(Mar 30, 2015 04:12 AM)cluelusshusbund Wrote: (Mar 30, 2015 02:36 AM)Yazata Wrote: The RFRA does not guarantee that a person making a religious claim will always win.
Do these laws license discrimination against gays? Stanford law professor Michael McConnell says no, "In the decades that states have had RFRA statutes, no business has been given the right to discrimnate against gay customers or anyone else."
McConnell also thinks that should state RFRA acts collide with public accomodation law, he thinks that public accomodation law would prevail.
Thats good enuff for me... i guess i got caut up in the hysteria an didnt thank it thru how this is a positive for gays... etc... an in no way a negative.!!!
An i say to all the people who thanks this law sucks... whats all the hubbub bub.???
I won't be driving thru Indiana any time soon. But if I did, I'd check to make sure the manager of McDonald's isn't a anti-gay christian first before eating there. It's my religious right not give money to such a cause. But then he'd probably throw me out anyway for being gay. "We serve christian heterosexuals only!"
"Supporters of these laws bring up the example of a florist who refuses to sell flowers for a gay wedding or a baker who won't make that couple's wedding cake -- and it's clear this law is aimed at fending off lawsuits that florist and that baker might face.
But what about a restaurant that refuses to serve a gay couple simply wanting to sit down for a meal?
"It would foil any lawsuit against a supplier who acted on religious grounds, but the law can get squirrely," CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin said, adding that it's likely that a refusal to serve a gay person wouldn't stand under the law, but a refusal to provide a service for a gay wedding would.
Is Indiana the first state to implement this kind of a law?
Nope. It's actually the 20th state to adopt a "religious freedom restoration" law, most of which are modeled after the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1993.
But that law passed with the backing of a broad-based coalition and wasn't set against the backdrop of gay rights or the wave of marriage equality laws that have swept the country in recent years.
The law in Indiana, though, as well as the slew of other states it follows, came after an outcry from social conservative circles over incidents where business owners found themselves in hot water after refusing services to gay couples planning to get married.
In addition to those 20 states, legislators in nine other states have introduced similar types of "religious freedom" laws -- bills that either failed to go through in 2014 or are still up for consideration this year.
But Adam Talbot, a spokesman with the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group, stressed that those 20 laws are "dramatically different in their scope and effect."
"Calling them similar in this way risks being misleading. Indiana is the broadest and most dangerous law of its kind in the country," Talbot said.
Arkansas' legislature passed an Indiana-style law on Friday, which now heads to the state's governor for approval.
Religious liberty -- and using it to push back against same-sex marriage and other gay rights -- has become the rallying cry for the social conservative movement in the last year as these groups have watched one anti-gay marriage law after the next tumble in the courts.
And standing behind with Pence as he signed the bill were several socially conservative lobbyists, the ones who pushed for the law and are fiercely opposed to same-sex marriage.
One of those lobbyists, Eric Miller, explicitly wrote on his website that the law would protect businesses from participating in "homosexual marriage."
"The only reason these laws have passed is because of same sex marriage. Everybody knows that," Toobin said. The political calculation that states are going to have to make is, is the reward from the religious groups greater than the cost in lost business."
Have these "religious freedom restoration" laws already been used as legal defenses?
Yup. The Human Rights Campaign pointed CNN to several cases in which individuals have used these laws in court -- and not just in cases involving LGBT people and weddings.
A police officer in Oklahoma claimed a religious objection when he refused to police a mosque. A police officer in Salt Lake City cited his "religious liberty" when he refused to police a gay pride parade.
A photographer in New Mexico used religious freedom as a defense for not serving a lesbian couple in 2013."---
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/27/politics/i...explainer/
Mar 30, 2015 01:19 AM
