Countering the cynical, neo-fascist histrionics over Indiana’s RFRA law …
Are the claims made against the new Indiana law accurate? Not really. This law, like other RFRAs, merely requires that state laws meet a demanding, but hardly insurmountable, test before infringing upon the religious practice or conscience of religious believers. If the law imposes a substantial burden on religious belief, the law must yield unless the law serves a compelling state interest and is the least burdensome way to advance that interest. Here’s more background on how these sorts of laws work.
RFRA laws are common, as shown by this map. Whether or not such laws are good policy, they are about accommodating religious belief, not authorizing discrimination.
Courts have routinely upheld the application of nondiscrimination laws against RFRA-based challenges on the grounds that preventing discrimination is a compelling state interest. Of course it’s possible that a court in the future would reach a different conclusion, but there’s no reason to think such a result is likely, and there is nothing about the Indiana law that makes it a particular threat in this regard. That is, such a court decision is just as possible in one of the other dozen-plus states that has had its own RFRA on the books for years or in one of the many other states that have equivalent protections for religious belief under their state constitutions.
The Indiana RFRA is not identical to every other RFRA, but the textual differences are not particularly material. Here, for instance, is a useful comparison of the Indiana law and the federal RFRA, as applied in the courts.
Since the Fed RFRA has been in effect since 1993 and most of the states have some form of religious accommodation laws, then the out-of-all-proportion reaction is based on pure political bullying.
If a photographer can be forced to promote a message they disagree with, why not a custom t-shirt shop, or writer, or advertiser?
Indeed, if medical doctors are licensed by the state, why can’t they be forced to provide abortions as part of the “right to reproductive health care” as championed by feminists?
Leftism is the most dynamic religion of the 20th & 21st centuries; it is a jealous religion and seeks to dismiss and destroy all others.
Can’t we all just agree to get on with BDSing Israel to death already, asks the Alinskyite left, or must we dispatch Indiana first? Oh, ok . . . Indiana it is. Maybe the example of Ramiro d’Orco butchered in the town square really will be useful after all.
Used to be that the sacrament of the Modern Left was abortion.
They’ve added a second: gay so-called marriage.
“Check your privilege” is another, their analogue to Confession.
“Barack Hussein Obama. Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm” was Holy Communion.
The devotion to Narrative over fact is an ongoing Confirmation.
I suppose going quietly under the bus is Last Rites…
Funny, one of the radio personalities on KGO in San Francisco, claimed to be a libertarian, used to say “if men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”. I used to think “oh yeah, clever” now I think, as said above, “it is a sacrament for the left”.
commie news
Who’s pulling the media’s puppet strings?
dingy harry news
Rife with Rumor and Conjecture
If men got pregnant, they wouldn’t be men.
the Republican Party has so much goodwill built up on these issues it’s really shocking to see so many people refusing to give them the benefit of the doubt
i can’t belieber it
>If men got pregnant,<
the strawMAN calls.
>the Republican Party has so much goodwill built up on these issue<
you be proggtarded
The Democrat Party has built up so much ill will on these issues it’s simply expected to see the usual rabble roused.
Belieber that troll.
>Yet even in such societies, individuals and groups of people exist who do not abandon politics as a vocation and who, in one way or another, strive to think independently, to express themselves and in some cases even to organize politically, because that is a part of their attempt to live within the truth. The fact that these people exist and work is in itself immensely important and worthwhile. Even in the worst of times, they maintain the continuity of political thought. If some genuine political impulse emerges from this or that “pre-political” confrontation and is properly articulated early enough, thus increasing its chances of relative success, then this is frequently due to these isolated generals without an army who, because they have maintained the continuity of political thought in the face of enormous difficulties, can at the right moment enrich the new impulse with the fruits of their own political thinking.
Vaclal Havel page 49 ppl<
The Republican Party’s goodwill on “culture war” issues stems almost entirely from the fact they’re not trying to force people to do things that are opposed by their belief systems.
Except progs, of course, for whom “leave me the fuck alone” is definitely against their religion.
There does seem to be something to that notion about “leave me the fuck alone” McG. Though, as I think on it, perhaps in a surprising sense about the modern leftists — like this: it may be that far from the primary driver of their joy for the idea of government telling any or all men what their opinions must be (and the supposition goes, at their own “control” over what that government opinion telling will amount to), their joy at this idea stems primarily from wanting to be told what their opinions must be (cf. here Aristotle’s discussion of “slaves by nature” in the Politics). We don’t generally think about individual men as natural slaves today — we hardly can. But it may be that our disgust with that idea causes us to miss something highly important in human nature. Maybe. Anyhow, it’s just a thought.
Maybe so. That would explain why we free-range citizens offend them so — to them, we’re not just disobedient, we’re abominations.
Probably why zombies want to eat brains, come to think of it. It isn’t just that they like the taste, but it’s punishing those nonconformist non-zombies that creates the imperative.
Which puts the prominent tattoo nowadays in good stead: a kind of scent off the track.
Seeing as I only seem to post on these type of topics, I thought I would drop in and not….except to say that I wasn’t going to…comment….ok…..later…
What isn’t illegal is mandatory.
Basically, we all need to be told what to do.
It seems to me that, as sdferr called them, those people ‘wanting to be told what their opinions must be (cf. here Aristotle’s discussion of “slaves by nature” in the Politics)’ are just plain lazy. And they’re so dedicated to not caring that they’re willing to give up Freedoms in order to continue with their frivolous lives.
Not only their own, but all of ours too. Which is an act not of laziness, but of war.
Indeed, McGehee, but, in their irrational selfishness, that’s not even a consideration.
Someone tell Jeff Martha Stewart stole his jam:
https://vid.me/Yczs
If the government can force photographers and bakers to participate in gay weddings, then it can…
Force Jewish and Muslim caterers to serve pork products at gay weddings.
Force Jewish wedding photographers to work Nazi-themed weddings
Force black bakers to decorate wedding cakes for Klan-themed weddings.
etc.
I really want to see James O’Keefe or Jason Mattera do a video where someone tries to get a cake with a picture of Hitler on it for a gay Nazi wedding.
I want to see a gay wedding planner in Topeka asked to do a wedding at Westboro “Baptist Church” and refuse.
Only because we, too, have been lazy.
This is simply a way to politically destroy a weak republican candidate for President and get out in front of a strong one. This tempest in a teapot has nothing to do with any type of discrimination.
the Dems here in Indiana have been doing anything they can to demonize Pence since he got in, everything he says or does is a “scandal”. He’s been mentioned as a possible presidential or VP candidate and now he must be stopped. Even moreso is Mitch Daniels, currently President of Perdue U., architect of the tuition freeze and the Gov who fixed Indiana and faced down the flea-baggers. He was Scott Walker before there was a Scott Walker, and he’d be a really strong candidate for President. But… not anymore. He lives in Indiana.
BTW, if he makes any kind of public statement on this, especially about adding homosexuals to a protected class, he’s running.
It would be just keen to have everyone like me too but, I stop at extortion.
This is simply a way to politically destroy a weak republican candidate for President and get out in front of a strong one.
I would posit that the disastrous capitulation to the Iranians unfolding this week called for a front-page distraction, and this Indiana thing just happened to be handy.
I just wish somebody were forceful enough to push back against this mob, the way Christie used to. “I stand with my devout friends and neighbors, against the vicious religious hatred aimed at them by the leftist radicals marching through our streets right now. If people are going to be forced to behave contrary to their beliefs, the First Amendment means nothing.”
Call these animals out as the hatey haters they are. Call them out for their casual disregard for the Bill of Rights. Make the bastards play a little defense for a change.
Why is this so hard to do?
Squid
Because a lot of people are unwilling to go against the media and too few people will back them up after the media storm.
Prager said today he was floored when the CT governor attacked Indiana. He said he’d never seen anything like it. And the histrionics went further with him saying ANY presidential candidate who supported the RFRA in any form was “unfit” to be president.
This kind of hate-filled hyperbole is not only NOT challenged by the media darlings, but supported.
It’s making the media’s treatment of Sarah Palin look like love taps.
>Prager said today he was floored when the CT governor attacked Indiana. He said he’d never seen anything like it<
call out publicly the – klu klan kommunists
Is Governor Pence backing down?
Seems so.
If so, stick a fork in him.
klan> klux
What’s so bad about discrimination?
We often praise those who have discriminating taste is this or that.
You own the Property, you get to decide who can go on it.
You provide a service, you get to decide who can obtain said service.
[The above is Abnormal Thinking – Doupleplusungood – in 2015.]
If anyone is interested, I offer more details of my thinking here:
http://thecampofthesaints.org/2015/04/01/on-the-joys-of-discriminating-and-the-pantywaisting-of-pence/
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McG – “free-range citizen”. I am so borrowing/stealing that.