Religious leaders in Kansas view the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision last week as an opportunity to revive legislation that would protect their “religious freedom” — measures that gay rights advocates warn would legitimize discrimination against LGBT people.
The Associated Press reported this weekend that social conservatives believe they have an opening to bring the state’s religious freedom bill back in 2015. The legislation failed this spring; it passed the House, but stalled in the Senate after significant backlash from business groups. It would have prevented businesses from being sued if they refused to serve LGBT people for religious reasons.
“We are not going to let it die. We are very committed,” Rev. Terry Fox, a leading Southern Baptist minister, told the AP. “The Body of Christ is a powerful movement when it comes together.”
Gay rights advocates and social conservatives alike had watched the Hobby Lobby case to see how it might influence their cause. The Court’s decision was decidedly narrow in its language, and some legal experts pointed TPM to Justice Anthony Kennedy’s concurring opinion in the case as evidence that he would not support discrimination against LGBT people on religious freedom grounds.
But others warned on the day of the ruling that conservatives would likely take Hobby Lobby’s win as their chance to resuscitate religious freedom legislation.
“The opinion really doesn’t really resolve the question of whether for-profit businesses can seek religious exemptions from anti-discrimination law,” Douglas NeJaime, a law professor at the University of California-Irvine, told TPM. “If I’m one of those groups, I’m going to pursue this.”
Religious leaders have already asked the White House for an exemption from President Barack Obama’s upcoming executive order aimed at preventing anti-LGBT discrimination by federal contractors. The conservative lobbyist behind Arizona’s religious freedom bill that gained national attention hinted she could revisit the issue. Now Kansas religious leaders are signaling they’ll do the same.
Gay rights advocates don’t seem to be fretting yet. First, they see the Hobby Lobby decision, and Kennedy in particular, on their side. Second, the forces that doomed the Arizona and Kansas bills — namely, the business community — are still in place. They aren’t surprised by the renewed push in Kansas, but they don’t believe it poses a danger to their cause.
“The ultra-conservative religious voices that championed the Kansas anti-gay bill last year have said consistently that they would try again. Hearing a renewed call now is no surprise,” Jenny Pizer, senior counsel at Lambda Legal, a gay rights organization, told TPM. “We’ve fully expected zealously anti-LGBT religious groups to ignore the Hobby Lobby decision’s language that it is not a shield for discrimination, and to wave it as a sword or, at least, a rallying banner, regardless of what it actually says.”
Yep. Pretty obvious that LGBT rights were in the crosshairs when Supreme’s started destroying women’s rights.
Yup. They will never quit. There are still scattered “Take Back Vermont” slogans here and there, remnants of a time long past.
Generally adorning a large satellite dish or cardboard sign on a double-wide.
Good Luck with that!
I have been making the same simple request for over a week. Show me the long form birth certificate of this Hobby Lobby person if you want me to believe that he / she is a person with individual rights.
A Pew Forum study in 2009 revealed that “White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified – more than six in 10 supported it.”
So in other words, more than sixty percent of white Evangelical Christianists endorse the purposeful infliction of pain and agony on other human beings. I have no doubt that many Christianists would be only too happy to subject gays and lesbians to such treatment simply for being who they are.
Who would Jesus torture?
Mark my words, the Hobby Lobby decision and the religious right are the best thing to happen to Democrats in 2014. With this decision and this push to further discriminate against women, gays and whoever else the religious right hates is going to mobilize women, gays, and young voters in November.
I know this goes against the common wisdom of the Very Serious People, but the Dems could take back the House and widen their majority in the Senate. The polls will miss this populace movement by women, minorities, gays, the young and liberals.
The Dems just need to pound away at these issues with ads and stump speeches and whatever else is at their disposal. The majority is on their side, they just need to not screw this up.