If you are currently freaking out over the new law in Indiana, you are grossly misinformed.
(CNN)The United States has seemingly erupted this week about what it means to live your religion, especially in Indiana, where its new Religious Freedom Restoration Act faces a firestorm from critics who say it uses faith as a pretext to discriminate against gay people.
Such state laws have been growing ever since the U.S. Religious Freedom Restoration Act became law in 1993, designed to prohibit the federal government from “substantially burdening” a person’s exercise of religion.
So far, 20 states have some version of the religious liberty law, and the legal controversies have grown, too.
Nonetheless, claims under those state RFRAs are “exceeding rare,” and victories involved mostly religious minorities, not Christian denominations, experts say.
“There is reason to doubt whether these state-level religious liberty provisions truly provide meaningful protections for religious believers,” wrote Wayne State University law professorChristopher Lund in a 2010 analysis, when there were only 16 states with such laws.
Here are some of the more interesting cases arising from the federal and state laws, touching upon an array of religious matters from a knife carried by an IRS accountant to a tea from the Amazon:
Then Wall Mart And all the other business’s are misinformed.
You would think that their lawyers would set them straight.
Instead, the legislators in Indiana and
Arkansas will set their laws straight .
To make sure that you are not discriminated against if you aren’t straight .
All that’s required to stop the freakout is to say, without equivocation, that there are no circumstances in which discrimination based on sexual orientation is legal but discrimination based on race or ethnicity is not.
Instead, we hear the same gibberish conservatives use when asked to explain why police officers must pay mandatory dues to union bosses but the rest of the workforce gets to enjoy glorious workplace freedom.
Mark,
A liberal defending Walmart. Wow. Isn’t that as rare as a pro life abortionist?
Pike,
There are circumstances where protection for homosexuals afford special rights.
Go back to my example where 2 teenagers are “making out” in the restaurant.
I kick the teenage hetrosexual couple out for bad behavior, done and over.
I kick the teenage gay couple out for same bad behavior, they scream bigotry and homophobia and call out the government agency SWAT team! That is unacceptable! Smae on any legislators in Indiana and Arkansas for backing down and watering religious freedom laws down.
Retail businesses are PRIVATE establishments open to public. They are NOT public establishments where you can dictate every little thing.
If you want it to be a “public establishment”, then just call for the good Marxist thing, and confiscate it, and stop fooling around.
You don’t want me to tell you the code of behavior in your PRIVATE home, why is it acceptable to tell me in my PRIVATE workplace? Or are liberals now dictating behavior in private homes and business?