Anyone Who Studied History Knows This.

Thought out history religions have been use to oppress people.

New Report Connects Religious Exemptions from LGBT Equality to Historic Efforts to Deny Civil Rights
The Leadership Conference
February 1, 2016

ATLANTA – Today, The Leadership Conference Education Fund will release its report, Striking a Balance: Advancing Civil and Human Rights While Preserving Religious Liberty, documenting how the religious arguments commonly used today against LGBT equality have been used to oppose the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage and equality, racial integration, inter-racial marriage, immigration, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the right to collectively bargain. Striking a Balance also examines the current legal and political landscape in which religious exemptions are being used to deny civil and human rights, including LGBT equality.

“For as long as people have demanded freedom, dignity, and equality under the law, many arguments to deny these rights have been wrapped in a false flag of religious liberty,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference Education Fund. “Religious liberty is a sacred American ideal, not a cynical strategy to oppose LGBT equality, the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, inter-racial marriage, or the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

Throughout history there are examples where one religion enslaved or wiped out people of another religion or race and now it is LGBT people who are struggling to end oppression who are being accused of denying religions the right to oppress others.

The reports says,

The advance of legal equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people is one in a long history of accomplishments by activists who have successfully challenged institutional discrimination and dismantled legal barriers to opportunity. The progressive advocacy community also has a strong record of supporting religious freedom for all Americans and working to protect the ability of all people, particularly religious minorities, to exercise their faith.

There is also a long history of religious arguments being used to justify opposition to anti-discrimination efforts and other social justice movements. Religious rationalizations have been used to defend slavery and Jim Crow segregation, oppose equal rights for women, and promote discrimination against Muslims.

Recently, the corruption of the concept of religious liberty has been used to devise a legal and political strategy to oppose and undermine protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. In the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the majority reinterpreted the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and opened the door to its use in ways Congress did not intend. While that case centered on the requirement under the Affordable Care Act that insurance coverage include contraception, the Court majority’s reasoning, and its determination that for-profit corporations could make a “religious exercise” claim under RFRA, suggested new potential avenues for opponents of LGBT nondiscrimination protections to promote a variety of religious exemption laws at the state level. 

Legislators see the religious freedom laws only applying to not being forced to sell a wedding cake to a LGBT couple but when you pass legislation that grants someone the right to no obey a law because it interferes with their religious freedom you just opened a great big loop hole for anyone to step through. I don’t want to serve a black person because it is against my religion.  Or does it mean that a church can stone to death a person who commits adultery and if you don’t allow it then how do you draw a line on what is permissible, would caning be okay?

How do you define a religious belief? Will there be a religious test, can it be a person’s own belief or does it has to be part of an organized religion, and that in itself is discriminatory.

So when you start passing religious freedom law you open a whole new can of worms.