I concur with Thudlow Boink that at the time, there was no category of people called “gay”. Jewish teaching held all sex outside of marriage to be a sin. Jesus taught his followers to take this seriously, but never commanded anyone to enforce any rules of sexual behavior on those outside the community; in fact, he more or less said not to [Luke 9:54]. Given Jesus’s oft-recorded habit of eating with prostitutes and others generally regarded as ‘unclean’, he presumably would also not have distanced himself from anyone based on any sex act.
Yes, I’ve read the law.
I’ve also read the rhetoric emanating from the politicians pushing this law (and similar laws elsewhere). Where is this “clear and expressed governmental goal” actually expressed?
In the absence of a clear expression that the state government actually wants to avoid discrimination by businesses of public accommodation, are the courts going to find a compelling governmental interest? For example, if a city or other subdivision of the state passed a ordinance forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation, but the state itself has expressly declined to add sexual orientation to the list of protected classes (as the state legislature in Indiana did), would a court find the city’s interest all that compelling? I’m not convinced that they would, and I’d be interested in knowing what case law you believe supports your opinion.
According to a couple of articles I’ve read - one in USA Today, can’t recall the other - no one has ever successfully used an RFRA to defend a discrimination claim. However, the USA Today article pointed out that the states and polities where such attempts have been made had anti-discrimination laws that included LGBT as a protected class. Unlike Bricker, IANAL, but it sounds as though a RFRA claim would only succeed where no such ordinances existed. So a Christian baker in Indianapolis would probably not win a RFRA case, but one in East Jesus, Arkansas, would.
I’m an agnostic but I did go to a Christian school complete with Christian Studies every Wednesday afternoon and my minor in university is Biblical Studies (Hebrew Bible, not New Testament but since this sort of thing is interesting to me I’ve been doing some reading).
I agree with **ITR champion ** on this. And is there any actual reason to think Jesus would have turned away a gay customer, assuming for this question that the word “tekton” actually does mean a carpenter?
Thanks Bricker.
Where do you get that idea? Love is wanting what God wants for yourself and others, and God has pretty high expectations about virtues like chastity.
You might, but Indiana doesn’t, as there’s no laws on the books making gays a protected class.
That was true even before this law passed.
So why don’t you lay out precisely what additional harm the law caused?
Since I’m hardly a great writer…
In short, it removed any ambiguity that a business has free reign to do whatever the hell it wants by calling it a religious belief.
How does being gay interfere with chastity ? Gay is not synonymous with “promiscuous”, or even “sexually active”.
That said, while I dunno what Jesus thought about gays he *was *kinda racist :p.
I see you haven’t read the thread.
If you had, you would have seen an extended discussion about the precise quote you just offered up as factual, and a correction of the misapprehension that it creates. Specifically, your quote says that the federal RFRA does not include for-profit corporations, but in fact it does.
You may have heard of the Hobby Lobby case. Hobby Lobby is a for-profit corporation. You knew that, right?
And you knew that the Supreme Court ruled that the federal RFRA applied to Hobby Lobby, right?
So why would you post a quote that says the federal RFRA does not apply to for-profit corporations, when you know, yourself, that it does?
That quote didn’t say it doesn’t apply to for-profit corporations. That quote says there’s no specific language pertaining to for profit corporations.
But by all means, turn this into an argument about semantics and ignore everything else that might be brought up.
You’re right: that’s what the quote says.
But what’s the purpose of pointing out there’s no specific language concerning for-profit corporations, except to convince the reader that the federal RFRA does not apply to for-profit corporations?
And there IS specific language in federal law that applies the RFRA to for-profit corporations:
1 USC § 1: “the words ‘person’ and ‘whoever’ include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals…”
This is not an argument about semantics. This is a rebuttal to your claim that the federal RFRA differs in material ways from the Indiana RFRA.
Does it? How? Specifically?
No, it does not. It gives businesses the opportunity to go to court and have the court decide. That is not the same thing, especially in light of the fact that, at the federal level, most RFRA suites fail. You only hear about the odd ones that are upheld.
I would think this language would have a pretty significant impact on what the courts would decide.
On the streets, I think it really gives businesses the opportunity to be discriminatory, and if the customer doesn’t like it, *the customer *can go to the courts and get their grievances aired. Everyone seems to be ignoring that that process is a huge ass burden, as though you could call up the judge app while standing in front of the store that won’t sell you a pizza for which you have gay intentions.
Why, specifically, do you think so? If someone had brought such a suit in Indiana last year, what kind of standards would the court have used to evaluate it then, and how are those standards different than the current ones?
Same question: how is that different from last year in Indiana?
Because last year RFRA was not part of Indiana law, and today it is.
If it doesn’t change anything, then why the hell was it passed? Why endure the statewide shitstorm over a law that has no practical effect?