Anti-Gay Laws are based on religious freedom

[Tiberius]

I was actually surprised that the GOP was so open about their bigotry here. But I shouldn't have been.

 

 

http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/27/news/companies/businesses-fight-indiana-gay-discrimination/index.html

 

 

Nice to see prominent business leaders speaking about against this attack on liberty.

[\GoBillsInDallas/]

19 other states already have this law, including 8 with democratic governors and legislatures:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/03/27/19-states-that-have-religious-freedom-laws-like-indianas-that-no-one-is-boycotting/

 

13 other states are currently considering similar laws, including 6 with democratic governors and legislatures:

 

http://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/2015-state-rfra-legislation.aspx

[IDBillzFan]

I was actually surprised that the GOP was so open about their bigotry here. But I shouldn't have been.

 

 

http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/27/news/companies/businesses-fight-indiana-gay-discrimination/index.html

 

 

Nice to see prominent business leaders speaking about against this attack on liberty.

 

 

Are you literally SO stupid as to not know that this is an overwhelming bi-partisan law that was even passed in liberal Illinois when Obama was a state Senator?

 

Of course not, because when you copy/paste your way through events, you couldn't possibly be smart enough to spend just a few seconds double-checking what your moronic overlords feed to you.

[Tiberius]

 

 

Are you literally SO stupid as to not know that this is an overwhelming bi-partisan law that was even passed in liberal Illinois when Obama was a state Senator?

 

Of course not, because when you copy/paste your way through events, you couldn't possibly be smart enough to spend just a few seconds double-checking what your moronic overlords feed to you.

This is a different law, passed as a knee jerk reaction to marriage equality, and straight up along party lines, all Repubs for, all Dems against in Indiana.

 

How are YOU calling anyone stupid? You are like Stupid Incorporated. So glad you are a Conservative.

[B-Man]

Now, now LA..............this is simply the Left's cause du jour..............it will pass quickly to be replaced by another.

 

As GBID points out, liberal hypocrisy here is rampant.

 

Video: Protests over Indiana version of RFRA seem to miss one important point

by Ed Morrissey

 

Actually, it’s more like 30 important points, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Gov. Mike Pence signed a bill into law on Thursday that offers protection for religious expression, and the entertainment world has hit the roof over it. CNN provides coverage of the protests that has been typical of that seen all week: (video at the link)

 

CNN’s announcer doesn’t get around to mentioning until almost at the end of the segment that other states have similar laws, and never mentions that the federal government does as well. Senators Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy sponsored the original Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) after the Supreme Court’s Smith decision that failed to protect a Native American who was denied employment benefits after having tested positive for peyote. Bill Clinton signed that RFRA into law in 1993 after it passed unanimously in the Senate.

 

Since then, 19 other states have passed similar legislation to apply RFRA to their own jurisdictions.

 

{snip}

 

Another 11 states have judicial precedents that constitute a RFRA policy in their courts. Over the last twenty-plus years, RFRA statutes have a clear track record of careful jurisprudence, because they don’t protect ad-hoc discrimination on any basis. That’s true on both federal and state levels, and we know this in part because the hysterics shrieking over the law in Indiana offer nothing but ignorant hypotheticals. They cannot point to a case where RFRA has been used to justify broad discrimination, because it never has.

 

Cases decided under RFRA get strict scrutiny on three tests. First, the religious belief has to be sincerely held, and not just a pose to make a point. Second, the state interest in overriding the religious belief has to be compelling. Last, the action taken by the state has to be the least intrusive that still satisfies the compelling state interest. Courts have been using these tests for more than two decades to separate real cases of state infringement on religious practice from simple discrimination. The Hobby Lobby decision is one such case; the Obama administration lost that case because the Supreme Court noted that even HHS had to admit it didn’t use the least intrusive method available to them, and largely punted on the issue of whether the contraception mandate intruded on sincerely-held religious belief.

 

The lemmings like Gator are simply responding to people who think that the "exercise of religion" includes bigotry.

 

Except, though, that almost no one is arguing that exercise of religion excuses bigotry. Christians have not objected to providing services to LGBT customers, but to being forced to participate in same-sex weddings by the state, either by baking a cake for one or having to photograph it, and then getting forced out of business by fines when they refuse out of religious conscience. Furthermore, Christians can’t “abuse” RFRA, because it’s the courts that use it to adjudicate disputes of this kind. RFRA laws constrain the states and their actions — they don’t undo public-accommodation laws for citizens.

 

 

The only reason for the hyperbolic outrage coming from the entertainment and sports industries the last two days is willful ignorance. That’s their problem. It doesn’t have to be ours.

 

 

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/28/video-protests-over-indiana-version-of-rfra-seem-to-miss-one-important-point/

 

 

.

[Tiberius]

Hot air!!! LOL!!!

[IDBillzFan]

Hot air!!! LOL!!!

 

 

Gatorman: "Quick, Overlords, you didn't tell me that liberals passed this law too! You didn't tell me it was also a federal law! They're embarrassing me to no end and I need to know what to do!"

 

Overlord: "Mock their sources! It's your only way out before calling them bigots for no good reason at all!"

 

Gatorman: "Thank you, Overlords. For a moment I thought I would have to think for myself!"

 

Overlord: "You're not capable of that. Just keep copy/pasting and all will be well, iittle sheeple."

[blzrul]

Sharia law anyone?

[DC Tom]

It's fascinating to read the law and find out how completely its being misrepresented.

[Keukasmallies]

It's fascinating to read the law and find out how completely its being misrepresented.

 

Whoa, let's not let reality cloud our rants! The current pendulum placement for this issue is whatever our LBGT brothers, sisters, and [fill in the blank] think it is.

[B-Man]

It's fascinating to read the law and find out how completely its being misrepresented.

 

Exactly.

 

The Left is fine when government restricts freedom, but when that rare law comes along that reiterates it, they melt down like Hillary at a Benghazi hearing.

 

The Left hijacked this issue as it always does, by re-framing it to fit its own misguided philosophy, one that always de-values life and freedom. It is exactly the way the abortion debate has been handled. Pro-lifers frame the issue as a matter of murder. Pro-abortionists frame it as a matter of “choice”.

 

In the case of religious freedom laws, Leftists re-frame the reiteration of a group’s freedoms, instead making those protected by the law appear as bigots. It isn’t a pro-freedom law, it’s an anti-gay law. The complicit mainstream media, like USA TODAY, calls it a law “that grants businesses the right to refuse service to gay and lesbian couples.”

 

What a load of crap. How did this nonsense get started? Because last time a law like this passed, CBS News falsely claimed that an EMT could refuse to give aid to a homosexual, citing religious beliefs.

 

Never mind that no EMT would ever do something like refuse care to a homosexual, because EMTs are EMTs because they like saving lives.

 

But leave it to the Left to concoct the most ridiculous and impossible circumstance that they could dream up, and make it reality. Firefighters won’t put out a gay fire! What if the only hospital in town refuses service to a gay person? What if the only barbershop in town won’t cut a gay head?

 

The Left must do this, because without victims, government has nothing to fix, and people cannot be controlled.

 

 

 

It is the Leftists that are bigots. To them, it doesn’t matter if the rights of other people that get trampled on in the process. It only matters when the rights of people Leftists care about get trampled on.

 

 

 

You will note that lightweights like Gator have no response to these arguments, that is why, in my previous post where there were comprehensive quotes from CNN and links to the Washington Post, he could only weakly try to criticize Ed Morrissey's blog Hot Air. It goes without saying that he is unfamiliar with it, and incapable , of making any type of intelligent response to it.

 

 

 

.

Edited March 29, 2015 by B-Man

[ExiledInIllinois]

Relgious freedom is indivdual freedom. Never going to resolve this impasse. Gays need to just move on and find a business that will accept them.

 

Anyway, that's why Apple is gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[DC Tom]

 

What a load of crap. How did this nonsense get started? Because last time a law like this passed, CBS News falsely claimed that an EMT could refuse to give aid to a homosexual, citing religious beliefs.

.

 

More to the point: if an EMT refused aid to a homosexual, he'd be fired (which the law doesn't prevent) and/or sued. He could then argue in court that being required to provide aid to a homosexual represents an "undue burden on his expression of religion" placed on him by the government (because that's the text of the law). And he should lose, because "doing your job of providing aid to the injured" is not an expression of religion.

 

What's really going to be fun now is watching politicians come out of the woodwork decrying this law, who voted for the federal law in the early 90's (most of 'em - it passed by a wide bipartisan margin), where the laws are practically identical. In particular, I'm waiting to hear what Chuck Schumer has to say - so far, he's been notably and intelligently silent on the matter.

[Tiberius]

Looks like Republican hate laws are bad for business. Bunch of jobs lost in Indiana or the law

 

 

http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/28/news/companies/angies-list-indiana-gay-discrimination/index.html?iid=TL_Popular

[B-Man]

 

Look at how pleased Bill Clinton was to sign what was then perceived as important civil rights legislation in 1994.

 

The Religious Freedom Act.........................I guess that he didn't realize that it was a "hate law.............lol

 

 

 

and isn't that Chuckie Schumer in the background ?

 

 

 

.

[Alaska Darin]

 

Look at how pleased Bill Clinton was to sign what was then perceived as important civil rights legislation in 1994.

 

The Religious Freedom Act.........................I guess that he didn't realize that it was a "hate law.............lol

 

 

 

and isn't that Chuckie Schumer in the background ?

 

 

 

.

Look at all that diversity.

[IDBillzFan]

Looks like Republican hate laws are bad for business. Bunch of jobs lost in Indiana or the law

 

 

http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/28/news/companies/angies-list-indiana-gay-discrimination/index.html?iid=TL_Popular

 

They'll be replaced by companies happy to set up shop without fear of being sued and put out of business by far left nutjobs looking to make the front page of the DailyKos.

 

 

Look at how pleased Bill Clinton was to sign what was then perceived as important civil rights legislation in 1994.

 

The Religious Freedom Act.........................I guess that he didn't realize that it was a "hate law.............lol

 

 

 

and isn't that Chuckie Schumer in the background ?

 

 

 

.

 

Wow. Look at all those Republicans signing hate laws and ruining business.

Edited March 29, 2015 by LABillzFan

[Azalin]

Nice to see prominent business leaders speaking about against this attack on liberty.

 

Only someone as completely moronic as you would call support for freedom of association and freedom of religion an attack on liberty. News flash, Bozo - diversity refers to more than just skin color, you monosyllabic, boneheaded ape.

Edited March 30, 2015 by Azalin

[Tiberius]

Only someone as completely moronic as you would call support for freedom of association and freedom of religion an attack on liberty. News flash, Bozo - diversity refers to more than just skin color, you monosyllabic, boneheaded ape.

 

Hi, good morning. What religious freedom is this preserving? What religious liberty was trampled on before this law was in place? The Governor replied to those questions by saying Hoosiers are not bigots and stupid platitudes like that. What do you have for us?

[Azalin]

Hi, good morning. What religious freedom is this preserving? What religious liberty was trampled on before this law was in place? The Governor replied to those questions by saying Hoosiers are not bigots and stupid platitudes like that. What do you have for us?

 

Apparently the two sentences I posted are too much for you to intellectualize, not that anyone's surprised.

[B-Man]

Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Explained

by John McCormack

 

FTA:

 

Is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act really a license to discriminate against gay people?

 

No. Stanford law professor Michael McConnell, a former appellate court judge, tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD in an email: "In the decades that states have had RFRA statutes, no business has been given the right to discriminate against gay customers, or anyone else."

 

So what is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and what does it say?

 

The first RFRA was a 1993 federal law that was signed into law by Democratic president Bill Clinton. It unanimously passed the House of Representatives, where it was sponsored by then-congressman Chuck Schumer, and sailed through the Senate on a 97-3 vote.

 

The law reestablished a balancing test for courts to apply in religious liberty cases (a standard had been used by the Supreme Court for decades). RFRA allows a person's free exercise of religion to be "substantially burdened" by a law only if the law furthers a "compelling governmental interest" in the "least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."

 

So the law doesn't say that a person making a religious claim will always win. In the years since RFRA has been on the books, sometimes the courts have ruled in favor of religious exemptions, but many other times they haven't.

 

If there's already a federal RFRA in place, why did Indiana pass its own RFRA?

 

Great question. In a 1997 Supreme Court case (City of Boerne v. Flores), the court held that federal RFRA was generally inapplicable against state and local laws. Since then, a number of states have enacted their own RFRA statutes: Indiana became the twentieth to do so. Other states have state court rulings that provide RFRA-like protections. Here's a helpful map from 2014 that shows you which states have RFRA protections (note that Mississippi and Indiana have passed RFRA since this map was made):

 

 

 

Is there any difference between Indiana's law and the federal law?

Nothing significant. Here's the text of the federal RFRA:

 

Government may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person—

(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and

(2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

 

And here is the text of Indiana's RFRA:

 

A governmental entity may substantially burden a person's exercise of religion only if the governmental entity demonstrates that application of the burden to the person: (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

 

Indiana's RFRA makes it explicit that the law applies to persons engaged in business as well as citizens in private lawsuits, but until quite recently it had always been understood that federal RFRA covered businesses and private lawsuits. (See this post by law professor Josh Blackman for more on these matters.)

Late last night just outside the Senate chamber, I asked Senator Chuck Schumer of New York (who sponsored federal RFRA in 1993) to comment on the story. "Not right now," he replied. Schumer still hasn't found time to respond to this question on Twitter:

 

John McCormack @McCormackJohn Follow

.@SenSchumer could you explain how Indiana's RFRA is different than the federal RFRA you sponsored in 1993?

6:53 PM - 26 Mar 2015

 

So why are so many people saying that Indiana's law is an unprecedented attack on gay people?

 

Bad journalism is to blame here. See this CNN headline that says the law "allows biz to reject gay customers," or this New York Times story that makes the same claim while ignoring the fact that many other states and the federal government have the same law on the books.

Indiana's RFRA does not grant a license to discriminate. First of all, the state of Indiana, like 28 other states, has never prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation at public accommodations. Even without such laws in most states, discrimination doesn't commonly occur because the United States is a nation that is tolerant of gay people and intolerant of bigots. Mean-spirited actions by a business owner anywhere in the country would almost certainly be met with a major backlash.

 

 

 

Much more (for those who can process it) at the link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/indianas-religious-freedom-restoration-act-explained_900641.html?page=2

[Magox]

Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Explained

by John McCormack

 

FTA:

 

Is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act really a license to discriminate against gay people?

 

No. Stanford law professor Michael McConnell, a former appellate court judge, tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD in an email: "In the decades that states have had RFRA statutes, no business has been given the right to discriminate against gay customers, or anyone else."

 

So what is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and what does it say?

 

The first RFRA was a 1993 federal law that was signed into law by Democratic president Bill Clinton. It unanimously passed the House of Representatives, where it was sponsored by then-congressman Chuck Schumer, and sailed through the Senate on a 97-3 vote.

 

The law reestablished a balancing test for courts to apply in religious liberty cases (a standard had been used by the Supreme Court for decades). RFRA allows a person's free exercise of religion to be "substantially burdened" by a law only if the law furthers a "compelling governmental interest" in the "least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."

 

So the law doesn't say that a person making a religious claim will always win. In the years since RFRA has been on the books, sometimes the courts have ruled in favor of religious exemptions, but many other times they haven't.

 

If there's already a federal RFRA in place, why did Indiana pass its own RFRA?

 

Great question. In a 1997 Supreme Court case (City of Boerne v. Flores), the court held that federal RFRA was generally inapplicable against state and local laws. Since then, a number of states have enacted their own RFRA statutes: Indiana became the twentieth to do so. Other states have state court rulings that provide RFRA-like protections. Here's a helpful map from 2014 that shows you which states have RFRA protections (note that Mississippi and Indiana have passed RFRA since this map was made):

 

 

 

Is there any difference between Indiana's law and the federal law?

Nothing significant. Here's the text of the federal RFRA:

 

Government may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person—

(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and

(2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

 

And here is the text of Indiana's RFRA:

 

A governmental entity may substantially burden a person's exercise of religion only if the governmental entity demonstrates that application of the burden to the person: (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

 

Indiana's RFRA makes it explicit that the law applies to persons engaged in business as well as citizens in private lawsuits, but until quite recently it had always been understood that federal RFRA covered businesses and private lawsuits. (See this post by law professor Josh Blackman for more on these matters.)

Late last night just outside the Senate chamber, I asked Senator Chuck Schumer of New York (who sponsored federal RFRA in 1993) to comment on the story. "Not right now," he replied. Schumer still hasn't found time to respond to this question on Twitter:

 

 

So why are so many people saying that Indiana's law is an unprecedented attack on gay people?

 

Bad journalism is to blame here. See this CNN headline that says the law "allows biz to reject gay customers," or this New York Times story that makes the same claim while ignoring the fact that many other states and the federal government have the same law on the books.

Indiana's RFRA does not grant a license to discriminate. First of all, the state of Indiana, like 28 other states, has never prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation at public accommodations. Even without such laws in most states, discrimination doesn't commonly occur because the United States is a nation that is tolerant of gay people and intolerant of bigots. Mean-spirited actions by a business owner anywhere in the country would almost certainly be met with a major backlash.

 

 

 

Much more (for those who can process it) at the link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/indianas-religious-freedom-restoration-act-explained_900641.html?page=2

 

The difference between the two laws is that the federal law applies to individuals and that the Indiana law explicitly broadens it to corporations and companies.

 

That is a major distinction.

 

The reason why the law was passed was to cater to the religious right, it served no substantive purpose. The only thing that it will manage to accomplish is alienate the youth vote.

 

Bad politics and the explanation that Pence attempted this week on ABC Sunday's show was weak. He needs to do better in his explanations than this past Sunday.

Edited March 30, 2015 by Magox

[DC Tom]

 

The difference between the two laws is that the federal law applies to individuals and that the Indiana law explicitly broadens it to corporations and companies.

 

That is a major distinction.

 

The reason why the law was passed was to cater to the religious right, it served no substantive purpose. The only thing that it will manage to accomplish is alienate the youth vote.

 

Bad politics and the explanation that Pence attempted this week on ABC Sunday's show was weak. He needs to do better in his explanations than this past Sunday.

 

Nothing more than mindless fear-mongering. What people miss is that the burden of proof is on the entity to demonstrate that their expression of religion is substantially burdened by the state.

 

The operative words being: expression, substantially, and state.

 

That's not license to discriminate. It doesn't permit a Muslim-owned Jiffy Lube franchise to deny a woman an oil change because women shouldn't be allowed to drive, any more than they're allowed to now. It merely permits them, if they do discriminate, to argue that being forced to change the oil in a woman's car, and being fined for not doing so, is burdensome to their expression of religion...for which they'd have to argue that an oil changes represents an expression of Muslim faith.

[B-Man]

Want Evidence of Hysterical Anti-Christian Bigotry? Look No Further than #BoycottIndiana

by David French

After litigating religious liberty issues for more than 20 years, I’m used to utter hysteria erupting on the Left when Christians try to assert conventional and traditional religious liberty rights. Perhaps my favorite example was the claim — by a Tufts University student panel — that a Christian group had to be thrown off campus without due process, in part because the Christian group’s insistence on selecting only Christians as leaders placed Tufts students at greater risk of suicide. Yes, suicide.

But for national freakouts, it’s tough to beat either the sky-is-falling rhetoric around the idea that a few Hobby Lobby employees would have to buy their own abortifacients or, more recently, the sheer nonsense of #boycottindiana, the movement to freeze an entire state out of the national economy for passing a religious freedom law similar to the national Religious Freedom Restoration ACT (RFRA) and RFRAs in 19 other states. While it’s hardly surprising to see legally ignorant sportswriters use the language of segregated lunch counters, it’s disturbing to see well-informed CEOs such as Apple’s Tim Cook conjuring up the specter of the Old South.

Simply put, their concerns about systematic invidious discrimination are utter hogwash, and they either know it or should know it. Why? Because RFRAs aren’t new, the legal standard they protect is decades older than the RFRAs themselves, and these legal standards have not been used — nor can they be used — to create the dystopian future the Left claims to fear. After all, the current RFRA legal tests were the law of the land for all 50 states — constitutionally mandated — until the Supreme Court’s misguided decision in Employment Division v. Smith, where the Court allowed fear of drug use to overcome its constitutional good sense. And yet during the decades before Smith, non-discrimination statutes proliferated, and were successfully enforcedto open public accommodations to people of all races, creeds, colors, and — yes — sexual orientations.

So what’s really going on here? A toxic combination of anti-Christian bigotry and sexual revolution radicalism. It is simply uninformed and bigoted to believe that Christians are somehow lurking in the shadows, ready to deny food, shelter, and basic services to their gay fellow citizens — blocked from such vicious actions only by the strong arm of the state. In my entire life as an Evangelical, I’ve never met a fellow Christian who wouldn’t gladly serve a gay customer. If there are exceptions to that nearly-universal rule, they are so marginal (and marginalized) in the Christian community that they’re irrelevant not only to Christendom but also to the body politic.

But the Left, ever-vigilant against group-based slights on behalf of favored constituencies, is only too eager to label orthodox Christians as threats to the public.

While RFRAs protect people of all faiths, from peyote-smoking Native Americans to Bible-toting florists, the Left’s outrage is narrowly targeted — against the Christian people whose livelihoods they seek to ruin, whose consciences they seek to appropriate, and whose organizations they seek to disrupt. #boycottindiana isn’t a cry for freedom. It’s nothing more than an online mob, seeking to bully those it hates

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

 

[OCinBuffalo]

The knee-jerk from some corporations on this issue, like Angie's List, which is based in Indy, is so telling. It tells me 2 things:

1. um, hey gay people and Democrats, Angie couldn't give 2 schits about your agenda.

2. once again we see that micro-marketing event by event is being cast as long-term, constant support for a cause, when in fact the opposite is true: the cause is irrelevant, it's the clicks that matter.

 

This is about marketing and clicks. Period. Some may not understand how the internet works. For those people? "This is about getting your name in the paper". These corporations have everything to gain, and nothing to lose, by running out to the media and proclaiming all sorts of things, like they are going to delay their expansion in Indiana....(yeah...until their corporate counsel tells them they are in danger of getting sued for breach of contract).....

 

....for days!

 

Right around as much time as it takes for the next OUTRAGE! story to break, miraculously Angie and her people will be back at it, "creating 1000 job for Indiana". Only a total rube, or somebody with no high-level business experience, doesn't see this angle.

 

Marketing has been every bit the death of corporate philanthropy and suppor for causes, as it has personal philanthropy and support for causes. Doubt me? Well, do you want to add an extra $1 to your McDonald's bill for Charity X, or don't you?

 

Consider: nobody knew Ralph Wilson gave a ton of money down in Miami for spine cooling research, before Kevin Edverett, did they? Why, because Ralph was a real philanthropist.

In contrast: everybody knows every detail via twitter of every second/penny spent on "charity" by celebrities. Why? Marketing in the form of "look at me" self-promotion.

 

So what do we really have here? A bunch of corporate marketing people, who will gladly latch on to anything gay, or black, or woman, because this is about the bottom line. Making a big PR splash when the time is right drives the clicks today, and they can always go back to not giving a schit next week, because? Nobody else will either.

 

The days of the Ford Foundation getting its 2 second notice, and no more, for funding PBS, even though they've been doing it for 30 years? Over.

 

EDIT: And hey, I'm not the cynical one here. Cynical is telling people you're going to delay your corporate expansion, profiting from that, and then slowly backing away.

Edited March 30, 2015 by OCinBuffalo

[Tiberius]

INDIANAPOLIS—Addressing the controversy surrounding his state’s recently signed Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Indiana governor Mike Pence forcefully insisted to reporters Monday that the new law has nothing at all to do with what it was explicitly intended to do. “Let me state directly that in no way is this law designed to allow the kind of anti-gay discrimination that is the law’s single reason for existing,” said Pence, emphasizing that provisions authorizing businesses to refuse service to gay customers were nothing more than the only explanation for the law being drafted in the first place. “Regardless of the widespread misconceptions surrounding it, I want to reassure Hoosiers of all backgrounds that this law will never be interpreted in the way it was unambiguously designed to be from the very beginning.” Pence further clarified that the act’s sole purpose was in fact to safeguard the free exercise of religion it was in no way whatsoever created to protect.

 

 

http://www.theonion.com/articles/indiana-governor-insists-new-law-has-nothing-to-do,38330/

Apparently the two sentences I posted are too much for you to intellectualize, not that anyone's surprised.

Excuse me? Did you address the issue of why this law was needed?

[Tiberius]

"The gay rights group Human Rights Campaign (HRC) warns that such laws are often incredibly vague and light on details usually intentionally.

 

The evangelical owner of a business providing a secular service can sue claiming that their personal faith empowers them to refuse to hire Jews, divorcees, or LGBT people, HRC says in a report. A landlord could claim the right to refuse to rent an apartment to a Muslim or a transgender person.

 

Appearing on ABCs This Week Sunday, Pence would not directly address such hypothetical questions, instead emphasizing that tolerance is a two-way street including tolerance for religious beliefs. And he stood up for his fellow Hoosiers."

 

 

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0329/Indiana-Gov.-Mike-Pence-scrambles-to-clarify-new-religious-freedom-law

[OCinBuffalo]

"The gay rights group Human Rights Campaign (HRC) warns that such laws are often incredibly vague and light on details usually intentionally.

 

The evangelical owner of a business providing a secular service can sue claiming that their personal faith empowers them to refuse to hire Jews, divorcees, or LGBT people, HRC says in a report. A landlord could claim the right to refuse to rent an apartment to a Muslim or a transgender person.

 

Appearing on ABCs This Week Sunday, Pence would not directly address such hypothetical questions, instead emphasizing that tolerance is a two-way street including tolerance for religious beliefs. And he stood up for his fellow Hoosiers."

 

 

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0329/Indiana-Gov.-Mike-Pence-scrambles-to-clarify-new-religious-freedom-law

Tolerance is a 2, or 3 or 10 way street, otherwise it isn't tolerance. So what's the problme here?

 

In this day and age of "gotcha" games, and the obvious drive from the left not just for tolerance, but forced acceptance, do you really put it past some clown to purposely set up a business owner to have to compromise his beliefs....or else? == post the video on Youtube? send it to MSNBC?

 

South Park did a wonderful job of explaining that civilized society begins and ends with tolerance, and not acceptance. I suggest you Google it. Now, if South Park can explain this so easily, WTF is wrong with supposedly serious media people struggling with the difference in meaning between the two words? The struggle is a lie. They are purposely trying to distort the meaning of these two words into synonyms.

 

And, please: you know damn well that the real agenda here is forced acceptance, via ostracization.

[DC Tom]

"The gay rights group Human Rights Campaign (HRC) warns that such laws are often incredibly vague and light on details usually intentionally.

 

The evangelical owner of a business providing a secular service can sue claiming that their personal faith empowers them to refuse to hire Jews, divorcees, or LGBT people, HRC says in a report. A landlord could claim the right to refuse to rent an apartment to a Muslim or a transgender person.

 

Appearing on ABCs This Week Sunday, Pence would not directly address such hypothetical questions, instead emphasizing that tolerance is a two-way street including tolerance for religious beliefs. And he stood up for his fellow Hoosiers."

 

 

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0329/Indiana-Gov.-Mike-Pence-scrambles-to-clarify-new-religious-freedom-law

 

Keep pretending you know what you're talking about, dumbass.

[Azalin]

Excuse me? Did you address the issue of why this law was needed?

 

 

Whether or not the law is needed isn't my point. My only point is that only someone like you would call legislation intended to bolster freedom of religion and freedom of association a bad thing.

[Dorkington]

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-bans-non-essential-state-travel-indiana

[DC Tom]

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-bans-non-essential-state-travel-indiana

Pandering ass.

[Chef Jim]

Pandering ass.

 

And again.

 

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/As-protest-SF-Lee-mayor-won-t-send-city-6163948.php

[Tiberius]

Whether or not the law is needed isn't my point. My only point is that only someone like you would call legislation intended to bolster freedom of religion and freedom of association a bad thing.

You are such an idiot. You don't even know if the law is needed for what you say it is and you defend it. Lol.

 

Love how you guys all claim to be fiscal conservatives, not moral ones, but bend over to defend this crap.

[B-Man]

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy embarrasses himself with Indiana RFRA tantrum

 

On Monday, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy revealed that he will prohibit all state-sponsored travel to this heretical member of the Union. He joins the mayor of Seattle, who also blocked city-funded travel to Indiana in protest over this perfectly banal law.

 

This reaction is nothing short of an embarrassment for the left and a repudiation of the values that the Democratic Party espoused as recently as the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton signed a national version of this act into law.

 

The hypocrisy exhibited by the left in this display of childish pique over Indiana’s RFRA bill is impossible to ignore.

 

Malloy’s absurd response to the Indiana law is, no doubt, an effort to distract his liberal constituents from the fact that Connecticut’s RFRA law – yes, they have one, too – goes farther than the act signed last week by Gov. Mike Pence.

 

The Federalist’s Sean Davis makes the case:

 

Connecticut’s law, however, is far more restrictive of government action and far more protective of religious freedoms. How? Because the Connecticut RFRA law states that government shall not “burden a person’s exercise of religion[.]” Note that the word “substantially” is not included in Connecticut’s law.

 

The effect of the absence of that single word is enormous. It states that Connecticut government may not burden the free exercise of religion in any way. That makes it far more protective of religious liberty than the Indiana law that has so outraged Connecticut’s governor.

 

If Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy wants to blatantly discriminate against state’s with religious liberty laws on the books, that’s his prerogative. But if he doesn’t want to look like a completely ignorant hypocrite who has no idea what he’s talking about, he should probably take a look at his own state’s laws first.

 

 

 

 

 

RFRA is a shield, not a sword, It can be used to defend oneself against lawsuits or administrative action. It can’t be used affirmatively to try and deprive others of the protections of law.

 

 

 

 

.

[Azalin]

You are such an idiot. You don't even know if the law is needed for what you say it is and you defend it. Lol.

 

Love how you guys all claim to be fiscal conservatives, not moral ones, but bend over to defend this crap.

 

Do you even understand English? All I've said so far is that it's typical of people like you to find bigotry in defending freedom of association and freedom of religion. You may also note, oh drooling one, that I haven't even stated whether or not I believe the law is necessary. I'm attacking your imbecilic tendency to scream bigotry at anyone who holds a different world view than yours.

[Alaska Darin]

They had to pass it to find out what was in it. Obviously.

[DC Tom]

They had to pass it to find out what was in it. Obviously.

 

Or they could have read the nearly identical federal law that no one seems to have a problem with.

[TH3]

Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Explained

by John McCormack

 

FTA:

 

Is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act really a license to discriminate against gay people?

 

No. Stanford law professor Michael McConnell, a former appellate court judge, tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD in an email: "In the decades that states have had RFRA statutes, no business has been given the right to discriminate against gay customers, or anyone else."

 

So what is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and what does it say?

 

The first RFRA was a 1993 federal law that was signed into law by Democratic president Bill Clinton. It unanimously passed the House of Representatives, where it was sponsored by then-congressman Chuck Schumer, and sailed through the Senate on a 97-3 vote.

 

The law reestablished a balancing test for courts to apply in religious liberty cases (a standard had been used by the Supreme Court for decades). RFRA allows a person's free exercise of religion to be "substantially burdened" by a law only if the law furthers a "compelling governmental interest" in the "least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."

 

So the law doesn't say that a person making a religious claim will always win. In the years since RFRA has been on the books, sometimes the courts have ruled in favor of religious exemptions, but many other times they haven't.

 

If there's already a federal RFRA in place, why did Indiana pass its own RFRA?

 

Great question. In a 1997 Supreme Court case (City of Boerne v. Flores), the court held that federal RFRA was generally inapplicable against state and local laws. Since then, a number of states have enacted their own RFRA statutes: Indiana became the twentieth to do so. Other states have state court rulings that provide RFRA-like protections. Here's a helpful map from 2014 that shows you which states have RFRA protections (note that Mississippi and Indiana have passed RFRA since this map was made):

 

 

Is there any difference between Indiana's law and the federal law?

Nothing significant. Here's the text of the federal RFRA:

 

Government may substantially burden a persons exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person

(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and

(2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

And here is the text of Indiana's RFRA:

A governmental entity may substantially burden a person's exercise of religion only if the governmental entity demonstrates that application of the burden to the person: (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

Indiana's RFRA makes it explicit that the law applies to persons engaged in business as well as citizens in private lawsuits, but until quite recently it had always been understood that federal RFRA covered businesses and private lawsuits. (See this post by law professor Josh Blackman for more on these matters.)

Late last night just outside the Senate chamber, I asked Senator Chuck Schumer of New York (who sponsored federal RFRA in 1993) to comment on the story. "Not right now," he replied. Schumer still hasn't found time to respond to this question on Twitter:

 

 

 

 

 

 

So why are so many people saying that Indiana's law is an unprecedented attack on gay people?

 

Bad journalism is to blame here. See this CNN headline that says the law "allows biz to reject gay customers," or this New York Times story that makes the same claim while ignoring the fact that many other states and the federal government have the same law on the books.

Indiana's RFRA does not grant a license to discriminate. First of all, the state of Indiana, like 28 other states, has never prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation at public accommodations. Even without such laws in most states, discrimination doesn't commonly occur because the United States is a nation that is tolerant of gay people and intolerant of bigots. Mean-spirited actions by a business owner anywhere in the country would almost certainly be met with a major backlash.

 

 

 

Much more (for those who can process it) at the link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/indianas-religious-freedom-restoration-act-explained_900641.html?page=2

I would suggest you expand your bookmarks list for a better understanding of the law and how it is unique in many ways.

[DC Tom]

I would suggest you expand your bookmarks list for a better understanding of the law and how it is unique in many ways.

Please explain it.

 

As I don’t have a bookmark list; I read the law and some applicable precedents and formed my own opinion.