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Indiana, the RFRA, and the backlash

Deadbolt

Deadbolt

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Let's start with tomorrow's Indy Star front page.

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Travesty; particularily blown away that 20 other States have similiar laws.

WTF???
 
DeacsPop said:
Travesty; particularily blown away that 20 other States have similiar laws.

WTF???
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The key word is similar, though. RFRA is pretty uniquely fucked up, despite the spin coming from the extreme right.

Still, it's insane that this was allowed to happen in this day and age.
 
Republicans have quite a bit of audacity to claim a law expressly written to allow them the freedom to discriminate isn't about discrimination.
 
His explanation for supporting the bill seemed reasonable and middle of the road to me.
 
HowardDeanSux said:
His explanation for supporting the bill seemed reasonable and middle of the road to me.
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"I think Governor Pence has done the right thing," Bush said. "Florida has a law like this. Bill Clinton signed a law like this at the federal level. This is simply allowing people of faith space to be able to express their beliefs, to have, to be able to be people of conscience. I just think once the facts are established, people aren’t going to see this as discriminatory at all."
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Except the facts have been established and it looks pretty discriminatory.
 
And the governor who signed it asked the legislature to clarify what it meant, there has been reluctance to do so, they haven't shown any interest really in including broad protection for gay individuals, and they have said they won't repeal the law. The facts, if they are anything other than what it seems to be (allowing carve outs for discrimination), do not appear to need and more establishing. That's just back pedaling from Pence to claim otherwise
 
What was the language of the law that Clinton signed? How similar is it?
 
I read an explanation of the bill (on Wikepedia), and would like further explanations of what "facts have been established" that make this bill so discriminatory. What "broad protections for gay individuals" do you desire? What "carve outs for gay individuals" are you concerned about and/or have occurred which concern you?
 
How does Indiana's bill apply to interactions between private citizens? The Constitution protects against government conduct. So I recall the original wave of RFRAs were in response to the national one getting struck down and they were geared towards the citizen vis a vis the government. I can see some merits in laws like this. Example-- there are a ton of sob stories about local/state governments requiring autopsies as a general rule, even where death was non-suspicious, of people whose religions taught autopsies were not allowed and would screw them up for the afterlife. Are there any other states whose RFRA's contemplate interactions between private citizens?
 
What makes Indiana's RFRA different?

There’s a factual dispute about the new Indiana law. It is called a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” like the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in 1993.* Thus a number of its defenders have claimed it is really the same law...

The problem with this statement is that, well, it’s false. That becomes clear when you read and compare those tedious state statutes. If you do that, you will find that the Indiana statute has two features the federal RFRA—and most state RFRAs—do not. First, the Indiana law explicitly allows any for-profit business to assert a right to “the free exercise of religion.” The federal RFRA doesn’t contain such language, and neither does any of the state RFRAs except South Carolina’s; in fact, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, explicitly exclude for-profit businesses from the protection of their RFRAs.

The new Indiana statute also contains this odd language: “A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.” (My italics.) Neither the federal RFRA, nor 18 of the 19 state statutes cited by the Post, says anything like this; only the Texas RFRA, passed in 1999, contains similar language.
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The upshot of all this is this law, unlike all the other RFRAs, is expressly written to allow for profit businesses to refuse service to people on religious grounds.

The linked article rightfully compares this nonsense to the good Christian Maurice Bessinger, who:
wanted everybody in earshot to know that slavery had been God’s will, that desegregation was Satan’s work, and the federal government was the Antichrist. God wanted only whites to eat at Bessinger’s six Piggie Park barbecue joints; so His servant Maurice took that fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1968 decided that his religious freedom argument was “patently frivolous.”
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As I have said before, if Christians really believe there is a "war on Christmas" and Christians are becoming an embattled minority, they would not support laws allowing discrimination on the basis of religion.
 
Can you paint with a broader brush in your next post?
 
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