One party, just one, not both, not together, just one, is the party that seeks to judge others, limit access to goods/services and promote hate in America.
The reasons behind this bill are no different than the Jim Crow laws of the 60s and other acts of bigotry. If you vote Republican, this is you and your party across the nation.
–Scott Ackeridge
Scott Ackeridge wasn’t referring to the Nazi Party. But he could have been.
On September 15, 1935, the Nazis–who had taken power in Germany in 1933–introduced a series of anti-Semetic laws at their annual Nuremberg rally.
Adolf Hitler addressing a Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party
Under the Nuremberg laws:
- Marriages between Jews and German citizens were forbidden.
- Extramarital relations between Jews and German citizens were forbidden.
- Jews were forbidden to employ female German citizens under the age of 45 as domestic workers.
- Jews were banned from employment as attorneys, doctors or journalists.
- Jews were forbidden to use state hospitals.
- Jews could not be educated by the state past the age of 14.
- Jews were forbidden to enter public libraries, parks and beaches.
- The names of Jewish soldiers were to be expunged from war memorials.
With anti-Semitism now codified in German law, the foundations for the coming Holocaust were firmly laid.
Now, fast-forward to February 20, 2014.
The Republican-dominated Arizona legislature sends a bill to Republican Governor Jan Brewer that:
- Allows business owners to turn away gay and lesbian customers.
- Allows employers to deny equal pay to women.
- Allows individuals to renege on contract obligations.
All of these will be legally allowed–so long as “sincere religious belief” is claimed as the reason.
House Bill 2153/Senate Bill 1062 was written by the right-wing advocacy group Center for Arizona Policy and the Christian legal organization, Alliance Defending Freedom.
Specifically, the legislation proposes to:
- Expand the state’s definition of the exercise of religion to include both the practice and observance of religion.
- Allow someone to assert a legal claim of free exercise of religion regardless of whether the government is a party to the proceedings.
- Expand those protected under the state’s free-exercise-of-religion law to “any individual, association, partnership, corporation, church, religious assembly or institution or other business organization.”
- Allows any business, church or person to cite the law as a defense in any action brought by the government or individual claiming discrimination.
- Allows the business or person to seek an injunction once they show their actions are based on a sincere religious belief and the claim places a burden on the exercise of religion.
Advocates often cited the case of a New Mexico wedding photographer who was sued after refusing to take photos of a same-sex couople’s commitment ceremony due to the photographer’s religious beliefs.
“We are trying to protect people’s religious liberties,” said Representative Steve Montenegro, R-Litchfield Park.
“We don’t want the government coming in and forcing someone to act against their religious sacred faith beliefs or having to sell out if you are a small-business owner.”
Arizona Representative Steve Montenegro
But opponents say the law would:
- Protect a corporation that refuses to hire anyone who isn’t a Christian; and
- Block gays and lesbians from access to nearly any business or service–including fire and police.
“The message that’s interpreted is: We want you to work here, but we are not going to go out of our way to protect you, to protect your rights, to protect your family,” said Representative Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix.
Similar anti-gay legislation has been introduced by Republicans in other states:
- In Kansas, lawmakers voted to exempt individuals from providing any service that was “contrary to their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
- That bill passed the state’s House chamber on February 11, triggering national backlash. It has since stalled in the Senate and is not expected to advance this year.
- In January, South Dakota Republicans introduced a bill to allow businesses refuse to serve same-sex couples on the grounds that “businesses are private and that their views on sexual orientation are protected to the same extent as the views of private citizens.”
- The bill–which was killed in February–would have made it illegal for a gay person to file a lawsuit charging discrimination.
- A ballot initiative in Oregon would let business owners refuse to serve same-sex couples “if doing so would violate a person’s deeply held religious beliefs.”
- The initiative could be voted on this year.
Ironically, many Right-wingers who support the right of Christians to discriminate fear that they will become victims of religious persecution if Islamic Sharia law comes to the United States.
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NUREMBERG COMES TO ARIZONA: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on February 25, 2014 at 11:20 amHamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old columnist in Saudi Arabia, decided to celebrate the birthday of the Islamic prophet Muhammed in a truly unique way.
In February, 2012, he posted on Twitter a series of mock conversations between himself and Muhammad:
“On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.”
“On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.”
“On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.”
“No Saudi women will go to hell, because it’s impossible to go there twice.”
The tweets sparked some 30,000 infuriated responses. Many Islamic clerics demanded that he face execution for blasphemy.
Kashgari posted an apology tweet: “I deleted my previous tweets because…I realized that they may have been offensive to the Prophet and I don’t want anyone to misunderstand.”
Soon afterward, King Abdullah ordered his arrest.
Kashgari served a prison sentence until October, 2013, when he was released.
Outrageous? By Western standards, absolutely.
Clearly there is no tolerence in Saudi Arabia for the freedoms of thought and expression that Americans take for granted.
But before you say, “Religious oppression like that could never happen in the United States,” think again.
Right-wing American ayatollahs are now working overtime to create just that sort of society–where theocratic despotism rules the most intimate aspects of our lives.
One of these ayatollahs was/is GOP Presidential candidate and former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. In early January, 2012, he said that states should have the right to outlaw birth control without the interference of the Supreme Court.
Rick Santorum
In an interview with ABC News, Santorum said he opposed the Supreme Court’s ruling that made birth control legal:
“The state has a right to do that [ban contraception]. I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a Constitutional right. The state has the right to pass whatever statutes they have.
“That’s the thing I have said about the activism of the Supreme Court–they are creating rights, and it should be left up to the people to decide.”
In the landmark 1965 decision, Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court struck down a law that made it a crime to sell contraceptives to married couples. The Constitution, ruled the Justices, protected a right to privacy.
Two years later, in Eisenstadt v. Baird, the Court extended Griswold by striking down a law banning the sale of contraceptives to unmarried couples.
Santorum has left no doubt as to where he stands on contraception. On October 19, 2011, he said:
“One of the things I will talk about that no President has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘“Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s okay.’
“It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also…procreative.”
“How things are supposed to be”–according to right-wing fanatics like Santorum and the evangelicals who support him.
Like the Saudi religious religious zealots who demand the death of a “blasphemer,” they demand that their religious views should govern everyone. Both groups have far more in common than they want to admit.
The important difference–for Americans who value their freedom–is this:
The United States has a Supreme Court that can–and does–overturn laws that threaten civil liberties. Laws that GOP legislators–such as those in Arizona–clearly want to force on those who don’t share their peculiar religious views.
The Right is not waging a “war for religious liberty.”
It’s waging a bitter struggle to establish a government that uses force or the threat of it to impose highly conservative religious beliefs on those who do not share such religious beliefs.
And on atheists or agnostics, who share none at all.
These Rightists and their theocratic allies have more in common with Tomas de Torquemada (1420 – 1498) the infamous Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, than with Jesus Christ.
Tomas de Torquemada
Christ never ordered the torture or death of anyone. Torquemada–claiming to act in “defense” of the Roman Catholic Church–presided over the deaths of at least 2,000 “heretics.”
For such people, Torquemada believed, the only road to salvation lay in being “cleansed” of their sins. And nothing burns away impurities like fire.
Men like Torquemada and the anti-gay legislators of Arizona do not seek a golden future.
They crave to return to a “golden” past–which includes the one-time power of Christians to forcefully impose their religious beliefs on others.
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