bill aren’t all that serious about it. It looks like one of those bills that some self-righteous asshats wrote to make themselves look like they stand for morality. The point of such bills usually isn’t to get them signed into law – the point is to be seen voting on it. If it succeeds, fine. If it fails, you get to blame the Opposition for stopping it and causing all the problems in yr state.
So while it’s tempting to paint the bill’s passage as another example of Institutionalized Republican Bigotry, the bigger picture suggests that the GOP is at least trying to reign in the old OMGAY bugaboos that their batshit wing tends to deploy, if only for pro-business reasons. Which is, you know, better than letting the dingbats run the circus. (As John Boehner knows all too well.)
On the other hand, as Andrew Sullivan has pointed out, if the GOP really wants to shuck its batshit wing and be taken seriously as a party (especially by voters who are not Old White Guys) the last thing they should be doing is passing atavistic Jim Crow-style laws against the LGBTs. In fact, they probably shouldn’t even be introducing them on the floor in the first place.
But to be fair, it’s worth remembering here that both the GOP and the Democratic Party are complex beasts – what happens at the municipal and state level is going to vary widely from the federal level. Which means just because a bunch of Kansas house reps support a bill like this, it doesn’t follow that they’re taking their orders from John Boehner or Reince Priebus or whoever. It’s always possible Priebus is seeing all this from DC and thinking “Gawdamn it so MUCH, guys, we’re trying to IMPROVE THE TONE here …”
After all, party civil wars ain’t easy.
~ L. Bensonhurst
