Just in time for Holy Week, the State of Indiana has passed a new Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The law explicitly permits for-profit corporations from practicing the “free exercise of religion” and it allows them to use the “exercise of religion” as a defense against any lawsuits whether from the government or from private entities. The primary narrative against this law has been about the potential ways that small businesses owned by Christians could invoke it as a defense against having to, for instance, sell flowers to a gay couple for their wedding.
Any time right-wing conservatives declare that they are trying to restore or reclaim something, we should all be very afraid. Usually, this means the country or, in this case, the state of Indiana is about to be treated to another round of backward time travel, to the supposedly idyllic environs of the 1950s, wherein women, and gays, and blacks knew their respective places and stayed in them. While the unspoken religious subtext of this law is rooted in conservative anxieties over the legalization of same-sex marriage in Indiana, Black people and women, and all the intersections thereof (for instance Black lesbians) should be very afraid of what this new law portends.
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in the Hobby Lobby decision that corporations could exercise religious freedom, which means that corporations can deny insurance coverage for birth control. Now this same logic is being used to curtail and abridge the right of gay people to enjoy the same freedoms and legal protections that heterosexual citizens enjoy.
And given our current anti-Black racial climate, there is no reason to trust that these laws won’t be eventually used for acts of racially inflected religious discrimination, perhaps against Black Muslims or Muslims of Arab descent, for instance. Surely this kind of law in this political climate sanctions the exercise of Islamophobia.
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I will be so glad when corporations can have and select their customers. Maybe then they will realize how broke their customers really are. I suspect Indiana is a state on its way out of the union. It'll last as long as its people (the ones they like) can get along with each other and we all know, two people who are alike, don't get along for long at all. Eventually, they see something in themselves that they don't like, they fall out and then come looking for somebody less like themselves. Funny that they will only find someone unlike them in our neighborhoods. Good luck Indiana...you're gonna need it.
ReplyDeleteThis article brings up quite a few sad realities. It is so wrong for people to use religion as a justification for oppression and discrimination. Cases like that of Indiana show a regression from any progress toward social justice in today's society. This is disheartening.
ReplyDeleteOn the bright side we can have the church of cannabis. I don't get how law works. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/03/30/the-first-church-of-cannabis-was-approved-after-indianas-religious-freedom-law-was-passed/
ReplyDeleteThis article really is unfortunate. Religion should never be able to be used as justification for treating others wrongly
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, this country continues to remind me how irreligious she is. No one likes the idea of a truth beyond self. I'm sure that there is a political agenda behind these decisions in places like Indiana, but I assert that there is a systemic issue at play. We're forcing people to violate their truth. I see this as a protection rather than oppression. It seems that everyone seeks protections unfortunately means that someone is left out.
ReplyDeleteI am wagering that the exercise of religious freedom is the screen for racism and bigotry. The people in Indiana should collectively boycott these businesses who dare to implement these policies of exclusion. How dare they use religious freedom to cloak the nostalgia to turn the clock back on all the gains made in the arena of Civil Rights. God had nothing to do with hatred, he is a God of love. How can we endeavor to love those who we ostracize?
ReplyDeleteSometimes we need to stop and look at the fact that we are coming at this from a traditional American, westernized view. We should step back and really look at this through global eyes
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ReplyDeleteEven if you do not agree with someone's lifestyle or personal choices, since when is it a part of any Abrahamic religion to deny service to a person? This is the same type of mentality that dictated that "heathen" Native Americans did not have the right to own land because they were not Christians. This is the same type of mentality that dictated that brown people did not have the right to personal autonomy or human rights because they were from non-christian lands. This is a huge step backwards for Indiana.
I think that this religious freedom law is quite hypocritical. I am religious and I want religious freedom but my religious freedom should not take away another person's ability to have freedom.
ReplyDeleteReligion should never be able to be used as justification for treating others wrongly shouldn't take away any ones freedom
ReplyDeleteThis is so shocking that religion can be used as a reason for discrimination. From what I’ve learned from Bible and at church, we should all love each other and treat my neighbors as I would treat myself. I think God would still love someone if an individual believes in different God and follow different religious rituals. Why then are people discriminating and oppressing others in the name of religion? Where is today’s society heading to? Back to civil rights movement?
ReplyDeleteReally well-written article, and I'm in agreement for the most part. I do think the primary issue boils down to one of economics as well as politics; corporations will continue to lobby for the ability to function as individuals when it's morally convenient only as long as it's also financially viable. I think boycotting institutions that ascribe to discriminatory practices is a powerful way to help shape the narrative, in the event the legislation continues to skew toward the religious right.
ReplyDeleteI don’t agree with some of what the writer has expressed when speaking about Jesus. I do agree with her that as a Christian I often wonder why right-wing Christians are so harsh and controlling when Jesus was neither. Some of the laws that they are passing are very frightening for women and people of color and they will open the door for more laws that take away our freedom.
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