Don't like "teh gaii"? Arizona's got your back! As long as you couch your bigotry in "religious freedom" terms, it's okay to refuse to do business with the LGBT community and treat gays like second-class citizens. The Bible tells these upstanding "Love Thy Neighbor Christianists" so!
"SB 1062 permits discrimination under the guise of religious freedom.
With the express consent of Republicans in this Legislature, many Arizonans will find themselves members of a separate and unequal class under this law because of their sexual orientation.
This bill may also open the door to discriminate based on race, familial status, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability.
"Legislation of this kind has been attempted this year in Kansas, South Dakota, Tennessee and Idaho. Each of those attempts failed after prominent members of the business community spoke against the measures. While our state continues to recover from the public relations nightmare of SB 1070, the Republican supporters of this bill are willing to elicit the inevitable backlash and boycotts that will result from its passage."
Remember when bigots used religion to defeat interracial marriage? How'd that work out?
"The Lovings were supported by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Japanese American Citizens League and a coalition of Catholic bishops.
In 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving had married in Washington, D.C. to evade Virginia's anti-miscegenation law (the Racial Integrity Act). Having returned to Virginia, they were arrested in their bedroom for living together as an interracial couple.
The judge suspended their sentence on the condition that the Lovings leave Virginia and not return for 25 years. In 1963, the Lovings, who had moved to Washington, D.C, decided to appeal this judgment. In 1965, Virginia trial court Judge Leon Bazile, who heard their original case, refused to reconsider his decision. Instead, he defended racial segregation, writing:
"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red, and placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend the races to mix."
The Lovings then took their case to the Supreme Court of Virginia, which invalidated the original sentence but upheld the state's Racial Integrity Act. Finally, the Lovings turned to the U.S Supreme Court. The court, which had previously avoided taking miscegenation cases, agreed to hear an appeal. In 1967, 84 years after Pace v. Alabama in 1883, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Loving v. Virginia that:
"Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not to marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."
The Supreme Court condemned Virginia's anti-miscegenation law as "designed to maintain White supremacy".
The bigots in the Republican Party of Arizona may have a small victory in their soon-to-be-passed law that codifies legal discrimination against a group of American citizens, but it will eventually be overturned as unConstitutional, and the GOP will look like the confused and misguided, hiding-behind-"religion" bigots that they truly are in this matter.
I hope a national movement to boycott Arizona as a state for conventions, vacations, sports, and other activities will be the result of this stupid unAmerican, unConstitutional law, should Tea Party GOP Governor Jan Brewer sign it into law. Maybe the citizens of Arizona will then face the consequences of their shameful bigotry.
However, I sincerely doubt it.
Thursday 2/20/14, 7:30pm EST: The Arizona House just passed this bill tonight. The fate of anti-LGBT segregation in Arizona now rests in the hands of the state's Tea Party Republican governor, Jan Brewer, who has five days to decide whether to sign or veto it.
h/t Infidel753
22 comments:
This will probably impact more than gay rights.
Arizona could also see a return to the days when a pharmacy employee could refuse to honor a prescription for contraception.
The potential for unseen (or seen?) implications from this disgrace must be extensive.
This will end up before SCOTUS. But the Baggers will not quit. It's what they do, it's all they do and they will not stop.
"But the Baggers will not quit. It's what they do, it's all they do and they will not stop."
The last desperate gasps of a dying group of bigots.
This will be overturned eventually should Brewer sign it into law. As it should be.
Of course you do know don't you when one group of bigots take their last breath another group rises.
What the fundies seem unable to grasp is that actions like this will just accelerate their own decline. The more fundamentalism is associated with frantic efforts to protect the "right" to discriminate against gays, the more it will repel the younger generation -- even those of them who are born into Evangelical families.
"But the Baggers will not quit. It's what they do, it's all they do and they will not stop."
I think it was commenter Infidel753 who observed that America is slowly but absolutely surely moving in the Progressive/Liberal direction where social issues are concerned.
We've seen in the last 5 years the end of DADT, more and more states accepting marriage equality, the easing of marijuana prohibitions, and the ability for more Americans to buy insurance coverage without being turned away or dropped from their policies, to name just 4 areas that only a decade ago seemed unchangeable. Yet change happened.
And we can still hope for action on climate change and immigration.
Those who made fun of "hope and change," (I'm looking at Sarah, "Ted Nugent's Good Enough for Me" Palin) must be terribly frightened of how, in just 5 years, these MAJOR social changes were brought about.
Sarah Palin: "How's that hopey-changey thing working out?"
Progressives: "Oh, just fine, Sarah, just absolutely FINE!
LOL!
Andrew Sullivan:
"...the phrase 'subhuman mongrel' used against the first mixed-race president of the United States is an obscenity that should give every American pause.
As Wolf Blitzer has pointed out, it reeks of Nazi terminology. But its origins are much closer to home, in the architecture of anti-miscegenation laws that came down to us from the era of slavery and Jim Crow. It’s the rhetoric of white supremacy deployed against the first African-American president.
Is that what the GOP now represents? Is that what it’s really come to?"
Yes, the T-GOP has come to that. And worse: "...an unsettling blend of rage and ignorance."
Infidel753 --- the Baggers do not seem to realize that the business forces behind the Republican financial structure are not to happy with these bobos scaring the horses. Reflects poorly and there is a deep schism in the party.
What we need to be aware of is one fringe right winger who has very skillfully bridged that schism, Scott Walker.
He is a very skillful and dangerous pol.
Subhuman mongrel, is that a Lee Atwater phrase which they substituted for the "n" bomb?
Vladimir Putin has officially won over the hearts and minds of Arizona Republicans!
Infidel753: "The more fundamentalism is associated with frantic efforts to protect the "right" to discriminate against gays, the more it will repel the younger generation..."
Politicususa:
"It is this inability to adapt to social changes that will doom the Republican Party, not simply in Arizona but nationwide.
Polls have shown that as many as 74% of millennials support gay marriage and that number is growing every day.
Each time a Republican state government, whether it’s in Kansas or Arizona, attempts to discriminate against the LGBT community, millennials take notice.
This past week, a human chain formed around the University of Missouri gymnasium to prevent the Westboro Baptist Church from disrupting a speech by gay football player Michael Sam. That was in Missouri of all places, a state not traditionally known for its progressive views.
If Republicans have lost the issue to millennials in the heartland of America, then they have definitely lost the issue nationwide.
Take the hint, Arizona Republicans."
Shaw, here's the deal... at least as I see it.
Many in the GOP will wail and complain that this does not represent the great majority of people in their party.
But it does not have to represent the great majority to be offensive to many people across America.
I've had the discussion with people who refuse to be labeled as members of the GOP, preferring the term conservative instead. I've pointed out how certain terms and love of laws like this are can be offensive to gays, minorities, and in some case, the economically disadvantaged.
This is essentially what Rand Paul, Bobby Jindal and even Rance Preibus [GOP Chairman] said when they pleaded with the GOP, and conservatives to learn how to talk about issues in a way that does not offend and turn off potential voters.
And for that effort, I have been derided, mocked, insulted and dismissed as an idiot.
Much as people may wish that laws like this should not be possible in modern society, any attempt to say this is not mainstream conservatism, and the heart of the GOP, is misguided.
Unless and until we see conservative and GOP leaders stand up and dismiss the hate that accompanies these laws and the suggestions towards moderation, the GOP will continue to struggle in national elections.
And they should.
America should have no place for the type of racist, exclusionary policies and rants that we have witnessed from the likes of legislators in Kansas and Arizona and dear Mr. Nugent.
Those attitudes were crushed in the Civil War. We should not still be fighting it.
Dave Miller: "And for that effort, I have been derided, mocked, insulted and dismissed as an idiot."
I've seen how you, who have ALWAYS been a polite and reasoned commenter on the conservative AND liberal blogs, how you were treated by some of their nastier commenters. They've insulted and defamed you for your differing points of view. They've answered your comments with invective and slurs. Why bother with them anymore?
So long as a political party tolerates someone like Ted Nugent, that party and the people who associate with it deserve all the contempt heaped upon it that it receives.
The people who suck up to Nugent are not the "fringe." The man who hoped to be president of the United States, a woman who hoped to be a vice president of the United States, a past Speaker of the House, and a U.S. Senator, among others, are quite happy to defend and call themselves "friends" of Ted Nugent.
If that doesn't tell us how willing the TeaPublicans are to get into the sewer in service to their ideology, what does?
I'll probably hear the name "Jeremiah Wright" from conservatives and "Bill Ayer" as well. But they forget that Mr. Obama distanced himself from WRight, and he was hardly palling around with Ayers the way the TGOP leaders have with Nugent.
Both sides do NOT do it.
"Many in the GOP will wail and complain that this does not represent the great majority of people in their party."
Which is exactly why the Tea Party was set up. It is not a third party. It is part and parcel of the GOP. It's purpose is to provide plausible deniability to the republican dicks who don't have the balls to say and do exactly what they want to.
Jerry, the fringe of the GOP has now become the sane folks like Michael Steele and Joe Scarborough...
When people like Goldwater, McCain, & Graham are seen as RINO's, they are in bad shape...
Skud... who speaks for the GOP these days? Who is emblematic of the conservative movement here in the US?
And have they publicly denounced folks like Nugent?
Jerry C., as long as the Repubs don't disown the crazies in their party that write and pass these sorts of discriminatory laws against American citizens, then they own them.
The GOP is the party of bigots. Say it often and say it LOUD!
And they OWN Ted Nugent!
Shaw, these are definitely encouraging signs. I don't have a link now, but a poll a month or two ago showed public opinion on gay marriage split 50-50 in Utah. With changing youth attitudes, anti-gay attitudes are a sinking ship that the Christian Right refuses to abandon, and hopefully will eventually go down with.
And it's not only gays who benefit. Our first black President was elected and re-elected by convincing margins, despite the racist fringe of the right, despite it being seriously questionable a couple of decades ago if such a thing would ever be possible. Our likely first female major-party nominee for President is soundly beating every Republican alternative in the polls. I know the Republicans have made some alarming inroads against reproductive rights since 2010, but I think this is like the anti-gay legislation -- defining them in a way which will hurt them in the end.
While unquestionably unconstitutional, what I find most incomprehensible and reprehensible are the lawmakers who disregard the spirit and traditions of secular democracy.
Authoritarian cultists of the Gee-Ohh-Pee see only two kinds of citizenship:
1. “Real citizenship” conferred only upon those who think like them, look like them, talk like them, pray like them, and vote for them; in short “Real Americans.”
2. “Name-only” citizenship for racial minorities, gays, intellectuals, liberals, Democrats, subversives, socialists, ragheads, and Feminazis; none of whom deserve civil rights, voting rights, or human rights.
Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas also supports a state-sanctioned bigotry bill similar to the one passed in Arizona. Here are the words of Brownback as reported in the Topeka Capital-Journal: “Americans have constitutional rights, among them the right to exercise their religious beliefs and the right for every human life to be treated with respect and dignity” [my bold]. You can always discern either extreme stupidity or extreme cupidity when the speaker is tone deaf to his own hypocrisy.
No food, no employment, no services, no accommodations, and no rights for if you happen to on the Brownback list or the Brewer list of “Un-American Americans” targeted for persecution.
What next? “No Irish need apply.” “Whites only.” “Juden raus!”
(O)CT(O)PUS, I and others believe these tactics are the dying gasps of a frightened and confused group of people who don't see social change, in the form of extending equal rights to everyone, as an affirmation of our Constitution. Somehow they've mixed up their religion with our secular government, and since no one in the past has disabused them of this, they think it's an assault on their religious freedom instead of what it really is: an assault on their fellow citizens' freedoms.
They've got it all ass-backwards, poor things. Why didn't someone educate them????
Tucson Pizzeria Reserves Right to Refuse to Serve Arizona Lawmakers.
Here is Octo's list of monuments to visit and learn about how democracy works in America:
The Washington Memorial
The Jefferson Memorial
The Lincoln Memorial
Rocco's Pizzeria in Tucson Arizona
Octo...add Ian's Pizza, Madison WI to the list.
When Scott Walker started his draconian agenda to squash unions, attack teachers and women....students and other occuppied the State Capital for days on end. Ian's responded this way...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayoyDf5Jvd8
...and it is damn fine pizza and a damn fine company...check 'em out.
http://ianspizza.com/recreational-pizza-coming-to-denver/
okjimm,
Do they deliver?
Octo...hmmmm yes....in certain areas. Try their Kelp and Algae....it will help Sea you through.
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