Posted on 04/04/2015 7:29:03 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Life is full of delicious ironies, especially if you know where to look for them.
Consider the debate over SB 129, Georgia’s proposed “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” At this point, the entire argument is over one sentence recently added to the bill by the House Judiciary Committee. That sentence reads: “Courts have consistently held that government has a fundamental, overriding interest in eradicating discrimination.”
As long as that sentence remains in the bill, SB 129 will not give individuals or businesses a religious-based license to discriminate against gay people. If that sentence is removed, SB 129 does give individuals or businesses a religious-based right to discriminate against gay people. That’s what the whole fight is all about.
And once again, let’s be clear: This is not a relatively minor dispute about whether bakeries can legally refuse to provide a wedding cake to gay couples. Such isolated cases represent only a very tiny opening sliver of a very large wedge that backers of SB 129 are attempting to drive into law. SB 129 is really about whether employers will be able to offer benefits to married straight couples while denying those same benefits to married gay couples on the grounds that they have a religious objection to gay marriage. It’s about whether gay employees can be fired simply for being gay or suspected of being gay, again because employers have a religious objection to “the gay lifestyle.”(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at jaybookman.blog.ajc.com ...
replace “discriminate against gay people” with
“force people to act against their beliefs”
Actually this analysis is daft. The judicial rulings which remove the ability for states to outlaw gay marriage are grounded on the same basis that would remove laws against polygamy. You cannot be logically consistent and think that laws against gay marriage are bad, but that laws against polygamy are good.
Now, of course I don’t expect logical consistency from the Left, but the legal system does try to make a shot at it.
This is basically a violation of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment imo. Section 1 prohibits the states from unreasonably abridging constitutionally enumerated rights, the 1st Amendment protected freedom of religious expression versus constitutionally unprotected gay “rights” in this case.
14th Amendment, Section 1:All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States [emphasis added]; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Note that the “privileges or immunities” term which John Bingham, the main author of Section 1, used in that section is just another way to refer to constitutionally enumerated rights, most of these well-known rights, including 1st Amendment-protected freedom of religious expression, listed in the Bill of Rights.
As the lower courts including the Courts of Appeals, legislate from the bench, in the great cities of America where the disease of liberalism and political correctness reside, the clock ticks on SCOTUS where if Ginsberg retires, the new President can appoint the new justice that could give a 6-3 advantage to the constitutionalists, thus preserving the union, and gives hope that morals and values can overcome this disease of the mind that seeks to destroy our great nation.
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