Long article but I posted first few paragraphs.
Daily Beast:
Both conservatives and liberals aren't being straight about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
You want to know the weirdest thing about the fight over Indiana's state-level version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)? It's totally at odds with the origins of that first federal law.
Indiana's law is being championed by religious conservatives and opposed by secular liberals. In an intense press conference on Tuesday, embattled Republican Governor Mike Pence to ban every goddamned good-time substance known to mankind, from Four Loko to powdered caffeine to "delicious-looking detergent."
Weirder still: Arch-conservative Jesse Helms, a hardcore Christian who was an unapologetic homophobe, was one of just three senators who voted against[/I] the law. Writing for the majority in Employment Division v. Smith[/I], the drug warrior Antonin Scalia thundered that letting religion provide a loophole in such an instance "would open the prospect of constitutionally required exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind."
What a long strange trip it's been to today, man. Conservatives now see state-level RFRAs as the last, best hope of keeping religiously minded individuals from having to bake wedding cakes for gays, shoot video at gay weddings, and (at least theoretically) perform stripteases at same-sex bachelor parties. And liberals such as openly gay Apple CEO Tim Cook say such laws "allow people to discriminate against their neighbors."
Both sides are partly right. And they are both annoying and self-aggrandizing in their righteousness. Given the paucity of actual cases in play-virtually all news accounts recycle a handful of incidents in a few states-it's clear that the main function of the current controversy is to make religious conservatives feel even more persecuted than usual and to make secular liberals feel as if they are making a last stand for human decency. As my Reason[/I] colleague Scott Shackford puts it, "Indiana's RFRA-and the response-is all about the signaling."
This post was edited on 4/1 8:11 AM by Scout59
Full Article
Daily Beast:
Both conservatives and liberals aren't being straight about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
You want to know the weirdest thing about the fight over Indiana's state-level version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)? It's totally at odds with the origins of that first federal law.
Indiana's law is being championed by religious conservatives and opposed by secular liberals. In an intense press conference on Tuesday, embattled Republican Governor Mike Pence to ban every goddamned good-time substance known to mankind, from Four Loko to powdered caffeine to "delicious-looking detergent."
Weirder still: Arch-conservative Jesse Helms, a hardcore Christian who was an unapologetic homophobe, was one of just three senators who voted against[/I] the law. Writing for the majority in Employment Division v. Smith[/I], the drug warrior Antonin Scalia thundered that letting religion provide a loophole in such an instance "would open the prospect of constitutionally required exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind."
What a long strange trip it's been to today, man. Conservatives now see state-level RFRAs as the last, best hope of keeping religiously minded individuals from having to bake wedding cakes for gays, shoot video at gay weddings, and (at least theoretically) perform stripteases at same-sex bachelor parties. And liberals such as openly gay Apple CEO Tim Cook say such laws "allow people to discriminate against their neighbors."
Both sides are partly right. And they are both annoying and self-aggrandizing in their righteousness. Given the paucity of actual cases in play-virtually all news accounts recycle a handful of incidents in a few states-it's clear that the main function of the current controversy is to make religious conservatives feel even more persecuted than usual and to make secular liberals feel as if they are making a last stand for human decency. As my Reason[/I] colleague Scott Shackford puts it, "Indiana's RFRA-and the response-is all about the signaling."
This post was edited on 4/1 8:11 AM by Scout59
Full Article
