[Warning: rare rant alert]
As a man who married his man legally in the state where we live, I have been asked what I think about situations where some service providers have been asked and have denied services to same-sex couples. For example, florists, bakeries, party rental providers, or facilities (recreation hall or similar where a couple could have a party or wedding reception.)
One may think that I would have strong feelings about this matter…
…but I have not. I sorta let it go because I am one who believes in “live and let live.”
But I felt compelled to speak up upon seeing this week that legislatures in Kansas, Arizona, Idaho, Tennessee, and who knows where else proposing bills that would legally allow people to deny services to gay people if they believe the person requesting services is violating a closely-held religious belief.
Generally, I have felt that if someone owns a business and does not want to provide services to someone else based on whatever bigoted belief they may hold, then I can just tell them to stuff their wrong-headed bigotry and go elsewhere. I am a believer in letting money talk. Gay dollars are just as green as anyone else’s, and we can take our money to buy things from business operated by more tolerant and open-minded people. Why would I want to enrichen a bigot? Why would I want to patronize a business led by closed-minded hateful people? That’s why I never patronize Chick-fil-A, among others.
We — the Royal, capital “WE” — win out when we spend money that does not further any interest of people who hold such beliefs, whether their misguided thinking is caused by religious brainwashing, fear, confusion, or just plain stupidity.
But as I see more and more of this coming up in conservative U.S. states, I am feeling even more anger about it than originally I thought that I would. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution specifically says, “Freedom of Religion,” and the U.S. Supreme Court has determined in countless rulings to interpret that as the freedom to practice or follow — or not follow — any religion that you want.
I then found the anti-discrimination language codified by law in these states. Tennessee’s language is about the same as the others:
“Discriminatory practices” means any direct or indirect act or practice of exclusion, distinction, restriction, segregation, limitation, refusal, denial, or any other act or practice of differentiation or preference in the treatment of a person or persons because of race, creed, color, religion, sex, age or national origin.
Tell me, how can a state legally permit discrimination against anyone (regardless if he is gay or straight or whatever) based on a perceived violation of a religious belief if their own law prohibits discrimination based on religion?
I’m sure the conservative lawyers have a two-faced answer for that. (I label their answer as hypocrisy).
To this gay man who is not an attorney, this crap is an awful example of neaderthal conservatives’ last gasp. They see that their house of cards, writing discrimination against same-sex marriage into state constitutions, is likely to be tested at the U.S. Supreme Court level soon, and like they lost on June 26, 2013 when Section 3 of the hateful “Defense of Marriage Act” was found unconstitutional, they fear that they also will be informed that it is unconstitutional to require that marriage be between one man and one woman.
So now, they are going at it another way — finding methods to write anti-gay discrimination into law to weasel around what they see as their inevitable future loss with banning same-sex marriage.
It is this similar thinking and enacted laws in the Commonwealth of Virginia that made me insist that my partner leave Virginia and make our home in Maryland which is much more open-minded and progressive.
What drives these attempts at legislating discrimination into some states’ laws is fear. Pure and simple, no bones about it — fear. I truly regret that these bozos are such cowards and cannot admit that their attempts to prevent us from living a decent life under equal law with the person you love are unacceptable in this day and age.
Life is short: call a spade a spade, and a hypocrite a hypocrite. (I’ll return to boots tomorrow.)