“Remember we’re treating people who hold sincerely held religious beliefs differently than other Americans either. This isn’t one side or another. What we’re talking is tolerance on both sides. And it is not tolerant to force people to violate their religious beliefs. A veto of the bill will serve us not very well in terms of tolerance in the United States.” Michele Bachmann in favor of Republican Arizona discrimination bill 1062
Now there’s a surprise! Michele Bachmann the gift that keeps on giving. Another in the endless examples of how Jesus can scramble a brain.
You see the logic? Legislating bigotry into law is tolerance while speaking against codifying discrimination is intolerance. And the horror of it is these brains are rarely if ever unscrambled.
The Arizona gay discrimination bill, 1062 passed the Arizona Senate 17-13 in a pure party line vote with all Republicans voting for it. The Arizona House passed the gay discrimination bill 33-27 with all Republicans save 3 – or about 10% of them joining the Democrats to vote against it.
The outcry from mainstream Republicans against this bill was ubiquitous, what about the SUPER BOWL? And conventions and tourism? Rather than due process, equal protection and the morality of bigotry.
So what can the Party of Christian bigotry do about this growing problem of queers having 14th Amendment rights of due process and equal protection, and also the backing of the majority of voters. The constitutional consumed Tea Baggers talk about rewriting the 14th Amendment more to their liking. But that’s a hard road.
It seems that the Christian Republican party’s best bet to keep the discrimination going against gay couples is to make sure their state will never accept marriage documents from any other state. For if they lose that one, gay couples can take a weekend road trip, get married in some nearby atheist socialist intolerant state and return legal marriage benefits back in their tolerant Christian state. This is where the battle will go.
The new anti-gay laws in Uganda did go for life in prison rather than decapitation, so they are more tolerant that reported. The law also reads than a Uganda citizen can be extradited for homosexual acts outside Uganda and returned for punishment.
What is unique to many of these similar Central African countries with these laws, is that they are Christian nations rather than Muslim Nations. After all, these punitive laws in Central Africa are remnants of not only British and European colonialism, but more importantly, these laws are being pushed by American evangelical Christians to make the noble savages less noble and more savage.