Arizona Gov. Brewer says she has vetoed bill that allows businesses to discriminate against gays

[Nacho45]

Interesting. So you’re saying that you should be allowed to refuse us service, but we are “attacking” your business if we don’t patronize it and choose instead to avoid it and encourage others to do so?

If the business was simply avoided in the first place, the problem solves itself.

 

[SMGS127]

Freedom FROM Religion. It’s in the constitution.

Well, to be fair, it is. What it means, on the other hand, is what people debate. I am very glad the US government maintains that public schools cannot force my children to learn SDA nonsense and false propaganda about the Catholic Church, for example. I am also very glad that Protestants cannot institute Puritanical laws or laws forcing people to use grape juice as the “blood of Christ” in Mass.

Has it been way overextended? Yes. But I will always stand for my and others’ rights, especially children, to be free from religions I disagree with, even if it means people are free to leave the Church. Yes, it is always sad to see people betray their Church, but the alternative is a complete lack of religious freedom. Without freedom FROM religion, there is no freedom OF religion.

 

[Nacho45]

There is no such thing as freedom from religion and it certainly is not in the constitution. The only restriction is placed on the government (not the people) preventing it from establishing an official government religion, nothing more. Everything else we are told has been fabricated to fit an agenda. It also establishes people freedom OF religion, or even no religion at all if a person so chooses.

What we currently witness is the government imposing onto people what they can and can’t freely express within their faith, which is just as bad as establishing an official religion and forcing everyone into that religion. Tyranny is tyranny regardless of what appearance it chooses to take.

Regarding its meaning, that’s easy. It means what the authors intended it to mean, not what we want to twist it into as the flavor of the day.

 

[Birdpreacher]

There is no such thing as freedom from religion and it certainly is not in the constitution. The only restriction is placed on the government (not the people) preventing it from establishing an official government religion, nothing more. Everything else we are told has been fabricated to fit an agenda. It also establishes people freedom OF religion, or even no religion at all if a person so chooses.

What we currently witness is the government imposing onto people what they can and can’t freely express within their faith, which is just as bad as establishing an official religion and forcing everyone into that religion. Tyranny is tyranny regardless of what appearance it chooses to take.

Do you have a problem with the govt arrestting people who use drugs-such as native americans w/peyote- in their religious ceremonies?

 

[Nacho45]

Do you have a problem with the govt arrestting people who use drugs-such as native americans w/peyote- in their religious ceremonies?

You’ll need to be more specific as this is a very generalized question. Also, it takes the thread way off topic for which I must apologize as I have contributed to that as well.

 

[Birdpreacher]

You’ll need to be more specific as this is a very generalized question. Also, it takes the thread way off topic for which I must apologize as I have contributed to that as well.

Say I want to convert to native american religion, I want to smoke the sacramental peyote. I get drugged tested and go to jail. I cry out freedom of religion…should I be excused from my otherwise criminal activity since it was done in the name of religion?

 

[MichaelTDoyle]

“Sacrifice yourselves for sinners; and say often, especially when you make some sacrifice:
‘O my Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners and in reparation
for sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary I offer this sacrifice to Thee.’”
“As Our Lady said these words,” Lucia later described the scenes, “She opened Her
hands again as She had done the two previous months. The light reflecting from them
seemed to penetrate into the earth, and we saw as if into a sea of fire, and immersed in
that fire were devils and souls with human form, as if they were transparent black or
bronze embers floating in the fire and swayed by the flames that issued from them along
with clouds of smoke, falling upon every side just like the falling of sparks in great fires,
without weight or equilibrium, amidst wailing and cries of pain and despair that horrified
and shook us with terror. We could tell the devils by their horrible and nauseous
figures of baleful and unknown animals, but transparent as the black coals in a fire.”
Frightened, deathly pale, the little ones raised their eyes to Our Lady for help as
Lucia cried out. “Oh… Our Lady!”
Our Lady explained: “You have seen Hell — where the souls of poor
sinners go. To save them God wants to establish throughout the world
the devotion to My Immaculate Heart.

Think carefully about your opinion and what you say. Understand what is at stake if we lead someone to believe sexual behavior outside of marriage is at all acceptable. We sin, but no one should die as an unrepentant sinner. Laws like RvWade or conversely the defeat of this law put a government’s imprimatur on behavior and people are further convinced that sin is not sin. How can they then repent?

Keep your eyes and your tongue (and your prayers) on the real war.

 

[cloistered]

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to go to a religious service of my own choosing.
B) Others are allowed to go to religious services of their own choosing.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to marry the person I love legally, even though my religious community blesses my marriage.
B) Some states refuse to enforce my own particular religious beliefs on marriage on those two guys in line down at the courthouse.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am being forced to use birth control.
B) I am unable to force others to not use birth control.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to pray privately.
B) I am not allowed to force others to pray the prayers of my faith publicly.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) Being a member of my faith means that I can be bullied without legal recourse.
B) I am no longer allowed to use my faith to bully gay kids with impunity.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to purchase, read or possess religious books or material.
B) Others are allowed to have access books, movies and websites that I do not like.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) My religious group is not allowed equal protection under the establishment clause.
B) My religious group is not allowed to use public funds, buildings and resources as we would like, for whatever purposes we might like.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) Another religious group has been declared the official faith of my country.
B) My own religious group is not given status as the official faith of my country.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) My religious community is not allowed to build a house of worship in my community.
B) A religious community I do not like wants to build a house of worship in my community.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to teach my children the creation stories of our faith at home.
B) Public school science classes are teaching science.

Scoring key:

If you answered “A” to any question, then perhaps your religious liberty is indeed at stake. You and your faith group have every right to now advocate for equal protection under the law. But just remember this one little, constitutional, concept: this means you can fight for your equality – not your superiority.

If you answered “B” to any question, then not only is your religious liberty not at stake, but there is a strong chance that you are oppressing the religious liberties of others. This is the point where I would invite you to refer back to the tenets of your faith, especially the ones about your neighbors.

 

[Music_Michael]

Notice how the media (as even the thread title demonstrates) frames the debate so as to give the illusion that this were about discrimination rather than protecting religious liberty.

With the overruling, further precedence has been set to give Christian business owners an ultimatum: either do something which violates their conscience or risk being sued and run out of business by the new moral authority of the 21st Century: Homosexuals.

Let freedom ring.

 

[Monkey1976]

Say I want to convert to native american religion, I want to smoke the sacramental peyote. I get drugged tested and go to jail. I cry out freedom of religion…should I be excused from my otherwise criminal activity since it was done in the name of religion?

Actually, thanks to the federal law on which the Kansas, Arizona, and Missouri bills are based, the government cannot punish someone for engaging in the use of peyote as part of their religion. It was that exact situation which prompted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1996. Read it, and then look at the bills which are being called the new Jim Crow.

 

[MarcoPolo]

That’s not what the bill was about at all. A person couldn’t just make up a religion to discriminate, it had to have a valid basis and a court would still have to make that determination. As for your comment about fornicators, if a deeply religious baker was asked to bake a risqué cake for a strip club or a bachelor/bachelorette party, the baker should be able to refuse service. And for that matter, if Amish or plain Catholics have stricter standards of modesty, I certainly wouldn’t expect them accept portrait commissions of people in the nude.

This is exactly the precedent this case sets as I can tell. This whole Arizona veto business, in the final order, has nothing to do with homosexuality. It has everything to do with whether a private business owner must be forced to be complicit in any ceremony or activity she finds offensive, as long as that activity is legal. If the KKK wants their initiation ceremony filmed, this legal precedent could be cited to force a photographer to do so. If an adulterous man wants a cake made for his mistress, a baker, based on this legal precedent, must be complicit in the adulterer’s affair. If a person wanted to conduct a “roast” of a florist’s mother, the florist, according to this precedent, must be a willing participant in an insult dinner of his own mother. Etc… This was a bad decision, fueled by a hyper-emotional culture that is trying to define whether or not a person is good or bad based on gay “marriage,” and has projected that ideology on to a matter of commerce.

 

[irishpatrick]

Can anyone on this thread, knowing the state of the world, and the state of the USA culture, feel surprised with the Governor’s decision? Would you NOT have been far more surprised had she signed the bill?

Sometimes people at the bottom of a mountain cannot see the rolling snowball, picking up steam, heading directly for them–and, by the time they do see the snowball, it is too late to get out of the way because the snowball had become a massive avalanche.

And–so it all continues as one with a discerning historical and eternal pov would expect…

 

[signit]

I completely support people’s right to exercise religious liberty. However, I think individual people would’ve used this bill to go way too far.

Agreed.

I was opposed.

As I said in the other thread, if it were just about the Catholic and the wedding cake, I’d be on the side of religious freedom.

And, as the governor said, this isn’t an issue in the state at this time. Arizona isn’t even a gay rights state; busineses can legally discriminate against gays as it now stands. If and when it becomes an issue we can talk about a possible solution.

 

[Music_Michael]

Supposed someone employed by any major media or corporate entity said how proud they were of traditional marriage. Would the entity “celebrate the diversity” or would they pressure the individual to attend sensitivity training programs and embark on an apology tour?

 

[Havard]

Excepts from an excellent letter written to Gov. Brewer by 11 top law professors, (including a former professor of mine, Rick Garnett):

SB1062 would amend the Arizona RFRA to address two ambiguities that have been the subject of litigation under other RFRAs. It would provide that people are covered when state or local government requires them to violate their religion in the conduct of their business, and it would provide that people are covered when sued by a private citizen invoking state or local law to demand that they violate their religion.

But nothing in the amendment would say who wins in either of these cases. The person invoking RFRA would still have to prove that he had a sincere religious belief and that state or local government was imposing a substantial burden on his exercise of that religious belief. And the government, or the person on the other side of the lawsuit, could still show that compliance with the law was necessary to serve a compelling government interest. As a business gets bigger and more impersonal, courts will become more skeptical about claims of substantial burden on the owner’s exercise of religion. And as a business gets bigger, the government’s claim of compelling interest will become stronger.

So, to be clear: SB1062 does not say that businesses can discriminate for religious reasons. It says that business people can assert a claim or defense under RFRA, in any kind of case (discrimination cases are not even mentioned, although they would be included), that they have the burden of proving a substantial burden on a sincere religious practice, that the government or the person suing them has the burden of proof on compelling government interest, and that the state courts in Arizona make the final decision.

Whatever judgment you pass on SB1062, you should not be misled by uninformed critics. The Arizona bill is fundamentally different from the Kansas bill. It resolves ambiguities that have been the subject of litigation elsewhere. It deserves your accurately informed consideration.

Prof. Mary Ann Glendon
Harvard Law School

Prof. Douglas Laycock
University of Virginia School of Law

Prof. Michael W. McConnell
Stanford Law School

Prof. Helen M. Alvaré
George Mason University School of Law

Professor Thomas C. Berg
University of St. Thomas School of Law
(Minnesota)

Prof. Carl H. Esbeck
University of Missouri School of Law

Prof. Richard W. Garnett
Notre Dame Law School

Prof. Christopher C. Lund
Wayne State University Law School

Prof. Mark S. Scarberry
Pepperdine University School of Law
(Minnesota)

Robin Fretwell Wilson
University of Illinois College of Law

Prof. Gregory C. Sisk
University of St. Thomas School of Law

Full text of the letter here:
azpolicy.org/media-uploads/pdfs/Letter_to_Gov_Brewer_re_Arizona_RFRA.pdf

 

[Brendan]

1
If you answered “B” to any question, then not only is your religious liberty not at stake, but there is a strong chance that you are oppressing the religious liberties of others. This is the point where I would invite you to refer back to the tenets of your faith, especially the ones about your neighbors.

But when a governmental edict compels a person to violate the tenants of their faith, that WOULD be an oppression of religious liberty.

So if a Jew was forced to eat bacon, that would be a violation of religious liberty.

If a Quaker was compelled to shoot another person, that would be a violation of religious liberty.

If a Catholic was forced to fund or provide abortificants or contraceptives, that too would be a violation of religious liberty

 

[Havard]

Also, here’s the text of the bill, for anyone who hasn’t read it:

azleg.gov/legtext/51leg/2r/bills/sb1062s.pdf

 

[Havard]

Say I want to convert to native american religion, I want to smoke the sacramental peyote. I get drugged tested and go to jail. I cry out freedom of religion…should I be excused from my otherwise criminal activity since it was done in the name of religion?

If the government wants to impose a burden on the free exercise of religion, they could before this bill, and they still just as easily could have if it had passed, so long as they proved a “compelling government interest”. You should know that in the U.S., in cases of religious freedom, courts have sided with the government more often than they have with citizens. The media has completely misled people about this bill, it would have changed none of that.

 

[Maxirad]

I wonder what such people as Fr. Frank Pavone and Fr. Robert Sirico think of the decision.

 

[Cider]

Love the biased title of the “news” article chosen to start this thread.