Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi SHAME!
Republican led states Tennessee, North Carolina, and Mississippi are set to pass or have passed hateful anti-LGBT legislation that legalizes making the LGBT community second-class citizens. Tennessee's repulsive bill, which awaits the governor's signature, even allows mental health counselors to turn away anyone from the LGBT community for reasons of "sincerely held beliefs."
Gay rights and mental health advocacy groups have protested the bill and urge Tennessee Governor Haslam to veto it because it could permit mental health professionals to discriminate against LGBT patients without legal liability.
The bill passed by the legislature is a more discriminatory version of legislation approved earlier this year. That measure stated that therapists and counselors could turn away patients based on “sincerely held beliefs.” The state House last week passed a version that expanded grounds for shunning patients to “principles,” which the Senate approved on Monday.
Some opponents of the bill said they worried the wording could allow discrimination against other groups, including people of color. “There’s no litigation on what those ‘principles’ are,” state Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D) said on Monday.
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Tennessee would become the only state with such a law, according to the American Counseling Association. The measure would violate the group’s code of ethics, which affirms that mental health professionals cannot refuse treatment based on “personally held values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.”
Tennessee lawmakers also are considering a proposal that would require transgender individuals to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender at birth, part of a wave of anti-LGBT legislation proposed in the South.
Last summer the SCOTUS ruled that marriage equality was legal and, therefore, states that did not allow same-sex marriage were in violation of federal law. Not happy with the ruling, several states, mostly in the Bible Belt, began formulating laws that would bypass the SCOTUS ruling and keep the LGBT community in second-class citizen status.
It is interesting to note that many of the people who support these discriminatory laws against the LGBT community are the same people who soil their undies worrying about Sharia Law coming to the U.S. Fundamental Muslims in theocratic countries in the Middle East would certainly be sympathetic to the southern states that believe in punishing people for who they are.
But not all of America agrees with those bigoted states:
States Turn Their Back On Mississippi Over Its New Discriminatory Law
Another business refuses to invest in North Carolina:
Deutsche Bank announced Tuesday that it would suspend its plans to add 250 jobs in its Cary, North Carolina office, citing the state's sweeping law that overrode local measures protecting LGBT individuals from discrimination and limited employees' ability to sue over workplace discrimination.
"We take our commitment to building inclusive work environments seriously. We’re proud of our operations and employees in Cary and regret that as a result of this legislation we are unwilling to include North Carolina in our US expansion plans for now.
We very much hope that we can re-visit our plans to grow this location in the near future," Deutsche Bank Co-CEO John Cryan
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10 comments:
"Sincerely held beliefs" are the new code words for racist, bigoted beliefs.
Why do you think its not right for states to make laws thats right for there people? Haven't you heard of states rights? And what about religious freedom. Thats a right just like rights for gay people.
Clearly Anita the troll is dumber than her picture and lack of English comprehension show.
Jerry, lots of people agree that these new "religious freedom" laws are thinly disguised attempts at denying full citizenship to the LGBT community through state-sanctioned bigotry.
A.A.B., or whoever you really are, you may be a trickster but your question deserves a comment. At one time it was the law to segregate African-Americans from other Americans; it was the law to deny African-Americans educational access to state schools for which those African-Americans paid taxes; at one time it was the law to deny African-Americans and white Americans the right to marry each other. Often state laws are nothing more than attempts by certain states to infringe on the rights of minority Americans because a majority of their citizens are bigoted. It's pretty clear that these so-called religious freedom laws are the same sort of laws we've seen before, and which will not survive. The states that pass these discriminatory laws are, again, on the wrong side of history.
Dave, I'm not so sure A.A.B. is really that dumb, or even if she is really a "she." But whoever he/she is, at least s/he didn't get deleted -- at least this time.
" The states that pass these discriminatory laws are, again, on the wrong side of history."
Not only are they on the wrong side of history, they are on the wrong side of the constitution.
So it's against their religion not to be bigoted and narrow-minded? That kind of religion isn't really worthy of defending, imo.
Anita is absolutely right about one thing. She ain't bright (or maybe she has wickedly ironic sense of humor).
Anita: Real religious freedom is not the issue here -- actual religious institutions will remain free to (for example) refuse to perform gay marriages or reject gays as members, just as they can refuse to marry any couple they disapprove of, or reject anyone as a member on whatever grounds. That religious freedom has never been under threat.
What these states' laws specifically do is allow private businesses to discriminate against gays for religious reasons. It's exactly the same as the old segregated water fountains, whites-only lunch counters, and suchlike.
It's encouraging how many major businesses are taking a stand against this. Bigotry, it seems, is bad for the bottom line these days.
April 13 (Reuters) - Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards on Wednesday signed an anti-discrimination order protecting the rights of gay and transgender people, aligning his state on the liberal side of a political divide playing out across the South.
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Methinks the boycott threat is working.
However, I believe the brown shirts in South Carolina decided to pass a discrimination bill.
Wonder if this has any chance of moving out of the south.
The Louisiana governor is a Democrat, elected after the disastrous governorship of Republican Bobby Jindal. That may have a lot to do with why Louisiana did not go down the path of bigotry toward the LGBT community as the other Republican-held southern states have.
THink about it, Ducky. When the south was no longer able, by law, to hold human beings as slaves and those free men and women started to enjoy their constitutional rights, the south began to pass Jim Crow laws to keep them in a different sort of bondage. This tactic runs deep in the Old Confederacy. They don't like what the feds pass as laws, so states rights and all that -- that gives them some time to continue their bigotry toward minorities they don't like -- this time it's the LGBT community.
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