Web Editor
On March 23, North Carolina Governor Pat McCroy signed the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, which states that a person cannot use a bathroom of the gender they identify with unless they have taken the legal measures to change their gender.
Two weeks later, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed a law that allows people to discriminate the LGBT community based on personal religious beliefs. Now, let me tell you the way in which both laws wrong.
House Bill No. 1523 or Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act, which was signed by Mississippi governor on April 5, states in Section II that it protects the idea that “marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, sexual relations are reserved to such a marriage, and male (man) or female (woman) refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex.” Section III states that services can be denied “based upon or in a manner consistent with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.”
Yet, Section I of the Fourteenth Amendment states that the government cannot “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
If states are passing legislature that protects discrimination from religious groups, they are failing to follow the constitution. I see no clause that says that equal protection can be denied based on sexual orientation or identity.
Personally, I grew up in a conservative, Catholic household with baby boomer parents. At this point, I do not follow a religion anymore, but my parents never taught me to hate others such the LGBT community because they were different. For example, I don’t like a lot of things like vegetables; yet, I don’t condemn vegetarians for viciously killing the producers on the food chain.
A person’s likes and dislikes are…none of my business.
There is this verse in the bible Hebrews 13:4, that states “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.”
Are we just choosing what is convenient to us? I certainly think so. I have not heard of any laws that state we should deny services to adulterers based on religious beliefs probably due to the fact that no one really cares.
Please, stop using religion to condemn the LGBT community. One thing I learned from religion is that God loves everybody. However, if God hates the LGBT community, then I apologize but God is just as flawed as us.
