Seattle mayor is reading Indiana law all wrong
Mar 30, 2015, 12:21 PM | Updated: 5:36 pm
(AP)
Taken from Monday’s edition of the David Boze Show on AM 770 KTTH.
UPDATE: Governor Jay Inslee announced Monday afternoon he is imposing an administration-wide ban on travel to Indiana. “Washington stands for equality.”
The mayor of Seattle is upset with Indiana. He has banned city employees from using city money to travel to Indiana.
“Laws that say you can discriminate have no place in this country,” Murray said.
It makes you wonder if he’s actually read the law because it’s really not what it said.
“I am not doing this because I am a gay man,” Murray said.
Related: Seattle mayor says no city-funded travel to Indiana
I believe that to be true. I think he’s doing it because he’s a very, very liberal man. Liberals have poured out into the streets by the thousands and there’s a social media campaign to demonize Indiana without actually taking a deep breath and looking at what it says.
The Weekly Standard did a superb job – John McCormack laid out the case as far as what this law actually says. It doesn’t say what the left is trying to say. It doesn’t say what the mayor said. It doesn’t give you a license to discriminate.
It was also pointed out that Indiana is one of a number of states that doesn’t specifically list sexual orientation. It doesn’t prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. Yet when reporters were asked, is there a lot of discrimination against sexual orientation in Indiana, they couldn’t think of examples, which you’d think there would be plenty of if government were required to step in and make sure the people of Indiana not discriminate against homosexuals coming into their stores or shops or whatever.
It turns out that people are super friendly in Indiana.
But nevertheless, you have big business leaders, as well as politicians like the mayor of Seattle, coming in and saying that they can’t do business in Indiana.
It does not make a lot of sense when you take a closer look at it. What they’re trying to claim is that the law itself allows for discrimination – it’s allowing for people to discriminate against homosexuals, but that’s not really it.
McCormack quotes from a University of Virginia law professor, who filed an amicus brief in support of gay marriage. Professor Douglas Laycock points out that “the American tradition of religious liberty has exempted practices since the seventeenth century. Quakers in colonial times didn’t have to swear oaths, or serve in the militia.”
“It’s illegal to give alcohol to minors, but no one thinks the law should be applied to communion wine or seder wine at the Jewish Passover,” Laycock wrote.
The Free Exercise Clause, part of the First Amendment, required religious exemptions unless the government had a compelling interest in forcing its regulation. Then, in 1990, the Supreme Court changed that rule and basically said that the free exercise of religion is protected only against discrimination.
So previously, it required religious exemptions unless the government had a compelling interest. Then it became that you had to prove that the action was inherently discriminatory or there wouldn’t be the exemption. Congress responded with the Federal Religious Restoration Act in 1993, creating the statutory right to practice your religion.
It was an abominable decision on the part of the court. It was something that Americans had enjoyed the right of for a long time.
By the way, just like you might say, I might disagree with your freedom of speech, but I defend to the death your right to say it – religious freedom was never thought to go that far. Now we’ve got a lot of people acting as though they’ll defend your religious freedom so long as it doesn’t offend me, which is really saying that you’re not willing to defend religious freedom at all.
But the point of the Federal Religious Restoration Act is it doesn’t give anyone the ability to discriminate according to their faith. There are still laws against discrimination that are defined as having a compelling state interest. It simply requires the state to illustrate that compelling state interest and to solve that state interest in the least restrictive way possible. So in other words, it doesn’t give a green light to discriminate against whoever you want. It just says if a claim goes to court in Indiana, then the solution for government has to show it has a compelling state interest, which discrimination laws win on that count all the time – and they have to use the least restrictive solution possible.
So when the mayor of Seattle says it’s open season on discrimination, it’s simply not true.
Taken from Monday’s edition of the David Boze Show on AM 770 KTTH.
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