So on Friday, Oct. 17, we had a little party, right? People got married in the breezeway between the Pima County administration building and the courthouse, and we have posters being made of U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick and we’re booking him now for next year’s pride parades.
Put away the party hats folks, because crazyland has not left the building. It’s time for another fight.
H/T to Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini, who wrote today about how the Alliance Defending Freedom is i Arizona chatting up our crazyland lawmakers to revive a new version of SB 1062, the bill Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed after huge public pressure from people who understood that legalizing description was just not a good idea. In this case, the bill would have allowed individuals and business could deny services to anyone LGBT, claiming “sincerely held religious belief.” Yeah, that’s always the problem with discrimination—it’s always so damn sincere.
An outfit called Alliance Defending Freedom is backing the idea of legalized discrimination. And a legislator or two are talking like they’d be happy to see a new version of Senate Bill 1062, which would have legalized (or at least attempted to do so) discrimination by individuals and businesses who claim to be acting on what they called a “sincerely held religious belief.”
Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed that bill, saying it wasn’t necessary and hopefully understanding the negative impact such a proposal would have had on our businesses and our tourism.
Let alone our souls.
Now, apparently, it’s back.
According to an article by The Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl discussions about this are going on at the State Capitol. She noted: “House Speaker Pro Tem J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, told the Arizona Capitol Times that the issue of how to protect businesses from being forced to work with groups with whom they have a moral objection will need to be addressed.”
How about you address it by telling people that discrimination is illegal?
This article appears in Oct 23-29, 2014.
What’s really crazy is that Arizona *already* has a statute that’s identical to the federal RFRA which allowed Hobby Lobby to skip paying for women’s birth control under its health plan. So, there’s no need to amend any existing laws or pass any new ones for someone in Arizona to say they don’t have to recognize same-sex marriages because it violates their religious beliefs. In the end, I think they’ll lose those claims, just as claims for religious exemptions from the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s ban on race discrimination failed. But there’s a lot of time and a lot of litigation and uncertainty between here & there.
it’s a shame, but, the beat goes on.
Isn’t the Alliance Defending Freedom just Cathi Herrod’s Center for Arizona Policy by another name? And are they really interested in safeguarding the cake baker’s or the florist’s right to discriminate or are they fighting a rear-guard battle to preserve their own relevance in a world that is fast spinning out of their control? Ms. Herrod hosted two workshops for pastors of her persuasion just before the August primary, trying to shore them up in their opposition to marriage equality rather than trying with them to see that perhaps the world is big enough for loving couples to be able to express their freedom by marrying. I invite those pastors to come out of her shadow into the light of the Good News.
“At the Legislature, Herrod’s strategic fingerprints are all over the Center for Arizona Policy’s bills from their inception. The center’s staff often writes legislation, takes it directly to lawmakers who chair the committees where it will be heard, and then lines up experts to testify on behalf of it.”
http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/art…
Wouldn’t you like to have that kind of access to legislators?
Ms Herrod will have even greater access with Doug Ducey as governor. Vote for Fred Duval.
This is yet another reason why we need to vote for Fred Duval, Victoria Steele, Randy Friese and all other Democratic candidates for the legislature. The Arizona Republican Party doesn’t need to be “rewarded” with your vote when they REFUSE to reject the politics of hate. As long as extremists and reactionaries run the State Legislature, Arizona’s voters and businesses will be hurt.
“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called religion”
According to these people and the Supreme Court, avowing a religion grants you special rights. If you don’t have a government-approved religion, you are effectively a 2nd class citizen and there will be no special rights for you.
If this isn’t enough proof that Doug Ducey as Governor would doom the state… make sure everyone you know gets out to vote!
Cathi Herrod and her hateful CAP are a dying breed but they just don’t know it yet..She is like a dying cobra who is still able to hiss and spit her venom all over everyone. vote for Fred Duval, he will handle them very effectively.
Would any perceptive reader here be shocked to learn that Rick Jason might possibly be that overweight, aging, and quite possibly, closeted, but definitely frustrated homosexual that’s been hanging around the downtown bus terminal?
Didn’t think so…
Brewer should never vetoed the last one. Our state attorney General will lose his Job for not appealing that sleazy judges ruling.
How can anyone named Herrod voice an opinion on religion? The Herrod family lost their creeds in..oh…say about the year 0.01 AD?????
PS: Is “Rick Jason” (supra) a real person? Sique behavior? Whaaaat?
I wonder if people know what their signing on for when they vote or believe in this kind of law. They claim that it is to protect Christians from the horror of gay people but it also allows someone to post signs that say “Blacks and Jews need not apply”. Try and tell me it won’t once you open the door to discriminate it’s open for anyone to use. The whole “sincere religious belief” defense isn’t when you think about it. If you claim that it’s because you book, say the bible says you can do this then why don’t you follow everything to the letter of the law. It’s not a sincere religious belief if you only pick and choose what you what to follow. If you took it to a court of law it probably wouldn’t stand to scrutiny.
Think about some of the crazies out there that believe that Christians should be killed because of a sincere religious belief. Think of the religions that believe that you can sell off your daughters because of a sincere religious belief. Think of the KKK burning blacks, Jews and non-Christians because of a sincere religious belief. The inquisition happened because of a sincere religious belief. The Salam witch trials happened because of a sincere religious belief.
Don’t say it won’t happen because it has, over and over again in history.