Once upon a time in a great country called Amurica, a federal judge in Kentucky ruled that the state could no longer refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed out of state. Yay, right? Well it seems like us queers win one, and then other folks get upset and find other ways to piss off the internet and keep the lawyers in business. So the new “Discrimination du Jour” appears to be new laws working their way through the governments in Tennesee and Kansas that allow folks to discriminate against us horrible people by exercising their right to refuse services to people who in support of a same-sex wedding in the name of “protecting their freedom to exercise their religion”.
Hold the fucking phone, people. If we actually read the Bible, all of the admonishments about homosexuality (and they’re in the Old Testament, which includes a lot of other weird shit like banishing women from the tribe while they’re on their period, not eating shellfish, and only allowing men to beat their wives with a small stick) doesn’t say that it’s an abomination to bake a lemon chiffon cake with fondant icing for the two nice boys (in matching waistcoats) or two nice girls (on their second date) down the street who want to get themselves hitched. It doesn’t say “Thou shalt not photograph a same sex wedding and promise their photos to them within two weeks but then really take two months and have them come out all purple” anywhere in the Bible. It admonishes people against performing homosexual acts (although it doesn’t specifically prohibit marriage) although some scholars believe the original (translated many times by man) intent in those passages was meant to apply specifically to general promiscuity, whether same-sex or otherwise.
It’s frightening how wide-reaching these ideas are. Are business owners allowed to refuse service for all weddings, civil unions or commitment ceremonies with which they take issue? What about mixed-race ceremonies, which were illegal within the last century? How about Muslim ones? Can a Catholic business owner refuse service to an unwed mother who is visibly pregnant or to another who they know to be divorced?
The First Amendment allows free exercise of religion, meaning that one’s religious rites and practices are protected by law; it does not, however, give citizens carte blanche to circumvent other laws requiring them not to discriminate.
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