No excuses for bigotry

BIGOTRY SHOULD trump civil liberties--as long as the bigots can claim to be motivated by religion.

That's the reasoning behind a slew of right-wing bills being pushed at the state level that would allow businesses to legally discriminate against those in the LGBT community--as long as it's on the basis of "strongly held religious beliefs."

These so-called "religious freedom" bills would more accurately be called "pandering to bigots" bills. The most notorious of the "turn away the gay" measures is Arizona's Senate bill (SB) 1062, which passed both the state House and Senate before it was vetoed by Gov. Jan Brewer, who came under tremendous pressure because of the national outcry.

SB 1062 would have amended the state's existing Religious Freedom Restoration Act by allowing business owners to deny service to gay and lesbian customers--as long as proprietors were acting "solely" on their "strongly held" religious beliefs.

Those who supported the bill were pushing a "state's rights" approach to civil liberties, but attempting to cloak it in religious freedom. Losing their fight to keep gays and lesbians from having marriage equality at a national level, opponents of equality are now attempting to keep LGBT people from sitting next to them at the proverbial lunch counter.

The Arizona bill raised obvious comparisons to Jim Crow racism. But supporters of SB 1062 and similar measures claim that legalized anti-gay bigotry isn't the same as Jim Crow racism. How so? Because, they say, there's Biblical support for antigay beliefs, while there isn't Biblical support for racist beliefs.

The logic would be ridiculous if it wasn't so ugly--and ahistorical. Religious leaders and racists routinely used Biblical justifications to defend slavery--and, later, segregation and anti-miscegenation laws.

(And for a more recent example, just consider the comments of Evangelical Christian and Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson in an interview with GQ magazine last year. Robertson not only saw no problem using the Bible to not only justify his antigay bigotry--he also went on a racist tirade about how Blacks were "singing and happy" during segregation because "they were godly" back then.)

THANKS TO an immediate and furious reaction on the part of LGBT rights supporters across the nation, the bill was pushed back and the right wing has been put on the defensive.

In Tucson, Rocco's Little Chicago Pizzeria made the comparison to Jim Crow clear when it posted a sign in its window reading, "We reserve the right to refuse service to Arizona legislators." As Anthony Rocco DiGrazia told the Huffington Post, "The response has been overwhelming, and almost all positive from across the globe...Opening the door to government-sanctioned discrimination, regardless of why, is a huge step in the wrong direction."

Hundreds protested the bill at the Capitol on February 24, and there were threats of an economic boycott of the state if Brewer signed the bill.

As actor and LGBT rights activist George Takei--who experienced internment as a Japanese-American child during the Second World War--wrote in a blog post:

This "turn away the gay" bill enshrines discrimination into the law. Your taxi drivers can refuse to carry us. Your hotels can refuse to house us. And your restaurants can refuse to serve us...

Kansas tried to pass a similar law, but had the good sense to not let it come up for a vote. The quashing came only after the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and other traditional conservative groups came out strongly against the bill.

But not you, Arizona. You're willing to ostracize and marginalize LGBT people to score political points with the extreme right of the Republican Party. You say this bill protects "religious freedom," but no one is fooled. When I was younger, people used "God's Will" as a reason to keep the races separate, too. Make no mistake, this is the new segregation, yours is a Jim Crow law, and you are about to make yourself ground zero.

Even some conservative groups, such as the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, came out strongly against the bill--recognizing the impact that a potential economic boycott would have on the state if SB 1062 were to be passed into law. These business interests were motivated less by doing the right thing than by the bottom line--they remember the $500 million-plus loss the state suffered in 1990 when the NFL pulled the Super Bowl out of the state after first Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham, and later voters, rejected recognizing Martin Luther King Day as an official holiday.

Today, with Michael Sam on the verge of becoming the first openly gay NFL player, a similar economic threat hung over the state if Brewer had allowed the bill to become law. Super Bowl XLIX is slated to be held in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale in 2015, and although NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, to his shame, didn't publicly state that the Super Bowl would be yanked if the bill became law, NFL officials signaled that they were closely "following" what happened with SB 1062.

Hotel giant Marriott sent a letter to Brewer suggesting that the legislation "would have profound negative impacts on the hospitality industry," while Apple, which is building a sapphire glass plant in Mesa, reportedly told state officials that the bill should be vetoed.

Several leading Republican politicians also came out against the bill, including Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake--again, not because of a commitment to LGBT rights, but because of the backlash that Arizona (and the Republican Party) would face. Then again, right-wing media personalities Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson only doubled down in support of the bill--with Carlson, for example, commenting that forcing a business to serve gay customers is equivalent to "fascism."

The outcry against the bill even forced some of those who initially voted for it to backtrack, including one of the bill's original co-sponsors, Sen. Bob Worsley. Worsley claimed to have a sudden "change of heart"--though, of course, he and others claim their motives in backing the legislation have been mischaracterized.

AT HEART, this bill, along with similar ones recently proposed in Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Oklahoma, is about legislating discrimination in the face of legal and social gains by the LGBT community--including recent court rulings striking down laws prohibiting same-sex marriage.

But several of these "religious freedom" bills are so broadly written that they could have far-reaching implications--like institutionalizing the right to discriminate against religious minorities, and allowing police or other state employees to refuse service to anyone who offends their religious sensibilities.

The Kansas bill, which overwhelmingly passed the state House of Representatives earlier this month before being killed in the state Senate, would not only have allowed any individual, group or private business to refuse to serve gay couples if "it would be contrary to their sincerely held religious beliefs," but it would also have permitted any government employee to refuse service to LGBT people in the name of "religious liberty." According to Slate.com:

If a gay couple calls the police, an officer may refuse to help them if interacting with a gay couple violates his religious principles. State hospitals can turn away gay couples at the door and deny them treatment with impunity. Gay couples can be banned from public parks, public pools, anything that operates under the aegis of the Kansas state government.

Meanwhile, Georgia's House Bill 1023, "turns religion into a veritable 'get out of jail or lawsuits free' card for any state or local law," according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jay Bookman. If passed, people and businesses would be exempt from following laws that "directly or indirectly constrains, inhibits, curtails or denies the exercise of religion by any person, or that directly or indirectly pressures any person to engage in any action contrary to that person's exercise of religion."

In Arizona, SB 1062 was drafted by the "Center for Arizona Policy" (CAP), a right-wing think tank that opposes LGBT equality and abortion rights. If they suffered a temporary setback on SB 1062, it's a sure bet that right-wing legislators and think tanks aren't done attempting to write discrimination into law at the state level.

Back in 1991, Public Enemy had a message for Arizona politicians and voters who refused to recognize Martin Luther King Day. As Chuck D sang in "By the Time I Get to Arizona," politicians using "fairness" as a cover for bigotry is nothing new and must be confronted:

Yeah, he appear to be fair
The sucker over there, he try to keep it yesteryear
The good ol' days, the same ol' ways that kept us dyin'
Yes: you, me, myself, and I indeed
What he need is a nosebleed
Read between the lines, and then you see the lie
Politically planned, but understand that's all she wrote
When we see the real side that hide behind the vote

We can't let legislators try to send us back to the "good 'ol days" when it comes to our rights.