Tea Party Senator Bringing Religious License To Discriminate Against Gay People To Texas

A Texas Tea Party lawmaker is working to enshrine religious discrimination into the state constitution.

Donna Campbell is the Medical Director of an Emergency Department at a local Texas hospital. She’s also everything you’d expect of a Tea Party Republican, including being pro-life, highly-religious, anti-women, and anti-gay.

As a State Senator, Campbell was the co-sponsor of the bill that slaughtered Texas clinics serving women, making getting an abortion in the Lone Star State close to impossible.

Now, Sen. Campbell is focusing her extremism on Texas’ LGBT population.

Under the guise of religious freedom, Campbell has introduced legislation that would allow any person, group, company, or corporation to refuse service to gay people. Of course, Senate Joint Resolution 10 doesn’t specifically say “gay people,” but clearly that’s its goal.

“Government may not burden an individual’s or religious organization’s freedom of religion or right to act or refuse to act in a manner motivated by a sincerely held religious belief unless the government proves that the burden is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest.”

That’s the key provision in Campbell’s bill, which would put the question before voters next November. If successful, it would enshrine religious discrimination into the Texas constitution.

These “religious freedom” bills “protect” people of faith from having to bend to laws or other government policies that they claim violate their deeply-held religious beliefs. And they’re dangerous, allowing anyone to point to religion as an excuse to discriminate.

A pharmacist could refuse to fill a prescription for HIV medication or contraception. A teacher could refuse to teach children of a same-sex couple. A DMV worker could refuse to administer a driving test to a person who is transgender. A waitress could refuse service to a gay man or lesbian woman. In the extreme, a man could refuse to take direction at his job from a female supervisor. 

John Wright at Lone Star Q reports that “Campbell introduced a nearly identical measure two years ago, but it died in committee. The 2013 measure was supported by the anti-LGBT group Texas Values and opposed by Equality Texas.”

Texas already has a statute, the Religous Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), that provides strong protections for religious freedom. However, critics say Campbell’s proposal would go much further than the Texas RFRA.

Campbell’s proposal could also effectively prevent cities from enforcing nondiscrimination ordinances if a business owner claimed “a sincerely held religious belief.”

Other states have tried similar measures with the very same goal: allow anyone to refuse to do business with LGBT people. Or people of different faiths, or of no faith.

Arizona attempted and passed a radical measure that was so severe it was vetoed by GOP Gov. Jan Brewer in February.

WATCH: Anderson Cooper Slams Senator Who Doesn’t ‘Know Anyone In Arizona That Would Discriminate’

A similar bill died that same month in Maine.

But GOP Governor Phil Bryant had no problem signing Mississippi‘s highly-controversial and nationally condemned license to discriminate against LGBT people, women, and minorities into law just two months later. 

And this summer, Republicans introduced a federal religious license to discriminate bill to allow child welfare providers to discriminate against gay people.

 

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