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Goldberg: Religious Freedom Restoration Act thinly veils prejudices, bigotry

If we’re to take them at their word, it appears lawmakers in Arkansas and Indiana are the only people in America who didn’t seem to realize their recently passed Religious Freedom Restoration Acts were designed to allow businesses to discriminate on the basis of sexuality.

Fortunately, public outrage was loud and extreme enough to force some reconsiderations: New York, Washington and Connecticut had all banned state-sponsored travel to Indiana. And even Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s own son signed a petition urging him not to sign the bill into law.

As of Thursday, both Indiana and Arkansas’s laws have been made official, after each was amended at the behest of their respective governors. Despite these revisions and clarifications, which are intended to curtail potential abuses of the law that would allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT clients, at this point in time, both still allow for dangerous expansions on the original legislation’s scope and intent.

Despite sharing a name with and drawing from the federal version, these state RFRAs drift unacceptably far from the source law’s intent.

The original federal law, off of which the state-level versions are claimed to be based, was passed in 1993 as a bipartisan response to Supreme Court case that stripped two Native Americans of their access to unemployment insurance because they had ingested peyote as part of a religious ritual. The logic of the law was clear — to protect believers from having to give up firmly held convictions in order to benefit from government protections. The qualifications were plain: So long as the actions did not harm others, and so long as there was no compelling government interest to prevent their actions, religious exemptions could be granted.



The problem with the Indiana and Arkansas laws are that they expand dangerously on the federal version. In a post-Hobby Lobby world, state RFRAs are being written to allow corporations, not only individuals, to exercise their “religious rights,” and in ways that might harm others — an oft cited example is the ability to turn away a customer based on their sexuality.

For those who think that’s just some hypothetical example: let’s be real, it’s entirely about discriminating against LGBT clients at this point. Religious freedom laws are meant to serve as shields to the faithful, not as a weapon of hate.

In 1993, the federal RFRA passed quickly and easily, with almost complete, bipartisan backing and acclaim. The nation was standing up on behalf of religious freedom — providing to Americans the protections that everyone, on both sides of the aisle, believed they rightfully deserved.

These state-level laws are far from unilaterally supported. In fact, their mere passing shows that a number of gaps are widening — between the views of state and federal legislatures and between lawmakers and their constituents. Despite the bill passing 67-21 as it did in Arkansas, the kind of public recoil that ensued undeniably shows that Americans don’t actually support these types of laws.

It’s abundantly clear at this point that lawmakers in Arkansas and Indiana have lost touch with their constituents. Currently 37 states allow same-sex marriage, and the Supreme Court seems likely to make that a full 50 by the end of the summer. Even 60 percent of millennial republicans support the cause. It’s no surprise Americans responded as they did last week.

What does this all mean in the big picture then? While a similar law has stalled in Georgia, it appears that Maine and Louisiana might be next in line to try and pass their own RFRAs.

We can only hope that they learn from recent history.

Zach Goldberg is a senior economics, policy studies and energy and its impacts major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @zgolds.





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