The RNC is about to vote on a resolution supporting so-called religious freedom laws across the nation.
The Republican National Committee this week is holding its spring meeting and its 168 committee members are voting on various resolutions that they expect party members to support. Up for a vote today is a resolution supporting state level so-called religious freedom laws, often known officially as Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, after the federal law of that name.
Apparently ignoring the international anger and backlash visited upon Indiana, whose Governor Mike Pence signed a sweepingly broad RFRA that would allow discrimination against anyone as long as one cites their sincerely held religious beliefs, RNC members are expected to approve today’s resolution.
The language, as TIME’s Zeke Miller reports, is “cautiously worded” and “encourages states to mirror the federal law, rather than the controversial Indiana version.”
“The Republican National Committee supports and encourages States’ actions to enact laws that mirror the federal RFRA to protect citizens’ rights to lead all aspects of their lives according to their deeply held religious beliefs,” it states.
But it is broad and clearly subject to interpretation, too.
“The Republican National Committee stands firm in upholding natural, human, constitutional, and, under the RFRA, statutory rights of religious freedom,” the resolution also states.
It is filled with the usual “WHEREAS” statements, including,Â
WHEREAS, The Puritan Pilgrims came to America seeking religious freedom from an established, state-supported church; and, by them our first written framework of government, The Mayflower Compact (1620), was written to maintain order and establish a civil society with just and equal laws;
Think Progress’ Zack Ford notes “there is now evidence that even a RFRA written as moderately as the federal law can be used to justify discrimination against LGBT people. The U.S. Supreme Court has already set a precedent for reading the law in an expansive way, interpreting it to allow employers like Hobby Lobby to to refuse contraception coverage to female employees.”
And while nowhere does the RNC’s RFRA resolution mention same-sex marriage or LGBT people, it’s clearly designed to oppose both.
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