Mississippi signs discrimentory law

[dragon]

Well wont be long before this is in the courts

Mississippi Republican governor Phil Bryant today signed a bill into a law that will allow business and individuals to deny service to anyone in the interest of religious liberty, according to ThinkProgress.

The legislation, known as Senate Bill 2681, the Mississippi Religious Freedom Restoration Act, would allow businesses and individuals to deny services to anyone, if serving that person or organization would "substantially burden" the individual's "religious exercise." It also adds the words "In God We Trust" to the official state seal. It received overwhelming support in the GOP-controlled legislature,

Grassroots LGBT organization GetEQUAL was the first to send out a statement condemning the governor's signing of the bill, while pledging to continue fighting such anti-LGBT efforts.

"We had hoped that the governor would see that this bill will further isolate Mississippi within the business community," GetEQUAL said in a press release. "We had hoped that the governor would see that this bill will hurt those who live in the state or who are considering moving there. We had hoped that the governor would see that this bill will, in fact, hurt his own family and people who he loves. We had hoped that the 'family values' that the governor espouses would hold true and that he would act in a way that fully values his own family. Unfortunately, hatred and ignorance won out today — and our hearts are with those fair-minded Mississippians who call the state home."

When the bill first passed the legislature, LGBT organizations condemned it, drawing harsh comparisons to Arizona's vetoed SB 1062, which caused a national uproar that involved the NFL and major corporations urging Republican governor Jan Brewer to veto the bill.

The Mississippi law makes no explicit mention of "sexual orientation," "gender identity," or even "marriage," and neither did Arizona's proposed law. Still, LGBT advocates warn that it will have the effect of legalizing discrimination against the LGBT community. And it could unravel any effort to pass antidiscrimination ordinances at the local level.

"Even though the Mississippi legislature removed some of the egregious language from Arizona’s infamous SB 1062, we are disappointed that it passed this unnecessary law and ignored the national, public outcry against laws of this nature," said Eunice Rho, advocacy and policy counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union in a statement last week when the bill passed both chambers of the state legislature. "We will continue to fight in state legislatures across the country to ensure that religious freedom remains a shield, not a sword."

link

[madd0ct0r]

lol - who want's to open a satanist burger stand?

[Borgholio]

lol - who want's to open a satanist burger stand?

Well Famous Dave's BBQ has a BBQ sauce called Devil's Spit. We could probably buy a ton of that stuff and work with it. Call the stand "The 9th Circle" Signature burger would be called "Apocalypse Cow".

[K. A. Pital]

In GOP we trust!

[PKRudeBoy]

I'm not sure what this bill actually does though. I'm fairly certain the Bible doesn't prohibit contact with gay people. The only things that I can think of might be covered under this are things like Leviticus uncleanliness taboos or possibly aspects of the Hindu caste system. It might let pharmacists not give out birth control, but I don't know if Mississippi already has one of those laws. How would a business prove a substantial burden if no such prohibition actually exists in the text. Yes, according to the Bible homosexuality is a sin, but nowhere does it say that a Christian cannot interact with sinner.

[Lord Revan]

I'm not sure what this bill actually does though. I'm fairly certain the Bible doesn't prohibit contact with gay people. The only things that I can think of might be covered under this are things like Leviticus uncleanliness taboos or possibly aspects of the Hindu caste system. It might let pharmacists not give out birth control, but I don't know if Mississippi already has one of those laws. How would a business prove a substantial burden if no such prohibition actually exists in the text. Yes, according to the Bible homosexuality is a sin, but nowhere does it say that a Christian cannot interact with sinner.

in the Bible no IIRC it doesn't state you can't interact with a sinner but when has what's actually said in the bible stopped people from using it as justification for discrimination and mistreatment?

And that's ignoring the fact that the bible is not in fact single definitive narrative but a collection of works from an era spanning millennia and thus counterdicts itself on several occasion (starting at the Book of genesis) and thus it's practically impossible to say for certain anything about it (and that's still ignoring any possible translation errors or drift in the myths from conception until it was written down due to the inaccuracies of oral tradition(and I mean stories passed down thru speaking, not the oral tradition GOP practices)).

[Wicked Pilot]

Every military base in Mississippi should blacklist any business operating within the scope of this law. That may not have been possible back during DADT, but it sure is now.

[Dalton]

They will reverse the shit out of this law as soon as a Muslim business (if they exist) refuses service to Jews

[Ralin]

I'm not sure what this bill actually does though. I'm fairly certain the Bible doesn't prohibit contact with gay people. The only things that I can think of might be covered under this are things like Leviticus uncleanliness taboos or possibly aspects of the Hindu caste system. It might let pharmacists not give out birth control, but I don't know if Mississippi already has one of those laws. How would a business prove a substantial burden if no such prohibition actually exists in the text. Yes, according to the Bible homosexuality is a sin, but nowhere does it say that a Christian cannot interact with sinner.

Christianity is more than just the Bible. A thousand year old religious tenet with rigorous textual and historical backing is no more entitled to protected expression than Billy Joe Bob's belief that the pattern that his empty beer cans landed in proves that God doesn't want him to let homosexuals into his restaurant.

They will reverse the shit out of this law as soon as a Muslim business (if they exist) refuses service to Jews

Mississippi is not a place that I associate with placing a great deal of importance on the rights and welfare of the Jewish people.

Though I am reminded of that time a couple years back when the Louisiana legislature passed one of those school voucher laws letting private religious schools receive state funds and then everyone freaked out when someone realized that Muslims run their own schools too.

[Mr. Coffee]

Mississippi is not a place that I associate with placing a great deal of importance on the rights and welfare of the Jewish people.

In the post-9/11 deep south Muslim IS the new Jew, bro.

[Highlord Laan]

I'm looking forward to when some Baptist of (even better) Muslim owned business uses this shitpiece of a law to refuse service to a properly murrican white christian. All the screeching and inbred weeping (probably set to a banjo) will be sweet, sweet music to my ears.

[loomer]

Personally, I'm hoping it'll be Christian Identity nutters refusing to service anyone darker than a light beige.

[Ralin]

I'm looking forward to when some Baptist of (even better) Muslim owned business uses this shitpiece of a law to refuse service to a properly murrican white christian. All the screeching and inbred weeping (probably set to a banjo) will be sweet, sweet music to my ears.

I suppose that would be funny, but I'm guessing that any Muslim-owned business that decides to refuse service to Christians in Mississippi isn't going to make much money.

As tempting as the idea is, I don't think the invisible hand of the market is going to come down and smack the people pushing this in the face.

[Welf]

As tempting as the idea is, I don't think the invisible hand of the market is going to come down and smack the people pushing this in the face.

It will rather give them a nice hand job. This law could make it acceptable social behaviour to discriminate putting assimilation pressure on religious and other minorities. The market likes winners.

[Ralin]

The market likes winners.

And Christianity has certainly adapted well to capitalism.

[Ahriman238]

I suspect this is a "it's against my beliefs to provide contraceptives" thing more than a "I can't serve teh GAYS!" thing.

How does anyone expect to stand in court and prove that providing a service "substantially burdened their religious exercise" otherwise?

[Irbis]

I'm not sure what this bill actually does though. I'm fairly certain the Bible doesn't prohibit contact with gay people.

Leviticus 18: "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable. Everyone who does any of these detestable things--such persons must be cut off from their people."

Banishment.

Romans 1: "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."

Do not approve of them, kill them.

Timothy 1: "We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practising homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me."

Discriminatory laws are not for just, they are for killers, slavers, atheists, and gays. Sounds about right.

[loomer]

What translation are you using, out of curiosity?

[Mr. Coffee]

Looks like the NIV to me. But my NIV copy has Lev 1:22 as just "Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable", and the "Everyone who does any of these detestable things--such persons must be cut off from their people" is from verse 29. Then again Lev 1:8-23 is basically a list of "Thou shalt not fuck the following".

I'd have to go look, but I'm pretty sure every one of Paul's letters (Timothy, Romans, ect) all include condemnations of homosexuality and sex in general. That guy was a serious stick in the mud. Not sure why JC even hung out with the douche.

[mr friendly guy]

Leviticus 18: "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable. Everyone who does any of these detestable things--such persons must be cut off from their people."

Well unless you have anal sex with a woman, it should be ok right?

[loomer]

Looks like the NIV to me. But my NIV copy has Lev 1:22 as just "Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable", and the "Everyone who does any of these detestable things--such persons must be cut off from their people" is from verse 29. Then again Lev 1:8-23 is basically a list of "Thou shalt not fuck the following".

I'd have to go look, but I'm pretty sure every one of Paul's letters (Timothy, Romans, ect) all include condemnations of homosexuality and sex in general. That guy was a serious stick in the mud. Not sure why JC even hung out with the douche.

Yeah, that's why I was asking. I use the translation and commentary by Jacob Milgrom for Leviticus and it was very different.

[Tribble]

I suspect this is a "it's against my beliefs to provide contraceptives" thing more than a "I can't serve teh GAYS!" thing.

How does anyone expect to stand in court and prove that providing a service "substantially burdened their religious exercise" otherwise?

Oh, I'm sure there will be plenty of people expecting to do exactly that. And not just for LGBT, I imagine it will be used for denying services to Jews, Muslims, Christians, Women, Atheists, or whoever their religion commands them to avoid.

Will it be constitutional? And if it is, will it be interpreted narrowly, or broadly? Given the wording, I would suspect the ladder.

It should be noted that there are already people complaining that the bill does not go far enough.

[Rogue 9]

I'd have to go look, but I'm pretty sure every one of Paul's letters (Timothy, Romans, ect) all include condemnations of homosexuality and sex in general. That guy was a serious stick in the mud. Not sure why JC even hung out with the douche.

He didn't; Paul wasn't one of the twelve disciples. He was some Roman dude who got hit in the head while riding to Jerusalem to persecute Christians, had a vision of God, and converted on the spot, all after the crucifixion.

[Irbis]

What translation are you using, out of curiosity?

To be honest, I just grabbed annotated bible local fundies at my university campus were handing out a few years back, flipped it for three first 'homosexuality is evil' annotations, then googled for appropriate chapters in English. While I know there is big divide* in English speaking world between particular sects how bible should be translated, I have little idea who supports which one so I just trusted google to find most popular translation and checked if the bit had the same meaning.

*here, it's just difference between archaic, 400 year old Latin/Greek based translation made by very orthodox patriot priest and atheist, evil and unfeeling translation by modern linguists from Hebrew which is cause of much rage from local fundies claiming it was done all wrong. Good times.

[Elheru Aran]

The translation is not particularly important as pretty much all popularly accepted versions of the Bible say the same thing-- "having sex with guys is bad". Only the most liberally translated versions that generally enjoy small circulation among a particular crowd say otherwise. Deviating so far from the norm-- and let's face it, it's been going through one translation or another for the past 500 years or so, give or take a couple of centuries, each one done by scholars who frequently had made the languages they were translating from their lives' work, read by similarly educated scholars, who damn well knew A from Omega backward and forward, so it's pretty much well given that we know more or less exactly what the canon version of the Bible says. There are many older manuscripts of the various books that deviate from canon, but usually it's in the form of a few words or sentences here and there being different, out of order, or simply not there. As far as the canon of the Bible is concerned, it's been translated to practically nothing; the rest is just putting one filter or other on it as the particular adapter wishes.

As far as Mississippi is concerned, the way they're interpreting the Bible has little to do with the actual message within, but that's nothing new... the Pharisees had a 2,000 year head start on them. Don't see many of *those* around.