Here We Go Again

Even when we have legislation that gives us protection from discrimination we still have to be on our toes.

Bill would let businesses shun gays, transgenders
Albuquerque Journal
By Maggie Shepard / Journal Staff Writer
Monday, December 21st, 2015

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Two state legislators have proposed a bill that would allow businesses to deny services to gay people and people who aren’t clearly male or female if it violated their religious beliefs.

The proposed bill generated immediate opposition. 

Anyone want to guest the party of the two legislators?

The bill, HB 55, pre-filed by Reps. David Gallegos, R-Eunice, and Nora Espinoza, R-Roswell, on Thursday, would remove the words “sexual orientation and gender identity” from the state’s current Human Rights Act, which says that businesses, government and non-profits can’t deny services based on certain customer characteristics.

Was anyone surprised that they are Republicans?

Gallegos and Espinoza take out the sexual orientation and gender identity wording  and emphasize that state law should not “burden a person’s free exercise of religion by requiring the person to provide a service or to conduct business” in opposition to their “sincerely held religious belief” regarding sexuality and gender. Gender is not always the same as a person’s anatomy, which is protected under the current and proposed laws as a person’s sex.

Whenever I see “religious freedom” I always wonder how they are going to determine if it is a “sincerely held religious belief” will there be some type of test? I doubt it, for one thing it would be unconstitutional. So basically what they are saying is that anyone can discriminate against trans people, lesbians and gays just by saying that it is against their religion.

Also there are some religions where the sexes cannot mix, for an example a man could not wait on a woman in a restaurant. So that religious belief can be violated but when it is against LGBT people we can’t go against the religious beliefs.