Georgia looking to pass its own legal discrimination bill

Hey look Missouri is joining in on the fun too.

A Republican state lawmaker on Monday filed legislation that would allow Missouri business owners to cite religious beliefs as a legal justification for refusing to provide service.

Although it doesn’t mention sexual orientation, the bill could provide legal cover for denial of services to same-sex couples.

The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Wayne Wallingford of Cape Girardeau, states that a governmental authority shall not substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion unless the government demonstrates that it has a compelling interest.

To supporters of the idea — similar to legislation filed in several other states — the goal is to make it clear that private individuals can use religious beliefs as a defense in litigation.

“We’re trying to protect Missourians from attacks on their religious freedom,” Wallingford said.

Link.

Is it sexist of me to want to cut off these politicans balls?

No, you're right. I drew a poor analogy by using the Jim Crow laws as an example.

While these newly proposed laws aren't State mandated discrimination, would you agree they can rightly be classified as State condoned discrimination?

Aljosa, remember this the next time you bring a Mother Jones article.

@Master_Live: Huh? I assume you were trying to quote whipassmt and the site glitched. Anyway, I know very well what Mother Jones is. They do great investigative reporting and whether or not they are left or right leaning is irrelevant: all publications have a stance.

So shops can also discriminate against religious people? "Sorry miss, since you're a whore of Christ, I cannot give you service due to my beliefs. Have a good day, bye!"

They did some crappy reporting here if I could directly disprove them with literally less than five minutes on Google.

so how do these laws work in practice? does the business owner need to prove their religious affiliation and provide proper holy texts to support their decision to deny service? if a business owner decides to deny service to someone they suspect is a homosexual but the potential customer is straight, what happens then? does the customer have any recourse vs. the business owner? what if the potential customer is bisexual? what then? or are the laws written in an extremely generic way such that a business owner can simply say "i refuse to serve this person on the grounds of religion" and that's that?

Honestly, and people are going to freak out over this, ok. Georgia can do what it wants, and restoring business owners the right to conduct their businesses how they want is essentially just restoring their basic (formerly, inalienable) property rights to them. That said, businesses will in the long run hurt themselves if they get to nuts with this, but that's what free markets are for. Frankly, a gay business owner should have the right to deny a fundamentalist Christian business if they should so want, and its kind of nuts that a free country doesn't allow that.

How do these inbred's survive?

Freedoms have limits.

This isn't a very popular policy across the nation, and it's going to hurt the image of the Republican Party (yes I know some state Democrats support it too but this is ultimately going to stick with the Republicans). Hell, the NFL is now considering moving the next Super Bowl away from Arizona should the governor pass the pro-discrimination bill. Frankly, the Republican Party can gain a lot by ignoring the religious nuts, I mean who are they gonna vote for anyways.

@lamprey263: As much as I desperately pine for a conservative political party that is free from religious fundamentalism and the insanity it entails, I don't think the GOP can just ignore them full stop. That's a habit that has to be broken slowly over time. Most of the national GOP would love for this gay marriage thing to go away, they know how to read polls too, they know this bigotry is hugely damaging and could break their ability to ever win another national election for President. But they have to wait for the Supreme Court to rule against it and say "well gosh golly guys we tried, but thats that and now we have to move on".

Even if gay marriage got a Supreme Court ruling I still imagine Republicans will use it as an issue for decades to come just like Roe v. Wade. And it might not even be for ideological reasons, they might just utilize such rhetoric for advantages with their voter base.

Governor Brewer vetoed the Arizona bill. Link.

Bwhahahahaha Brewer vetoed it.

would the same thing be true if they allowed businesses to turn away people based on skin color?

Technically if this law passes anywhere a business could do that so long as serving a person of another skin color was "against their religion".

The Arizona bill was just vetoed.

the bible does say slavery is ok.....

Interesting turn of events indeed.

"When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. "(Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

Yet this an old book that millions of people "like" but I'm sure the majority don't even read it completely and if they did then they don't understand it completely. There are other atrocities that are depicted in the bible besides this one but homophobes love to use this book as evidence as to why homosexuality is unnatural while things like that (slavery), stoning children to death, and females having to marry their rapists is completely natural in the other hand. Yeah I don't get it either.

http://www.openbible.info/topics/slavery

@AmazonTreeBoa said:

@bforrester420 said:

@AmazonTreeBoa said:

Which is why I never bothered replying to him. Not worth my time.

Wow, the dude who thinks we should legislate discrimination based on beliefs from thousands of years ago thinks it's not worth replying to someone else. The irony...

No, I got your point and its an untenable position.

Uh those are obviously out of date sections that no longer apply to the modern world! duh!

This bill is totally understandable. Religious groups, especially Christians have been suffering at the hands of gays and atheists for centuries now. It's time they got their FREEDOM back.

Who knows? Maybe one day one of them could even be elected president. Possibly even forty four of them consecutively.

(gotta love John Stewart)

@bforrester420 said:

@AmazonTreeBoa said:

@bforrester420 said:

@AmazonTreeBoa said:

Which is why I never bothered replying to him. Not worth my time.

Wow, the dude who thinks we should legislate discrimination based on beliefs from thousands of years ago thinks it's not worth replying to someone else. The irony...

No, I got your point and its an untenable position.

Clearly you did miss my point seeing you think I am trying to defend something.

Here's the Anderson Cooper interview again... lolz.

I don't believe that law will hold up when challenged. If it even passes.

Well, to be honest were you expecting it not to be?

But again perhaps the gay community shouldn't be so quick to decide what people can and cannot do, i still remember the gay couple who made a huge deal out of being denied service at a religious bakery, seriously why would you go to a place you know has beliefs that go against your lifestyle. Its crazy and this is why its being fought with more craziness.

Why are these dumbass politicians allowed to even be in office? We call ourselves the Land of the Free, yet we have "leaders" that try to suppress the human rights of others based on sexual orientation as if this was 1800. Hypocrisy much? Oh yeah, it's only the Land of the Free for old Christian white men, silly me. They make up the vast majority of Congress, which is definitely not representative of the entire population. Congress and state governments need more politicians who are women, younger than 50, non-white, and of varying religious or non-religious beliefs to better represent the country. All these old rich white guys stuck in the 1950s need to fucking die off so we can catch up with the rest of the developed world in the human rights department.

"But we're still going to ignore those sections and focus on bashing the gays because they're still unnatural no matter how you look at it!"

so naive

Gotta love it when the evangelicals cry foul when someone takes away their stick as they beat someone with it (metaphorically)

You know i get that no one should discriminate on insane grounds, but why is it ok to beat religious people over the head and basically say "hey you idiot, we know what you believe is wrong so go f yourself"

It´s actually pretty insane how much power liberals have because they can use the public opinion which are generate by fear for some people.

Religious belief holds zero power over anything else.

We have to make it clear that a lot of the things they believe are wrong because they are, have been, and continue to directly write those things into the law we all must obey. Soon as they stop copying their book into the law, I'll stop pointing how ridiculous their book is. I live in the year 2014. I do not wish for my laws to be based on the rantings of ancient sheepherders who heard voices and approved of slavery, stoning disobedient children, marrying girls off to their rapists, killing people who work on a certain day of the week, killing gay people, and various other immoral horrors.

It wouldn't bother me as much if Christians were trying to write the teachings of Jesus into the law. Problem is most modern Christians in the USA are Christian in name only and prefer to try to enforce the laws of the bloodthirsty monster of the Old Testament on us.

Not sure I understand your point, can you please explain/clarify it

Is it the gay community writing laws about who can get married and who can't? Writing laws about who can adopt children, and who cannot? Used to write laws about who could be in the military, and who could not? The gay community is the one trying to tell other people what they can and cannot do? Seriously?

As for the rest of that post, they were looking for a wedding cake. They went to a place that sells wedding cakes. Where else should they go? They were denied/discriminated against by that service based on their sexual orientation, which is against the law.

If I recall, things are usually only deemed unconstitutional after they pass

It wasn't a religious bakery, it was a bakery run by people who turned out to be religious

Well, my point was that while we are cried our ears full of "we need to accept everyone" it seems that no-one really need to accept religious people when they believe things someone doesn't deem "acceptable"

Not that i have a problem with religious people being hit on the head but its kinda funny that liberals can decide what is ok and what is not.

I think you missed the point of separation of church and state. Personal belief trumps no law, ever. It's not beating them over the head, it's following the rules laid down since the country was founded. This has nothing to do with "liberals", it's common sense. But considering a lot of our politicians couldn't tell you much about history or the country's own documents, it doesn't surprise me that some of them think it's okay to do the kinds of things this thread was started for.

There are more then one case but the one i am talking about was a cater/baker who refused to cater to a gay couples marriage.

But let me ask you this in cases where personal and religious values and beliefs are in play, where does the freedom to practice religion end and equal treatment under the law begin?

When you open a business dealing with the public