Going Against Your Own Interests

So what would cause someone to go against their own safety and human rights?

Former Log Cabin Republicans head publicly opposes proposed LGBTQ nondiscrimination law
LGBTQ Nation
By Bil Browning
March 18, 2019

Former Log Cabin Republicans president Gregory Angelo has come out against the Equality Act, the proposed legislation to ban discrimination against LGBTQ people.

Angelo says the bill “would flout bedrock principles that have served as the foundation of the American experience for centuries” and impinge on American’s “religious freedom” to discriminate against LGBTQ people.

“Don’t be fooled by the name,” Angelo writes in the rightwing Washington Examiner. “The Equality Act is legislation that would compromise American civil rights and religious liberty as we know it. All reasonable Americans, especially gay Americans who support pluralism and tolerance, should oppose it.”

So why would he be against the Equality Act? He says “religious freedom” but that is the twisted logic of the Republicans that “religious freedom” means that you can hide your bigotry behind religion.

“Passage of the ‘Equality Act’ would make liars out of the lot of us. It would put the nonprofit status of religious charities at risk; it would force mom-and-pop businesses to participate in same-sex marriage ceremonies; and it would flout bedrock principles that have served as the foundation of the American experience for centuries.”

That is totally BULL!

Twenty-two states offer some protection for LGBTQ+ people and in not one of them has a religious non-profit but put out of business. They have lost funding from state governments because they discriminate and many of them lost funding from United Way because of discrimination.

Public funding should be for everyone, when they receive public funding and funding from United Way they agree not to discriminate… something the religious non-profit lied about when they got the funding. There is a famous case down in New Jersey,

Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association broke state’s discrimination law when it denied use of its pavilion for couple’s civil union ceremony

NEWARK – A state administrative law judge has ruled (50k PDF) that the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association violated the state’s Law Against Discrimination when it denied Ocean Grove residents Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster the use of its boardwalk pavilion for their 2007 civil union ceremony. The association had allowed members of the public to rent the pavilion and had never before declined a permit other than for scheduling conflicts until it received Paster and Bernstein’s reservation request. The association rejected the couple’s application to use the space, stating that civil unions violated its Methodist doctrine.

“The Camp Meeting Association could have used the pavilion exclusively for its own purposes,” said Lawrence Lustberg of Gibbons, P.C., who represents the couple as a cooperating attorney for the ACLU-NJ. “The judge found, however, that the association opened the pavilion up to the public and thus was obligated to follow anti-discrimination laws.”
[…]
… The judge determined that the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association breached its agreement to make the pavilion available to the public on an equal basis. The association was also required to make the pavilion public in exchange for a state tax exemption it received that requires equal access on a non-discriminatory basis…

Basically they lied when the association agreed to the terms.

As for Mr. Angelo assertion of “it would force mom-and-pop businesses to participate in same-sex marriage ceremonies” he is right, but substitute “black” for same-sex. Would this be okay “it would force mom-and-pop businesses to participate in black marriage ceremonies” or how about “it would force mom-and-pop businesses to participate in Muslin marriage ceremonies?” Somehow it has become more acceptable to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people.

So why is Mr. Angelo against the Equality Act all of his arguments don’t hold water? Could it be the reason that he supports the white supremacist, nationalistic, xenophobic, and misogynistic polices of the Republican?