Repeat After Me…

“It is my firmly held religious belief that life begins at birth.”

[Editorial]

Those are the magic words and we have to learn to use them like the Christian Nationalist use them.

Gay rights advocates in Kentucky say expansion to religious freedom law would hurt LGBTQ+ safeguards
AP News
BY BRUCE SCHREINER
February 21, 2024

Gay rights advocates pushed back Wednesday against a Republican-sponsored measure to broaden Kentucky’s religious freedom law, claiming it threatens to undermine community-level “fairness ordinances” meant to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination.

The measure, House Bill 47, won approval from the House Judiciary Committee, but some supporters signaled a willingness to make revisions to the bill as it advances to the full House. The proposal would need Senate approval if it passes the House. Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers.

“I don’t think any of us here want to open a floodgate of lawsuits or, for that matter, to invalidate what local cities have done across Kentucky,” said Republican state Rep. Daniel Elliott, the committee chairman.

State Rep. Steve Rawlings, the bill’s lead sponsor, said the intent is to give Kentuckians a “fair day in court” if their rights to exercise their religious beliefs are infringed by any government action. The state’s existing religious freedom law, enacted more than a decade ago, consists of a few lines, he said.

They are weaponizing religion against us, they are using religion to get around the discrimination laws “It is my god given right to discriminate!”

They are forcing their religion on us and it is time to turn the tables on them and don't forget that the Bible was used to justify slavery.

A priest and other members of the parish went down along the border in 2017 leaving food and water for the undocumented immigrants and were prosecuted for leaving food and water for migrants in a desert wilderness area. They were convicted after a three day trial, the Washington Post reported,

In his verdict, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernardo Velasco said the women’s actions violated “the national decision to maintain the Refuge in its pristine nature.” Velasco also said the women committed the crimes under the false belief that they would not be prosecuted and instead would simply be banned or fined.

Catherine Gaffney, a volunteer for No More Deaths, said the guilty verdict challenges all “people of conscience throughout the country.”

“If giving water to someone dying of thirst is illegal, what humanity is left in the law of this country?” she said in a statement.

The Intercept wrote that,

A FEDERAL JUDGE in Tucson, Arizona, reversed the conviction of four humanitarian aid volunteers on religious freedom grounds Monday, ruling that the government had embraced a “gruesome logic” that criminalizes “interfering with a border enforcement strategy of deterrence by death.”

The reversal, written by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Márquez, marked the latest rebuke of the Trump administration’s crackdown on humanitarian aid providers in southern Arizona, and the second time in matter of months that a religious freedom defense has prevailed in a federal case involving the provision of aid to migrants in the borderlands.

Okay what does this have to do with us?

“I do have a strong Christian faith and background,” said Democratic state Rep. Keturah Herron. “However, I do think that we have to be very careful when we say that, based on your religious belief, that you’re allowed to discriminate against people. That is not what we need to be doing here in this commonwealth nor across the nation, and basically, this is what this bill says.”

“Religious Freedom” is a two edged sword, it cuts both ways… when the religious-right uses the law to discriminate why can’t we? Why can’t we refuse to serve or sell to people who are bigots because “It is against our firmly held religious beliefs.” to discriminate against them?

I think we have plenty of smart lawyers on our side to come up with a legal argument for that. 

 

[/Editorial]