Last week the Michigan State House passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, which allows for someone to discriminate against others based on their personal religious beliefs. This bill is now waiting in the State Senate and many political insiders feel that it has a very good chance of being passed.

The sponsor of this legislation, House Speaker Jase Bolger claims that this is not a license to discriminate but opponents of the RFRA state that it will make it legal to refuse service, deny employment or housing, or violate the rights of others based on religious grounds.

Also, as one Michigan state representative pointed out, this law could be used to deny someone medical care. For instance, a pharmacist could refuse to dispense birth control or HIV medications, and that has already occurred under a similar law in Illinois, or a paramedic could refuse to treat an accident victim. Or a police officer could refuse to intercede in a domestic violence dispute or like a recent event that occurred in Oklahoma where a police officer refused to safeguard a mosque or in Utah where an officer refused to police a gay pride parade and both are paid by the taxpayers to carry out these sworn duties.

But the RFRA isn’t the only legislation designed to attack the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) community. During the current lame duck session they also passed a bill in the state house allowing adoption agencies the right to deny foster kids the right to be adopted based on religious objections.

Recently Bolger also stated that an expansion of the Elliot Larsen Act will not happen this legislative session because Republicans refuse to include protections for people that are transgender. Members of the LGBT community were not even allowed to testify at the hearings denying the right of these Americans to have their voices heard. Seventy-five percent of Michigan voters support the LGBT community and feel they should be protected from job and housing discrimination, a fact that state Republicans are willing to ignore to appease the religious right.

It’s time that every American stands up to this hatred. I urge everyone reading this article to contact their state politicians and tell them this sort of legislation will not be tolerated. For too long bigots have been allowed to hide behind the cross and use their own personal beliefs to scapegoat their fellow man.

This bill is nothing more than institutionalized discrimination in the same brutal spirit as the Jim Crow laws of what I thought was a bygone era and the Nazi propaganda that ended in the deaths of millions upon millions of people.

In a time when people are rioting in the streets because of racism the Republicans pass a mean-spirited hate law that is only going to create more divisiveness in this nation. One more thing everyone should remember, allowing for the discrimination of the LGBT community today could open the door for discrimination of fundamentalist Christians tomorrow and it would be legal under this law.

As Americans we shouldn’t tolerate either and at times like these I realize that we are not even half the great nation we think we are.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

William Crandell is a community activist and member of the Michigan Education Association and the Michigan Democratic Party. He is also a member of the South County Democratic Club where he has served as their communications director and as the chairperson of the SCDC Blue Tiger Community Action Committee.