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Indiana "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" controversy


kimmy

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As well it should be, as that would open those businesses up to be targets of the kind of hateful BS we are already seeing over this bill.

Possibly so, but if drove across town to a store, walked in, put some effort into a selection, then was told they don't deal with my kind I'd feel pretty put out. I think they should have to put a sign up right at the start so everyone who can't get service knows not to go there.

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Normality is not a judgement call, you know. It's not open to ideological views. If 98% of the population is heterosexual then heterosexuality is what is normal. If only 1 or 2% or gay than that is, contrarily NOT normal. There is no inference of right or wrong, of good or bad here.

I get what you are trying to say, however in this case I believe normal is being used as a judgment.

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Possibly so, but if drove across town to a store, walked in, put some effort into a selection, then was told they don't deal with my kind I'd feel pretty put out. I think they should have to put a sign up right at the start so everyone who can't get service knows not to go there.

Yeah, appropriate signage is all that's necessary.

segregated-water-fountains.jpg

How's that?

gay-waterfountains-660x350-1413528166.jp

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Possibly so, but if drove across town to a store, walked in, put some effort into a selection, then was told they don't deal with my kind I'd feel pretty put out. I think they should have to put a sign up right at the start so everyone who can't get service knows not to go there.

That's not what this bill is about, and it's outright ignorance to suggest that it is.

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A very good article about how this is just another example of anti-Christian bigots making a big deal out nothing:

Indiana joining this large club isn’t news, right? Wrong. Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote a Washington Post op-ed calling the law “very dangerous” and promising to oppose it or ones like it. The CEO of the cloud computing company Sales Force threatened “slow rolling of economic sanctions” against the state if the law remains (yet Sales Force does business in China). Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy will cancel state-funded trips to Indiana as a result (even though Connecticut is one of the 20 states with a RFRA law). Hilary Clinton tweeted critically about the law (though her husband signed the 1993 federal version). Many news outlets reflexively refer to the bill as “anti-gay” and to religious liberty itself with dubious scare quotes.

But even here, the fear is overblown. It’s certainly true that Indiana’s RFRA would allow a business to use the religious liberty defense to protect a decision to not serve gay weddings (among many, many other things not related to sex or marriage at all). But even if the claimants can use a RFRA defense in more instances under the Indiana law, they are by no means guaranteed to win their case—and current jurisprudence seems unfriendly to to them.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/03/30/the-rfra-boogeyman/

Edited by TimG
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That's not what this bill is about, and it's outright ignorance to suggest that it is.

That's how it's being used.

What other purpose does it serve.

I think it's frigging hilarious ... people are really going to eye up customers and decide if they're gay, then refuse to serve them ?!

What planet are these people from?

.

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A very good article about how this is just another example of anti-Christian bigots making a big deal out nothing:

So are you saying this is just toothless legislation which only serves as meat to the base......wasting significant legislative resources to pass......hmmmm.....where have I seen this before.......where indeed?

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So are you saying this is just toothless legislation which only serves as meat to the base

I am saying it is copy of legislation passed in many other states and federally and the only people guilty of throwing red meat to their supporters are the hypocritical democrats that suddenly decided they needed to make a issue of the law.

The reality is creating phony conflicts over gay rights/abortion is a red meat issue for democrats because it allows them to avoid facing real issues. They could have ignored this law like they ignored the law in many other states and no one would have noticed or cared.

Edited by TimG
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I am saying it is copy of legislation passed in many other states and federally and the only people guilty of throwing red meat to their supporters are the hypocritical democrats that suddenly decided they needed to make a issue of the law.The reality is creating phony conflicts over gay rights/abortion is a red meat issue for democrats because it allows them to avoid facing real issues. They could have ignored this law like they ignored the law in many other states and no one would have noticed or cared.

You do realize how you were disproved above and the rest of your post is claptrap?

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That's how it's being used.

What other purpose does it serve.

I think it's frigging hilarious ... people are really going to eye up customers and decide if they're gay, then refuse to serve them ?!

What planet are these people from?

.

Absolutely not. Intolerant people like you are the reason legislation like this is necessary.

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This thread deserves a gigantic face palm. This law isn't a license to discriminate. All it provides is a level of defence if one is sued for discrimination. It doesn't mean one will win said lawsuit. There's still an awfully high bar to prove, and that's still decided by judges and juries. All this means is that on the odd instance, somebody might have a legitimate point.

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This thread deserves a gigantic face palm. This law isn't a license to discriminate. All it provides is a level of defence if one is sued for discrimination. It doesn't mean one will win said lawsuit. There's still an awfully high bar to prove, and that's still decided by judges and juries. All this means is that on the odd instance, somebody might have a legitimate point.

This has already been addressed. The lack of any specifics as to what constitutes a "sincerely held religious belief" means the sky is the limit as to what claims might be made. And the fact that Indiana has no anti-discrimination laws that include gay people make it impossible to argue that the state has a "compelling interest" in protecting gay people from discrimination.

-k

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The lack of any specifics as to what constitutes a "sincerely held religious belief" means the sky is the limit as to what claims might be made.

That has not not been the experience with identical laws in other jurisdictions.

Yet there is little if any evidence that RFRA laws have enabled discrimination against gays or same-sex couples. RFRA defenses have been used, for example, to protect a Native American who owned religiously important eagle feathers without a permit. The government seized the feathers but was forced to return them. RFRA allowed another Native American child to keep his hair long despite school rules about keeping hair to a certain length (the ACLU gave his family an award).

Of course the risk of unintended consequences in laws is always there. Most human rights legislation is filled with provisions that would be extremely odious if it was enforced to its fullest extent. If you want to dismantle legislation based on that logic I have a long list of other laws/regulations which are a much bigger concern than this. The more you argue the more I see this as a red meat issue being hyped to fire up the democratic base and less of a serious concern. Edited by TimG
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That has not not been the experience with identical laws in other jurisdictions.

The laws aren't identical.

* Every other Religious Freedom Restoration Act applies to disputes between a person or entity and a government. Indiana’s is the only law that explicitly applies to disputes between private citizens.

* Thirty law professors who are experts in religious freedom wrote in February that the Indiana law does not “mirror the language of the federal RFRA” and “will… create confusion, conflict, and a wave of litigation that will threaten the clarity of religious liberty rights in Indiana while undermining the state’s ability to enforce other compelling interests. This confusion and conflict will increasingly take the form of private actors, such as employers, landlords, small business owners, or corporations, taking the law into their own hands and acting in ways that violate generally applicable laws on the grounds that they have a religious justification for doing so. Members of the public will then be asked to bear the cost of their employer’s, their landlord’s, their local shopkeeper’s, or a police officer’s private religious beliefs.”

* The Indiana law which provides protections to religious practices “whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.” So entities can seek to justify discriminatory practices based on religious practices that are fringe to their belief system.

* Beyond the differences between the Indiana law and other states, many of the other states that have a RFRA also have a law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation. Indiana does not have one.

http://bit.ly/1CCDl0X

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I am saying it is copy of legislation passed in many other states and federally and the only people guilty of throwing red meat to their supporters are the hypocritical democrats that suddenly decided they needed to make a issue of the law.

The reality is creating phony conflicts over gay rights/abortion is a red meat issue for democrats because it allows them to avoid facing real issues. They could have ignored this law like they ignored the law in many other states and no one would have noticed or cared.

But that's simply not true. It's not a copy of laws used in other states or of the federal RFRA. It has the same name, but it is not a copy at all.

Indiana's RFRA specifically includes for-profit businesses as being "persons" who can claim protection from RFRA. The federal RFRA doesn't. Among all the state RFRAs, only South Carolina provides this protection to for-profit business.

And every RFRA except for Texas and Indiana limits the scope of it to government over-reach. As in, if you live in a "dry county" and the sheriff tries to bust your congregation for drinking sacramental wine, that's an RFRA violation. But unlike other states, Indiana has extended this to disputes in which the government has no part.

So despite what your sources are claiming, and what Mike Pence was saying on TV yesterday, this law isn't the same as the federal law or the law in any other state. Combine these two unique characteristics of the Indiana legislation and it is quite obvious that it was designed with the intention of protecting businesses from civil rights lawsuits. You'd have to be pretty naive to doubt that Indiana was specifically of gay people suing businesses when they crafted the law in this way.

-k

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