New "Religious Freedom" Laws Try to Legalize Religious Intolerance

With all these religious freedom bills flying around the country, we need to examine what religious freedom really is.

The federal religious freedom law (RFRA) was passed so that Native Americans could conduct ceremonies on sacred lands that had fallen into federal hands, and to use peyote in religious ceremonies. The precedent for this sort of thing was recognized as long ago as Prohibition; the Volstead Act allowed the sale of sacramental wine.

Thus, the intent of the RFRA wasn't to let people use their religion as an excuse to express their hatred for other Americans, it was to  to prevent the government from interfering with religious practices.

But there have been several cases in recent years where businesses and individuals have insisted that it's their religious right to discriminate against and even harm others:

• Taxi drivers refusing to give cab rides to passengers carrying alcohol.
• Checkout clerks refusing to sell bacon to customers.
• Pharmacists refusing to sell birth control pills to unmarried women.
• Pharmacists refusing to sell certain other drugs (Plan B) to anyone.
• Bakers refusing to sell cakes and florists refusing to sell floral arrangements to gays and lesbians.
• Employers refusing to provide birth control coverage for employees. 
• Right-wing Christians murdering doctors who perform abortion and blowing up women's health clinics.

Whenever there are interactions between people, there's always going to be some contention between one person's rights and another person's responsibilities in a civil society. If we allow individuals and businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians on "religious grounds," then all these types of discrimination would also be allowed:

• Orthodox Jews denying services to men who are not wearing hats.
• Catholics denying services to Protestants.
• Christians and Jews denying services to persons of mixed race individuals and interracial couples (cf. Deuteronomy 7:1).
• Muslims denying services to women who are not wearing veils.
• Ultraorthodox Jews denying services to menstruating women (because they're "unclean"), and since they can't really tell by looking, to all women.
• Baptist cab drivers refusing to give rides to people who have been drinking.
• Christian Scientist cab drivers refusing to bring patrons to hospitals.
• Hindus, Jews and Muslims refusing to give medical treatments because they contain certain animal products.
• Jehovah's Witnesses doctors denying blood transfusions during surgery.

There's no difference between a white cab driver refusing to give a black man a ride, a Christian baker refusing to sell a cake to a gay couple and a Muslim cab driver refusing to give a ride to a miniskirted woman leaving a bar at two in the morning.

As soon as we let people start discriminating against other people based on their own prejudices all the crap that  took us centuries to get rid of (segregated bathrooms and lunch counters, miscegenation laws, you know the drill) will start popping up all over again, under the guise of "religious freedom."

It's not big a step is it for ultra-conservative Christians to claim their religion requires them kill Wiccans, based on Exodus 22:18, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," or their own children for cursing them, based on Leviticus 20:19, "For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him." Eating shellfish is an abomination, according to Leviticus 11:12, so is it their religious duty to blow up Red Lobster?

Your religious rights end when you start violating someone else's civil rights.

Your religious rights end when you start violating someone else's civil rights. Anyone can make up their own phony religion and create whatever bogus dogma they want. Don't believe me? The Church of Scientology is a "religion," even though everyone knows it's just a gigantic scam expressly perpetrated by L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s to evade taxes. All it takes these days to be a religion is a lot of money, lawyers and a supply of suckers stupid enough to be led around by the nose.

But back to the matter at hand. If you don't want to sell cakes to gays, don't be a baker. If you don't want to sell birth control pills to women, don't be a pharmacist. If you don't want to sell bacon, don't work the checkout counter at Walmart.