Tag: religious discrimination

August 26, 2019

Ohio AG Yost Takes A Friday News Dump On The LGBTQA Community

Ohio Attorney General David Yost happy to crap on the LGBTQA community

Typically when elected people want to tell you bad news but don’t want to have to deal with it publicly, they will say the bad news on a Friday when the news media won’t spend much time on it since the weekend is the next day. The politician then hopes the whole thing blows over by Monday. Ohio Attorney General David Yost waited until Friday to announce that Ohio will sign-on to a brief for three US Supreme Court cases that will decide if the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects LGBTQA people. The brief and Yost don’t support protection of course.

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June 29, 2015

Finally, The ACLU Turns Against The RFRA

logo for the ACLU

During the recent firestorm over state Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) like those passed by Indiana and the use of them to discriminate against LGBT people, one of my conservative friends pointed out many liberals and the ACLU supported the federal RFRA passed in 1993. He implied they were being hypocrites. Late last week the ACLU formally repudiated its support of the RFRA.

The ACLU provided some of the same reasons to remove their support of the RFRA that has been mentioned in previous posts about this issue:

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April 3, 2015

The Majority Doesn’t Need Their Religious Freedom Restored

screencap from Holy Grail

Indiana and Arkansas have changed their state Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) to make it more explicit that it not be used by businesses to discriminate against LGBTs or others of different beliefs. RFRAs were originally created to protect minority religious beliefs from government overreach, like peyote use by Native Americans, and not to allow the majority religions to selectively honor the civil rights of others.

Josh Marshall over at Talkingpointsmemo.com had a great essay on the how RFRAs were perverted by the religious majority:

Read the postThe Majority Doesn’t Need Their Religious Freedom Restored
March 29, 2015

Why Do Religious Freedom Restoration Acts Open The Door To Discrimination?

photo of Indiana Governor Mike Pence
Indiana Governor Mike Pence trying to put lipstick on a pig

In a previous post, I used the title ‘Indiana Ends Fair And Equal Treatment‘ in response to Governor Pence signing a Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. RFRA’s have opened the door to discrimination since the federal version was used in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision back in June.

After my post went up I had a person on twitter try to claim that since the United States Supreme Court had ruled the federal RFRA constitutional and Indiana’s version is an exact copy of the federal version then there is no end to fair and equal treatment. That claim isn’t supported by the facts.

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March 27, 2015

Indiana Ends Fair And Equal Treatment

I was going to write a long winded post about the ‘Religious Freedom’ law signed by Indiana’s Governor Mike Pence today but I decided Brandan Robertson, on his blog Revangelical, made the kind of point I would be making. Basically, laws like Indiana’s ‘Religious Freedom’ law makes a mockery out of ideals of fair and equal treatment that evolved from the civil rights struggle.

Here is an official photo of the private signing ceremony. Governor Pence is seated at the desk. We know Catholics are well represented but where are the atheists and Muslims?

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August 19, 2013

Yes, Attempt To Recruit Christian Workers Violates State And Federal Law

created image of a sing with text Atheists Need Not Apply

The director of operations of a Subway franchisee, in West Virginia, sent letters to several churches and congregations saying his company was “in need of Christian employees.” I’m sure some people will not see the problem with such a letter, after all a business should be able to make hiring decisions that prefer a particular group of people. Some may think the guy was just trying to reach out to a segment of people to recruit more workers. The problem is that such outreach is actually against state and federal law.

Read the postYes, Attempt To Recruit Christian Workers Violates State And Federal Law