'Right To Discriminate' Bills

I'm not familiar with either the term or the article source.



Two More States Introduce 'Right to Discriminate' Bills

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In Kansas, House Bill 2453 would allow both people and private businesses to deny a long list of services to LGBT couples, just as long as the person or business is "operating consistently with its sincerely held religious beliefs." (Funny, I wasn't aware that businesses had religious beliefs...) The list includes "accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges... counseling, adoption, foster care and other social services... [and] employment or employment benefits, related to, or related to the celebration of, any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement."

and

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his bill is even crazier than its Kansas counterpart -- note that nowhere in the text above does it refer specifically to same-sex marriages. It's written so broadly that, if the bill passes with the above language intact, individuals and businesses would be free to discriminate against any marriage they find objectionable (again, as long as they justify that discrimination on religious grounds). So an innkeeper could refuse to rent a room to an interracial couple, as long as they cloaked their bigotry in the mantle of religion. And a baker could theoretically refuse to bake a cake for an interfaith wedding if, for example, they didn't believe Protestants should marry Catholics.

Has anyone heard of this kind of bill? Some of the article's sources seem reputable but I haven't done my homework yet.



On the surface, these doesn't seem like it would pass constitutional muster in court, but if they phrased it in such a way that the language doesn't specifically mention same-sex marriages, maybe it could. I dunno.

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