Kentucky Bill Gives Permission to Ignore Civil Rights

Mildred Jeter and Richard LovingWon Supreme Court ruling invalidating laws preventing marriage for interracial couples (1957)

A bill moving forward in the Kentucky Senate would give private businesses and public institutions the right to discriminate against basically anyone they want to as long as they hide behind their Bibles when they do it.

In other words, interracial couples, Muslims, atheists, and gay people can be denied services by businesses and the government for religious reasons even though federal law explicitly forbids discrimination. While the bill does not expressly mention these groups, it is so broad that it might as well.

According to SB180:

‘Protected activities’ means actions by people commissioned, employed, hired, retained, or otherwise used by the public or the government to provide customized, artistic, expressive, creative, ministerial, or spiritual goods or services, or judgments, attestations, or other commissions that involve protected rights;
‘Protected activity provider’ means a person who provides protected activities; and
‘Protected rights’ means the rights of persons to be free from governmental actions that impair, impede, infringe upon, or otherwise restrict the exercise of any right guaranteed by the United States Constitution or the Constitution of Kentucky, including but not limited to a person’s right of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and right to peaceable assembly.

The bill even denies those who are discriminated against the ability to sue in court, which makes it even more clear that Republicans want to turn Kentucky into a theocracy where civil justice and civil rights only belong to conservative “Christians.”

It hasn’t passed yet, but considering the Senate and the House are controlled by Republicans, and Tea Party nitwit Matt Bevin is the Governor, it’s only a matter of time before this bill becomes law and drags Kentucky back to the 1950s.

By Stephen D. Foster, Jr.
WinningDemocrats

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