If HB5958 Becomes Law It Would Allow People To Randomly Discriminate Against Whomever They Want For Religious Reasons Including Christian Persecution

“I support individual liberty and I support religious freedom. I have been horrified as some have claimed that a person’s faith should only be practiced while hiding in their home or in their church.” -Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger

Over the weekend, Republicans in the Michigan House passed a “license to discriminate” bill that would give just about anyone the right to refuse service to anyone if they felt it conflicted with their religious beliefs including Christian Persecution

The bill modeled after the one introduced in Arizona and that was rejected by Governor Jan Brewer was intended to appease white Christians who feel that they’re special and feel persecuted by a multi-cultural society. 

The broadly written Religious Freedom Restoration Act (HB 5958) would allow an EMT to refuse emergency treatment to a gay person or a pharmacist to refuse to refill HIV medication, because God decreed gays and lesbians should be put to death.

As The New Civil Rights Movement points out, the act is so broad it would let a Catholic high school refuse to hire a Muslim janitor, and a Secretary of State clerk could deny a new driver’s license to someone who is divorced

Tax Fraudster turned Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger and his cadre of Christian Fundamentalists in the Michigan Legislature fasttracked the bill, which passed the legislature along party lines.59-50 “I support individual liberty and I support religious freedom,” Bolger said. “I have been horrified as some have claimed that a person’s faith should only be practiced while hiding in their home or in their church.”

Brooke Tucker, staff attorney at the ACLU of Michigan, the RFRA could still essentially allow forms of discrimination Bolger asserted would not be protected:

“One of the ways that anti-discrimination laws work is that you have government agencies going after the people accused of discrimination. In that case, it would be a ‘government action,'” said Tucker. “For the landlord who violates the Fair Housing Act, a lot of times it’s the government who goes after him. The government takes a lot of steps to protect people from discrimination by others, and that’s something that could be severely impacted by this bill.

Furthermore, she said, even if the government is able to prove it had a compelling interest in protecting the tenant from eviction on the basis of his sexual orientation, and that the non-discrimination ordinance was the least restrictive means of accomplishing that goal, the effect would still be a massive clog in the court system, and the tenant would be homeless for the duration of the proceedings. 

What RFRA will do is give businesses and landlords the opportunity to contest everything in court, and force individuals who are now able to live discrimination-free lives to demonstrate that the government has a compelling interest in making those landlords act in a nondiscriminatory fashion. Even if that individual prevails, he will have spent a lot of time and money, and may be out of a job or out of a home while he’s waiting.”

If this bill becomes law, it also means Christians (who this bill is designed to give special rights to) could be denied services by members of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Atheists, Jews, Hindus, Muslims or any other non-Christian. Can you imagine the outcry if a Jewish, Hindu or Muslim doctor (who make up over 50% of the doctors in Michigan) denied medical care to a white Anglo-Saxon Christian patient for religious reasons?