Mississippi Lawmakers on Brink of Passing Georgia-Style Anti-LGBT ‘Religious Freedom’ Bill

GOP Governor Backs Hateful Anti-LGBT Bill as Senate Vote Looms

Although much of the LGBT community’s attention has been focused on North Carolina and House Bill 2 this week, the Mississippi Legislature is on the brink of passing an equally disgusting anti-LGBT measure. 

The GOP-controlled Mississippi Senate is expected to vote today on House Bill 1523, which has already cleared the House. Gov. Phil Bryant told Mississippi News Now he would sign the measure. 

“I don’t think it’s discriminatory,” Bryant said. “I think it gives some people as I appreciate it, the right to be able to say that’s against my religious beliefs and I don’t need to carry out that particular task.”

By “that particular task,” Bryant ostensibly means treating LGBT people with any shred of dignity whatsoever. But it’s not just LGBT people who’d be affected. HB 1523 would also open the door to discrimination against anyone who’s had extramarital sex — a category of people which, according to one study, includes 95 percent of Americans. 

Titled the “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act,” HB 1523 is a version of the so-called “First Amendment Defense Act” introduced in Congress last year, and it’s similar to the bill vetoed by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal this week. 

As one gay black man who protested the bill on the steps of the Mississippi Capitol on Tuesday put it, HB 1523 is essentially “Jim Crow for the gays.” 

However, the bill is also explicitly anti-transgender. HB 1523 would bar the state from taking action against individuals, religious organizations, nonprofits and other entities that discriminate based on their belief that marriage should be between one man and one woman, that sexual relations should be reserved to such a union, or that “male” and “female” refer to someone’s “immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth.”

The bill not only gives schools and businesses the right to bar trans people from using restrooms and locker rooms according to their gender identity, but also specifically allows counselors, doctors and others to refuse treatment to trans people. 

According to Protect Thy Neighbor, a project of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, here are a few other potential consequences of HB 1523: 

• a government clerk could refuse to issue a marriage license to a couple because one person had been previously divorced;
• a taxpayer-funded adoption agency could refuse to place a child with a happy and loving family because the parents lived together before they were married;
• a taxpayer-funded organization that provides shelter to kids who have suffered child abuse could turn away a pregnant teenager;
• a counseling group practice could refuse to see a mother and her teen who is experiencing severe depression because the woman is unmarried;
• a counselor could refuse to help an LGBT person who called a suicide hotline;
• a fertility clinic could refuse to treat a veteran and his partner because they are not married;
• a car rental agency could refuse to rent a car to a same-sex couple on their honeymoon; and
• a corporation could fire a woman for wearing pants.

After the bill cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, the Human Rights Campaign noted that it would also allow foster parents to subject LGBT children to “conversion therapy,” in addition to legalizing “Kim Davis-like discrimination” on the part of government employees.

HB 1523 passed the House 80-39, and today is the last day for the Senate to take it up. 

The Senate, made up of 31 Republicans and 20 Democrats, convenes at 9 a.m. Central time. Watch the proceedings live here. 

 

Image by Blake Feldman via Twitter