Rubio-Endorsed Lawmaker Files ‘Religious Freedom’ Bill To Make Refusing Service To LGBT People Legal

A Florida state lawmaker is pushing an Indiana-style anti-LGBT bill that would allow extensive discrimination.

Last year Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) endorsed his “good friend” Julio Gonzalez for the Florida House, saying he is a “principled conservative” and a “leader who gets things done.”

Marco Rubio’s far-right positions, especially on LGBT people, are well-known. As The New Civil Rights Movement’s Rachel Witkin  reported, Sen. Rubio supported Indiana’s “religious freedom” bill that brought international shame to the Hoosier State, he thinks that children can only live in families with a father and a mother – because that’s what the Bible says – he opposes ENDA, he supported DOMA, and he called expanding Florida’s foster care program to same-sex couples a “social experiment.”

So it’s no surprise that State Rep. Julio Gonzalez on Wednesday filed an extreme, wide-sweeping bill under the cloak of “religious freedom” that would make it legal for Floridians to discriminate against LGBT people merely by stating a sincerely-held religious belief.

Gonzalez’s “Protection of Religious Freedom” bill is focused on adoption agencies and health care facilities, but extends far beyond. It “provides immunity from liability for [any] health care facility, health care provider, person, closely held organization, religious institution, business owned or operated by religious institution, or private child-placing agency that refuses to perform certain actions that would be contrary to religious or moral convictions or policies.”

Even though, as the Herald-Tribune notes, “Gonzalez could find no instances in Florida of businesses being challenged in court for not offering products or services to same sex couples,” he has filed this bill legalizing discrimination.

“There have been various situations where there are increasing possibilities of subsections of society having their religious freedoms encroached on,” Rep. Gonzalez told the Herald-Tribune. “Over time it became obvious to me we need to adopt some statutory protections.”

“We have seen in other states the bakers, the photographers who don’t want to participate in certain religious events,” Gonzalez said.

The bill, HB 401, like many that have been debated and even passed across the country, is likely unconstitutional, paving the way for almost anyone to deny service for any “religious” reason.

Explaining the legislation, Equality Florida Action says the bill “would allow people to opt out of anti-discrimination laws,” and in “addition to churches, it would allow individuals, for-profit businesses, health care providers, non-profit adoption agencies and others to discriminate against anyone they want, for personal reasons.”

Rep. Gonzalez’s bill, Equality Florida Action notes, “would also allow a healthcare provider to deny reproductive and contraceptive services to women; retailers to refuse service to LGBT people; a day care to refuse admittance of a child with LGBT parents, and many other outcomes we believe most people would find deeply unfair.”

Matt McTighe, executive director of Freedom for All Americans, says “HB 401 uses a thinly veiled guise of religion to justify denying services to people in need at hospitals, adoption agencies, and other important institutions that Floridians use every day.”

He calls it “cruel to deny any child the opportunity to be welcomed into a loving, supporting family, just because they or a parent might be gay or transgender. It’s wrong to refuse potentially life-saving medical care to a person who has been in an accident simply because they are LGBT,” and says Rep. Gonzalez’s “bill goes too far and would make Florida a worse place for everyone.”

 

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