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| The Mississippi billboard says it all...A |
It seems to be a required ritual of Republican state legislatures across the United States.
Prove to their voters they are Christians by passing odious and usually unconstitutional laws "legalizing" discrimination against gays, and transgender people and anybody else they deem as not going to be Saved.
The
latest is Mississippi, and as is that state's style, basically every business, every service provider, every government agency and every church can now refuse service to gay people, and anybody else they deem immoral, like people who have sex outside of marriage, whether straight or gay, divorcees, you name it.
The only protected people in Mississippi are monogamous, straight married couples. Presumably only ones that are Christian.
I don't know how you determine whether somebody who walks into your store is following these rules without interrogating them, but I'll let Mississippi figure that out.
That state sure does have a lot to figure out, especially this: Why does the Mississippi legislature and governor do something like this, knowing that there will be an outcry that will hurt its already meager and sad economy, budget and everything else?
I don't have a good answer, and they probably don't, either.
I know these weird "religious liberty" bills are coming fast and furious nationwide from wackos who want us to turn into a theocracy.
It's everywhere, it seems, not just Mississippi. Tennessee. Idaho.
The
governor of Idaho just had to veto a bill that would have said schools can use the Bible in public school instruction. The gov, and his attorney general, wisely said this would have been unconstitutional.
Tennessee State Senate, not to be outdone, approved a bill designating the Bible as the official state book. The state's attorney general, along with every other legal eagle, says the measure violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
One Tennessee senator,
according to Slate, said "
the very founding of our nation, the very form of government we have to today" is based on the Holy Scripture.
Um, no. They created a secular government in which the freedom of religion was bestowed on the citzenry. Quite a different thing.
The Tennessee legislature, in its "wisdom" also passed a bill that would allow mental health couselors to not help someone if doing so would conflict with their "sincerely held religious beliefs."
As the website
thenewcivilrightsmovement.com put it:
"The ACLU of Tennessee warns the bill, should it become law, would allow counselors to 'refuse to see clients for almost unlimited reasons. For instance, a counselor could refuse to see a lesbian simply because of her sexual orientation, or see a couple involved in an interfaith relationship A counselor who is an atheist could refuse to see a Catholic client - and the list goes on.'"
That last sentence is important, and could really screw the right wing evangelists who are trying to create this evangelical Christian theocracy.
All this anti-gay, right wing evangelical Christian faux lawmaking is being done in large part to distract from the real problems facing their constituents that the legislatures are too stupid, or too in the pocket of wealthy campaign donors to tackle.
Let's not deal with an iffy economy, creating jobs, paying for schools and infrastructure, all that stuff is too hard!
So the resort to the tried and true "the gays did it" or "the atheists did it" or whatever to redirect voters' ire. That way, when the economy, the state, the schools, the roads and everything else is a mess, they can just blame it all on the gays and the ungodly, and pretend it's not their fault.
OK, then, Christianity is saved from the heathens! Our laws work!
Or not.
What happens if some smart aleck gay person, atheists, activist or prankster tries to take advantage of these new rules and laws to turn them on their heads?
The unconstitional lawmaking is designed to "protect Christians" from the "attack" their under from society as a whole, not to mention the big bad heathen U.S. Supreme Court.
You saw the example above of the atheist counselor not treating a Catholic client. You know somebody is going to refuse to serve somebody in Mississippi or North Carolina because that would-be client is an evangelical Christian.
"It's against my closely held religous belief to serve a Christian, so I'm not going to do it."
Will these upstanding Christians cling to their weird theocratic laws then? It will be fun to watch.
Meanwhile, the economies in the states with the bigoted legislatures are going to suffer because of their actions. (But as noted, it's the gays fault! And the atheists!)
We know North Carolina is losing lots of investment and business from people repelled by their bad anti-LGBT law. North Carolina has potentially a lot to lose: Its business sector is pretty vibrant.
You'd think the Mississippi legislature and its governor would work on fixing the state's really big problems. And they're YUUGGEE! as Donald Trump might say.
As ThinkProgress notes, Mississippi's economy is ranked worst of all the 50 states. It has the highest unemployment rate, the lowest gross domestic product per capita, the lowest averge money spent on personal consumption and the lowest average annual wages.
Mississippi also ranks lowest on its innovation and technology efforts, its educational attainment and health.
The state sounds like a helluva fun place, huh?
Their legislature and governor are only making things worse in Mississippi.
What happens when Mississippi gets too poor to even maintain its Christian churches?
