Oklahoma Senate About to Vote on ‘Religious Beliefs’ Bill Creating a ‘License to Discriminate’ Against LGBT People

Bill’s Sponsor Has Said Gay People ‘Don’t Have a Right to Be Served in Every Single Store’

The Oklahoma Senate on Thursday morning will take up on an extremely broad bill that would allow anyone to refuse service to LGBT people, merely by citing their “sincerely held religious beliefs or conscience.” 

SB 197, the Oklahoma Right of Conscience Act, protects people, businesses, and religious organizations from providing “any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges used in a marriage ceremony or celebration of a specific lifestyle or behavior.”

The language is so broad that “celebration of a specific lifestyle or behavior” could apply to, for example, refusing to allow children into a movie theater for a birthday party if the child’s parents are of the same sex. And celebration of a “behavior” could apply to nearly any act at all.

The bill also applies to government agencies, and could prevent, for example, a same-sex couple to be unable to get a marriage license. It specifies that government employees can refuse service based on their religious beliefs, and the employer “shall otherwise ensure that the requested service is provided, if it can be done without undue hardship to the employer.”

Undue hardship is not defined. If that particular government agency only has a handful of employees able to perform the specific function – say, issue marriage licenses – and each cites their religious objections, then the couple would be forced to visit another city or town.

The bill’s co-sponsor is Senator Joseph Silk, who has been pushing similar legislation for years. In 2015 he infamously said LGBT people “don’t have a right to be served in every single store.” 

UPDATE: 11:44 AM ET –
“We decided a long time ago in this nation, that separate but equal was always separate, and never equal,” Freedom Oklahoma Executive Director Troy Stevenson tells NCRM exclusively. “Bigotry has no place in our society, and asking us to fund bigotry with our tax dollars is more than insulting, it is unconstitutional… Never forget that when hate is defeated, it always looks for another ‘other’ to hate.”

Freedom Oklahoma has about 100 people at the Oklahoma statehouse today, lobbying against the bill. Stevenson tells NCRM, “we are hoping to keep it from being heard.”

Developing – updates to come. Stay tuned.

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