They Will Never Leave Us Alone

They have so much hate of us that they will attack us anyway they can, this time they buried a “religious freedom” clause in the education bill.

Republicans bury anti-LGBTQ provisions in massive higher education bill
The bill would ensure that anti-LGBTQ discrimination does not endanger funding.
Think Progress
By Zack Ford
December 14, 2017

A massive (542 pages) higher education reform bill proposed by House Republicans would write anti-LGBTQ discrimination into the law in the disguise of “religious freedom.” H.R. 4508, authored by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), contains two provisions clearly designed to enable discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, even if it doesn’t refer to those specific terms.

The bill’s name, “Promoting Real Opportunity, Success, and Prosperity through Education Reform” (the PROSPER Act), suggests it creates opportunities, but a section called “Campus Access for Religious Groups” would add a new provision to the law that would guarantee that student groups can refuse membership or leadership positions on the basis of their identity:

None of the funds made available under this Act may be provided to any public institution of higher education that denies to a religious student organization any right, benefit, or privilege that is generally afforded to other student organizations at the institution (including full access to the facilities of the institution and official recognition of the organization by the institution) because of the religious beliefs, practices, speech, membership standards, or standards of conduct of the religious student organization.

This language refers to various controversies that have arisen when student organizations accept campus funding but then violate the nondiscrimination policies that they are obligated to follow when they accept that funding. The groups refuse to let LGBTQ students either participate or join the leadership of the organization because they claim that those identities violate the religious tenets of the group.

You might remember a Supreme Court case in 2010 when a “Christian” organization at  University of California's Hastings College of the Law wanted to exclude people due to religious belief or sexual orientation and the court said that they could exclude people based on any protected class if they are receiving public funding.

Well now the high Ed bill will give them special rights to discriminate just by saying “it is against my religion.” There can be no test to tell if it is a religiously held belief or if they are just hiding their bigotry and hatred behind religion.

If this bill passes it will override state’s laws.

Here in Connecticut religious hospitals have to treat ALL patients and preform ALL medically necessary procedures. If these so called “religious freedom” laws are passed religious hospitals could refuse interracial couples, could refuse blacks, could refuse non-believers of their faith, and could refuse LGBT patients. Because somewhere in the Bible you can find grounds to discriminate against them.

Since the beginning of this country the courts have upheld that the First Amendment  meant the right to worship not the right to special treatment to disobey any law. They had a test that if the law was religiously neutral such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 it was Constitutional but now the Republicans are twisting it to mean that you cannot obey any law that you feel prohibits your so called “religious freedom.” Now the Trump and the Republicans are packing the courts with judges who have said publically that they put the Bible before the Constitution and many of them don't even know the law.