No religious beliefs are threatened in the scenario you posit. How do you think that any religious beliefs are threatened in that hypothetical?
I mis-spoke here: I think it may violate the 1st Amendment, but think it does violate the 14th.
From a group that supported the Indiana law:
I’m a little confused about how this law can be used to prevent people from buying your pizza, buying a cake, or using your bathroom, but it can’t be used to refuse to serve someone in a restaurant.
Regarding the pastor, there is no way the state would ever tell any church who they could or could not marry.
Please cite the New Testament prohibitions against homosexuality. I can’t recall Jesus weighing in on the issue…
Paul, perhaps?
Appreciated.
This goes into territory that I don’t feel qualified to judge–essentially there’s one legal scholar making one claim, and another saying the claim is leaving out a giant piece, and the first legal scholar not having an opportunity to explain why they left that piece out. I’m happy to provisionally accept that they should have included the explanation you said, with the provision being that I’m not completely clear on the issues involved.
Which ironically sounds like a gay as hell pizza place by the name.
So cities and towns and villages and counties can all have religious beliefs, aye? Because they are corporations and corporations are people and people can have religious beliefs, aye?
Yup. If Jesus ever spoke about homosexual practice, the words were not preserved. But Paul did (all translations from the New American Standard).
In Romans 1:26-27:
1 Cor 6:9-10:
1 Tim 1:8-11:
Religion can say whatever you want it to say. The New Testament can say whatever you want it to say. Jesus did say, “Keep the law.”
So by inference he said man should not lie with man as with woman.
Bricker, finest picker of nits the land has ever seen, probably picked shellfish because there is a specific out (from Peter), and I bet there’s one about mixed-cloth, too, though I don’t know it.
And yeah, Paul probably did say something about gay not being the way. There’s the thing in (Corinithians?) that has that Greek verb that most scholars think means ‘to gay.’
I get what you’re doing, and I don’t agree with the law, and I’m okey-doke with gaying and gender-queering and whatever else, but there are sincere Christians who think gayness is a sin, and we can hate them, but I don’t think it’s fair to say they’re hypocrites. Dicks, sure. Hypocrites? That’s tougher to prove.
Thank you astro!
No, no, and no.
Once again I will point out that the RFRA protects religious practices of corporations, not religious beliefs.
Cities, towns, villages, and counties can’t have religious practices, because such practices are forbidden as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”) as applied to the states via the operation of the Fourteenth Amendment (Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)).
(Humorously enough, at least in this discussion of corporations, the practice of applying the Bill of Rights, which originally bound only Congress, against the states is called selective incorporation.)
There’s a general exemption for Gentiles from the bulk of Mosiac law, as seen in Act 15:6.
Thank you for pointing out my erroneous use of the word “beliefs” when I meant “practices”. If a corporation is a person and the government cannot restrict the practice of said religion, how is a city prevented by the 1st Amendment from practicing a religion? Are you saying that some people have a different set of rights with respect to the the practice of religion? That some people are, in fact, prevented from practicing their religion?
Because I think the 1st Amendment prevents governments from establishing religion, but not people. How is “government” defined legally, like in the Dictionary Act?
Because we have to start fighting back somewhere.
The RFRA is a federal law. It binds Congress and the federal system.
But the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. The RFRA cannot permit that which the Constitution forbids.
Nothing in the federal constitution forbids the RFRA’s protection of private corporations.
But something in the federal constitution – the First Amendment – forbids state-run corporations such as cities, towns, and villages from exercising the practice of religion.
So, yes: some people – not natural people, but corporate people – are prevented from practicing religion. The people that are prevented by this constitutional bar are corporate people such as cities, counties, towns, and villages.
Why is this even a conversation we’re having in this day and age?
Are there not fundamental principals and laws on the books that say you cannot discriminate based on gender, race, sexual orientation or religion?
And when religion and sexual orientation come into conflict, why is it that we must defer to the far more arbitrary (religion)?
Your thinking is incorrect. The First Amendment prevents Congress from establishing religion, and later cases extended that prohibition to other governmental functions. The entities that are prevented from establishing religion are clearly defined in the body of caselaw surrounding the Establishment Clause, but the word “government” is not defined in this context because the prohibitions don’t mention “government” to begin with.
Where is the language that differentiates between state-run corporations and other corporations? Is that something that has been decided in SCOTUS decisions? Has a case ever been brought that argued that cities, etc. are people and the case was lost?
And again, how is “government” defined in our laws?
ETA: Just saw your post above with the answer to this; thank you.
No.
Gender: yes, but laws impacting gender classifications are analyzed with an intermediate standard of scrutiny. Race: yes, and laws impacting racial classifications are analyzed with strict scrutiny. Religion: yes, and laws impacting religion are analyzed with strict scrutiny.
But sexual orientation: no, at least not on the federal level. Some states have higher levels of protection for sexual orientation, but others do not. Laws impacting classification by sexual orientation are analyzed at the lowest, most forgiving standard, called “rational basis.” The rational basis test is sometimes know as the test that’s impossible to fail.
Because that’s the law passed by the legislature. Why must you limit your speed to 55? Same answer.