Own the discrimination

In Oklahoma, the extremist legislature is working to pass a bill that would allow any discrimination as long as it's religious in  motivation.  Basically, if you claim religion, you get to be exempt from laws.  An amendment to the legislation has been proposed that would require you to post explicitly what minority groups you choose to discriminate against.

Dislike Jews?  How about blacks?  Women a problem?  What about gays and lesbians?  And of course, the group everyone opposes, the transgendered.

I say, yes.  Make them post a sign.  Make them own their bigotry:  No fags allowed. Let them be proud of it. 

More:

The amendment to HB1371....would require religious businesses to come out of the closet.

“Any person not wanting to participate in any of the activities set forth in subsection A of this section based on sexual orientation, gender identity or race of either party to the marriage shall post notice of such refusal in a manner clearly visible to the public in all places of business, including websites,” the amendment states.

“The notice may refer to the person’s religious beliefs, but shall state specifically which couples the business does not serve by referring to a refusal based upon sexual orientation, gender identity or race.”
....
Ryan Kiesel, director of ACLU of Oklahoma, also praised the amendment, saying that it “very pointedly exposes the absurdity of creating a new era of legalized segregation.”

Anti-gay animus, or religious freedom?

In the wake of several deep-red states trying to pass laws that allow citizens to discriminate against fellow (gay) citizens because of "deeply held religious views", Andrew Sullivan gives us a metric of how to tell if this is animus, discrimination, or legitimate (if not legal) concerns about liberty:

So it also seems to me that the one demand we should make of such a defense of religious freedom is that it be consistent. For me, with devout Catholics, the acid test is divorce. The bar on divorce – which, unlike the gay issue, is upheld directly by Jesus in the Gospels – is just as integral to the Catholic meaning of marriage as the prohibition on gay couples. So why no laws including that potential violation of religious liberty? Both kinds of marriage are equally verboten in Catholicism. So where is the political movement to insist that devout Catholics do not have to cater the second weddings of previously divorced people?

For that matter, why no consideration of those whose religious beliefs demand that they not bless marriages outside their own faith-community? Do we enshrine the right of, say, an Orthodox Jewish hotel-owner to discriminate against unmarried couples who might be inter-married across faiths? Do we allow an evangelical to discriminate against Mormon couples, because their doctrine about marriage is so markedly different from mainstream Christianity’s?

It seems to me that the acid test for the new bills being prepared by the Christianist right with respect to religious freedom and marriage is whether they are discriminatory against gays and straights alike. Currently, they don’t begin to pass muster on that front. Until they do, the presumption that they are motivated by bigotry rather than faith is perfectly legitimate.

You can't be unfair, yet kind

From Slacktivist: 

I read this self-serving attempt to be the “nice” bigot by Halee Gray Scott at Christianity Today’sher•meneutics blog, “I Am Not Charles Worley: The Plea of a Christian Who Opposes Gay Marriage.” 

Scott wants you to understand that she’s not at all like the infamous homophobic preacher Worley. She’s totally different. 

Worley wants to deny LGBT people their basic civil rights and legal equality because he hates them. Scott wants to deny LGBT people their basic civil rights and legal equality for other reasons. 

See? See how very different they are? Same result. Same vote. Same fundamental discrimination enshrined in law. But Worley is mean. Scott is nice. 

And Scott has had it up to here with people not recognizing the extreme importance of that distinction....
....
Look, here’s the deal: It doesn’t matter if you think you’re a nice person. And it doesn’t matter if your tone, attitude, sentiments and facial expressions are all very sweet, kindly and sympathetic-seeming. If you’re opposing legal equality, then you don’t get to be nice. Opposing legal equality is not nice and it cannot be done nicely. ....

Scott wants to carve out a space in which she can be unfair, but still kind. Such a space does not exist and cannot exist.

If you are gay, you can just grow your own food

In case you were in any doubt that the Republican party line is relentlessly anti-gay, there's this story from Washington state.  First, the back story:  A florist is in trouble for refusing to sell flowers to gay men for their wedding.  It's not because marriage is legal in WA, it's because there's an anti-discrimination statute. So the Republicans want it to be legal to deny ANY service on "religious grounds".  Anything at all.

From Think Progress:

A bill introduced in Washington state last week would allow people to use their “sincerely held religious beliefs” to justify discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation. One activist started calling the bill’s sponsors to find out more about why they supported such a negative bill. His primary question was, “What are rural gays supposed to do if the only gas station or grocery store for miles won’t sell them gas and food?” 

A staffer at state Sen. Mike Hewitt’s (R) office had a unique reply:

Well, gay people can just grow their own food.

The staffer refused to identify himself, and when others called Hewitt’s office, no further comment was offered. The staffer later backpedaled a bit, claiming “patience was lost, mistakes were made, and that’s it,” but still had no comment on behalf of Hewitt. 

The question is a perfectly valid one. Conservatives often argue that if a florist, photographer, baker, or other business refuses service to a same-sex couples, there are plenty of others champing at the bit to support marriage equality. In urban areas, this may generally be true — but it’s not an argument that justifies discrimination. In rural areas, it may very well not be true. What if there is no local alternative? What if the only alternative is more expensive, of a lesser quality, or further away? The proposed bill doesn’t merely exempt those who provide services that might be related to weddings; it exempts all businesses. So it’s quite possible that a rural grocery store might be Christian-owned and attempt to refuse service to a same-sex family, and were this bill to become law, that would be perfectly legal. 

If a lawmaker’s staffer is willing to suggest that the alternative for same-sex families is to be self-sufficient and cut off from society, that should be a clear indication that this bill’s sole intent is animus.

NOM admits, it's not about marriage. It's about US.

From Jeremy Hooper at NOMexposed:

... I'm pretty shocked to see Mr. Fieler being so candid with the New York Times about why, exactly, he fights against gay people's marriages. I say surprised because the reasoning is not, as he tells it, just about marriage and religious freedom, like NOM claims. Instead, Fieler proudly owns his overall resistance to "the gay lifestyle™":

“The problem with gay marriage ...” Mr. Fieler said, “is it promotes a very harmful myth about the gay lifestyle. It suggests that gay relationships lend themselves to monogamy, stability, health and parenting in the same way heterosexual relationships do. That’s not true.”
[New York Times]

So here we have one of NOM's major (if not most major) funders using hostile phrases like "gay lifestyle" and suggesting that marriages like mine are inherently unstable, non-monogamous, and unhealthy. That, a view that is quite defamatory to many of us, goes *way* beyond just the marriage fight. This is the kind of rhetoric we're used to from nakedly anti-LGBT groups like the American Family Association. The whole point of comments like Sean's is to change America's view on gay people, not just our rights. It's the kind of dangerous phrasing that injects fear into the gay kids who see it and think they are intrinsically unfit for the future. 

Whether this is a sign of a more hostile NOM or is an uncharacteristic moment of candor remains to be seen. Either way, when the guy who has so fully helped to keep NOM's lights on admits that his view goes beyond my ring finger and instead goes right to my core, I'm choose to believe that he means it. And I'm going to use it.

Today's the day: vote NO on Amendment One!

Today, North Carolina will vote on a draconian "Amendment 1" to its constitution that will not only outlaw marriage between same sex couples (which is already illegal there), but will outlaw civil unions and any sorts of rights shared by unmarried opposite couples. It is driven by vicious anti-gay rhetoric--not just the usual bleats about "saving marriage" but actual vicious lies about the lives and loves about gay people, and a desire to hurt us (see here, here, and here for examples.)  And its effect will definitely be to deny gay people protections, hurt our children, as well as children and families of unmarried straights, elderly people with domestic partnerships, and so on.  Business is against it, so is the governor.    

 From Joe.my.god, the final polls don't look good:

 I don't know if the majority is ignorant, or uninterested, but it's pretty sad that with all the effort, the majority of people don't even know what the hell they are voting for.

From the Raleigh News & Observer:

…Constitutional amendments should be about law, not about religion, and not about the social agendas of conservative or liberal politicians. They should be solidly constructed to protect rights and weather the test of time, like cornerstones. They should stand for all the people. This one, instead, is bitterly divisive. Even one of its prominent backers, the speaker of the state House, has said he doubts that, if passed, it will stand beyond another generation.Amendment One meets none of the criteria by which a constitution can properly be modified. It is motivated by politics, driven in some cases by a vindictive attitude toward groups of people not approved of by those who believe themselves to be in the “mainstream.” 

 Marriage is far too strong an institution to have phony “protections” like this one.

Sadly, that falls on deaf ears in NC. The naked animus of Amendment One has been driven almost exclusively by fundamentalist "Christians", who invoke the most disgusting lies about  gay people, may be racist, and advocate hitting gay children to "beat teh gay out of them".  The damage they have done to the Christian "brand" is immeasurable.  I can't imagine any young person in NC daring to tell his friends he's "Christian" when this is now burned on their brains as what "Christians" stand for.

As for me, if this passes, the most I'll be doing in North Carolina is changing planes.   My rainbow dollars will be spent in places that don't actively hate me.

Update:From the Huffington Post:  (because suppressing votes is one way to win)

All, we're getting reports here in Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Raleigh (which are base areas for us, e.g. anti-Amendment 1) of precincts handing out INCORRECT ballots. In North Carolina, 17-year-olds can vote in the statewide primary (e.g., for governor, etc.) if they turn 18 by November 6th. However, they CANNOT vote on Amendment 1 in this primary -- they can only vote for candidates -- therefore they are being handed ballots WITHOUT Amendment 1. That is proper election procedure. 

The problem is, the reports we are getting are that people OVER 17 are also being handed these ballots WITHOUT Amendment 1 in what would normally be heavily anti-Amendment 1 precincts (Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Raleigh).... call 1-866-OUR-VOTE if you experience this in NC, or know someone who did.

Voices of Faith: Taking on bigotry

From Susan Russell at the HuffPo: 

 There is a critical difference between feeling discriminated against because you're disagreed with and being discriminated against because of who you are.  

 And there is a critical difference between people who feel that their marriage is being threatened if the lesbian couple next door can get married and the lesbian couple next door whose marriage is being threatened by ballot initiatives taking away their fundamental right to marriage, by a governor vetoing marriage equality passed by their elected representatives, and by a "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) that denies them 1,138 federally protected rights that their next door neighbors claimed the moment they said "I do." .... 

 As a priest and pastor I am very clear that the First Amendment protects my right to decide for myself whom God blesses or doesn't bless. I am equally clear that it does not protect my right to decide for myself whom the Constitution protects or doesn't protect. And so if we're going to be that nation "with liberty and justice for all" to which we teach our kids to pledge allegiance, we need to get religion-based bias out of the civil marriage debate once and for all. And then we need to work together to become the nation we were conceived in liberty to be -- by overcoming bigotry and by choosing equality.  

 And to overcome it, we have to name it. The defense rests.