- Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer has vetoed the controversial "religious freedoms" bill that would have allowed businesses to refuse services to LGBTQ customers based on religious beliefs.
- The Kepler space telescope has discovered hundreds of new planets outside our own solar system, bringing the total to nearly 1,700 worlds.
- Thailand's anti-corruption agency is set to bring charges against PM Yingluck Shinawatra as called increase by anti-government protesters for her ouster.
- Australian airline Qantas will cut 5,000 jobs as the company streamlines to do battle with Virgin Atlantic.
- For the ultimate in smartphone security, Boeing's new Black Android phone will self-destruct if tampered with, and will be sold primarily to government agencies.
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed. -- Benjamin Franklin
It's really depressing when [a small insane fraction of] the majoritarian religion claims the right to discriminate against people out of hatred and bigotry. And depressing that "religious freedom" is being perverted into something ugly -- this country has had a pretty good 300-year track record of true religious freedom, i.e. the tolerance and protection of groups, often small and "unorthodox," who faced death or persecution for their religious views elsewhere in the world. There is even a place for an honest accommodation of religion in some equal-rights statutes ... such as the careful protections that New York put into its marriage equality statute to not require religious groups to perform same sex marriages. We also have carve-outs, for example, in employment discrimination laws allowing religious groups to preferentially hire members of their own sects -- a seemingly appropriate balance of the interests of protecting the free exercise of religion and society's interest in ensuring non-descrimination in employment practices.
ReplyDeleteBut selling cakes or offering other public accommodations is not that sort of "core" religious practice that warrants some sort of carve out, and the Wingnut Republicans are pissing on this country's history when they cloak their bigotry in the language of religious freedom.