I finally read SB 1062, and I don't see what the fuss is about.
You may have heard of SB 1062. It's been in the news lately. It's usually characterized as a terrible piece of legislation that will allow for the reinstatement of "Jim Crow" laws under the guise of religious freedom. In headline after headline it's described as Arizona's "anti-gay law."
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has taken no position on it. A group of Latter-day Saints who support gay-marriage has publicly opposed it.
It's only about two pages long, and it clarifies the state's take on federal law that protects religious beliefs. The most far reaching part of it, to me, seems to be the redefining of "person" to include some businesses. It doesn't codify discrimination against homosexuals (it never mentions them), nor does it give businesses absolute freedom to do whatever they want. It merely says that the government must have a compelling interest in removing a person's ability to practice his or her religion, and now the "person" may also be a business.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the legislation, saying that it was "too broad." That may be so. Legislation that is too broadly written has created problems throughout the world. Read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago for an example. It was one Soviet law, written very broadly, that allowed for the arrests that filled the gulags.
I'm not a legal expert, and I don't know the ramifications of the wording of SB 1062. It may actually be so broad that it would invite businesses to open up whites-only lunch-counters because the owner's religious convictions forbade the mingling of whites and non-whites. I don't think the market would stand for it; and I don't think such a business could withstand the onslaught of public disapproval and stay open. (This is not 1914, after all.) Still, if a law allowed such a thing, it would not be a desirable law.
As other states mull the same issue, I wonder if the law might have to be written very specifically. In certain small businesses, where alternate services are readily available, and where participation in some specific activities would violate the business owner's deeply-held religious convictions, the business owner ought to be exempt from lawsuits or government intervention if he or she chooses to follow his conscience rather than take the cash. The Arizona law lists such businesses (including, I noted, a theater). Maybe it included too many businesses.
It seems reasonable to me, for example, that a bakery should be required to serve all people who come into it, but could be allowed to refuse to make a cake that endorses gay marriage, just as it would be reasonable for the business to refuse to make an obscene cake.
It would not be right for that business to refuse all service to some people because they are overtly, covertly, or apparently gay. It would also not be right for anyone to force the bakery to inscribe messages that the bakery owner considered offensive.
Like Governor Brewer, though, I'm not exactly sure how the line can be drawn legislatively. A photographer should be given the same exemptions, I think, and so should a church-owned building. But what about a public theater or an apartment building? Should only non-believers work as county clerks, or should county clerks be allowed a religious exemption to refuse to perform a wedding?
I don't think the crafters of the Fourteenth Amendment intended all of this.
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Monday, November 24, 2008
The Millenialist, Mormonism, and Prop 8
It's about time that I identify myself as a practicing, orthodox member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
It was not my intention, at the beginning, to allow for the obvious confusion that would arise from a Latter-day Saint writing about Millennialism. I never intended for the trends that I choose to call "Millennialism" to be identified with the Mormon idea of the Millennium, or thousand-year reign of Christ. In fact, it would be better to draw a contrast.
I originally wanted to speak quietly, bridging as well as possible the gap between academic and popular writing, and point out motions that I have seen in American culture in the past thirty years. My academic background is in culture, the arts, and languages, and I believe that I am more than qualified to say, "I've noticed something interesting or different . . ." I expected that only a few of my friends will read this blog, but I confess that I'd hoped that, eventually, it might be heard by others. It's a fantasy, but it's one I share with many, I'm sure.
What has happened to make me explicitly insert my religion into personal academic and cultural meditations?
Proposition 8, the California Constitutional Amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
What is intersecting here is my feeling that it is very likely that a majority of Americans will accept same-gender marriage as normative within a generation, my sincere religious hope that it doesn't happen, and my sincere religious fear that--if it happens--it will be devastating to American life in less than a century.
The wide-spread acceptance of homosexuality is being nurtured through the schools. School children, especially in large urban areas, are carefully groomed by the schools to believe that homosexuality is not unnatural, and that, if two people truly love each other, they should be allowed to marry--or do anything that they deem essential to their sexual happiness. It is very unlikely that, given current movements in the schools, traditional marriage will be able to hold out on a national level. That coupled with the genuine appearance that same-gender marriage causes no (immediate) damage to a culture, will erode the resistance to it.
This, I think, will become one of the hallmarks of Millennialism. Traditional marriage will cease to exist as a cultural phenomenon in America.
I don't think it will go down without a fight, however, and I can easily see a second Civil War on this very issue. Constitutional crises, proposed national amendments, conventions, and political disorder could foreseeably come about in the near future.
Furthermore, within a hundred years if the traditional family continues to erode, or if it ceases to exist, it will very likely become necessary to legislate reproduction, much as is currently happening in China and Italy. Un-reproductive promiscuity will abound.
If there is no Civil War.
As a religionist, however, I am hopeful of many things. I am hopeful, for example, that Millennialism will end at the beginning of the true Millennium. I am hopeful that persecutions will galvanize support for traditional marriage (it is already happening), and that will delay the worst--perhaps indefinitely. I am hopeful that people will see reason in the current arguments, and can agree to disagree--even with love and acceptance of each other as individuals and human beings. I believe in miracles.
It was not my intention, at the beginning, to allow for the obvious confusion that would arise from a Latter-day Saint writing about Millennialism. I never intended for the trends that I choose to call "Millennialism" to be identified with the Mormon idea of the Millennium, or thousand-year reign of Christ. In fact, it would be better to draw a contrast.
I originally wanted to speak quietly, bridging as well as possible the gap between academic and popular writing, and point out motions that I have seen in American culture in the past thirty years. My academic background is in culture, the arts, and languages, and I believe that I am more than qualified to say, "I've noticed something interesting or different . . ." I expected that only a few of my friends will read this blog, but I confess that I'd hoped that, eventually, it might be heard by others. It's a fantasy, but it's one I share with many, I'm sure.
What has happened to make me explicitly insert my religion into personal academic and cultural meditations?
Proposition 8, the California Constitutional Amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
What is intersecting here is my feeling that it is very likely that a majority of Americans will accept same-gender marriage as normative within a generation, my sincere religious hope that it doesn't happen, and my sincere religious fear that--if it happens--it will be devastating to American life in less than a century.
The wide-spread acceptance of homosexuality is being nurtured through the schools. School children, especially in large urban areas, are carefully groomed by the schools to believe that homosexuality is not unnatural, and that, if two people truly love each other, they should be allowed to marry--or do anything that they deem essential to their sexual happiness. It is very unlikely that, given current movements in the schools, traditional marriage will be able to hold out on a national level. That coupled with the genuine appearance that same-gender marriage causes no (immediate) damage to a culture, will erode the resistance to it.
This, I think, will become one of the hallmarks of Millennialism. Traditional marriage will cease to exist as a cultural phenomenon in America.
I don't think it will go down without a fight, however, and I can easily see a second Civil War on this very issue. Constitutional crises, proposed national amendments, conventions, and political disorder could foreseeably come about in the near future.
Furthermore, within a hundred years if the traditional family continues to erode, or if it ceases to exist, it will very likely become necessary to legislate reproduction, much as is currently happening in China and Italy. Un-reproductive promiscuity will abound.
If there is no Civil War.
As a religionist, however, I am hopeful of many things. I am hopeful, for example, that Millennialism will end at the beginning of the true Millennium. I am hopeful that persecutions will galvanize support for traditional marriage (it is already happening), and that will delay the worst--perhaps indefinitely. I am hopeful that people will see reason in the current arguments, and can agree to disagree--even with love and acceptance of each other as individuals and human beings. I believe in miracles.
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