Reflections From a Murky Pond

As all with rational minds know, the queers really seem to get off on portraying themselves as victims of oppression. It’s also a simple fact that the queers and their enablers stridently proclaim any law that either doesn’t validate their lifestyle or doesn’t infringe upon Americans’ religious freedoms as some act of horror, segregation, and/or apartheid.

As such it’s easy and normally best to simply discount them as immoral agendists who care nothing for anything but their own self-images. But what about those singular times when the Queers are neither wrong nor hyperbolic in their claims?

On Tuesday, February 11, 2014 the Kansas State House of Representatives easily passed House Bill 2453 by a vote of 72 : 49.  Kansas’ HB 2453 would permit individuals, businesses, and government employees to deny service to same-sex couples on the basis of their religious principles.

HOUSE BILL No. 2453

AN ACT concerning religious freedoms with respect to marriage.

Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Kansas:

Section 1. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no individual or religious entity shall be required by any governmental entity to do any of the following, if it would be contrary to the sincerely held religious beliefs of the individual or religious entity regarding sex or gender

(a) Provide any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges; provide counseling, adoption, foster care and other social services; or provide employment or  employment benefits, related to, or related to the celebration of, any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement;

(b) solemnize any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement; or

(c) treat any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement as valid.

Section 2.

(a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no refusal by an individual or religious entity to engage in any activity described in section 1, and amendments thereto, shall result in:

1) civil claim or cause of action under state or local law based upon such refusal; or

2) an action by any governmental entity to penalize, withhold benefits from, discriminate against or otherwise disadvantage any protected individual or religious entity, under any state or local law.

(b) Any individual or religious entity named in or subject to a civil action, an administrative action or any action by a governmental entity may immediately assert the protections provided by section 1, and amendments thereto, or this section, as a defense by moving to dismiss such action. If the motion to dismiss is filed in an action before an administrative tribunal, within 15 days after the filing of such motion any party to such action may elect to transfer jurisdiction of such action to a district court with proper venue. Within 60 days after such transfer of jurisdiction, the district court shall decide whether the claimed protection applies. The district court shall not permit any additional discovery or fact-finding prior to making its decision.

(c) If a governmental entity, or any person asserts a claim or cause of action, or takes any adverse action against an individual or religious entity in violation of subsection (a), such individual or religious entity shall be entitled upon request to recover all reasonable attorney fees, costs and damages such individual or religious entity incurred as a result of such violation.

(d) If an individual employed by a governmental entity or other non-religious entity invokes any of the protections provided by section 1, and amendments thereto, as a basis for declining to provide a lawful service that is otherwise consistent with the entity’s duties or policies, the individual’s employer, in directing the performance of such service, shall either promptly provide another employee to provide such service, or shall otherwise ensure that the requested service is provided, if it can be done without undue hardship to the employer.

Section 3.  As used in sections 1 through 4, and amendments thereto:

(a) “Religious entity” means an organization, regardless of its non-profit or for-profit status, and regardless of whether its activities are deemed wholly or partly religious, that is:

1) A religious corporation, association, educational institution or society;

2) an entity operated, supervised or controlled by, or connected with, a religious corporation, association, educational institution or society; or

3) a privately-held business operating consistently with its sincerely held religious beliefs, with regard to any activity described in section l, and amendments thereto.

(b) “Governmental entity” means the executive, legislative and judicial branches and any and all agencies, boards, commissions, departments, districts, authorities or other entities, subdivisions or parts whatsoever of state and local government, as well as any person acting under color of law.

Section 4.

(a) If any word, phrase, clause or provision of sections 1 through 4, and amendments thereto, or the application of any such word, phrase, clause or provision to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the remaining provisions shall be given effect without the invalid portion and to this end the provisions of sections 1 through 4, and amendments thereto, are severable.

(b) Nothing in sections 1 through 4, and amendments thereto, shall be construed to allow any individual or entity, acting under color of state law to perform any marriage prohibited by state law, including, but not limited to, laws relating to plural marriage, incest, consanguinity and marriageable age.

(c) Nothing in sections 1 through 4, and amendments thereto, shall be construed to authorize any governmental discrimination or penalty against any individual or religious entity based upon its performance, facilitation or support of any celebrations of same-gender unions or relationships.

(d) The provisions of sections 1 through 4, and amendments thereto, shall be construed in favor of a broad protection of religious exercise, to the maximum extent permitted by their terms and by the constitutions of this state and the United States of America

Section 5. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after its publication in the statute book.

I’m always among the first to discount and disparage the “usual suspects” in the special interests activism sphere but I have to side with their claims on this one. It’s essentially Jim Crow as applied to queers or, at least, any queers who are publicly couples.

Admittedly, I’m somewhat ambivalent over all parts of this bill that pertain to the private sector because I don’t think that the rights and privileges of queers should ever trump Americans’ rights to free association, property, or religious expression. The government and its employees, however, do not enjoy all of those rights and including them in the bill is more than a little disturbing.

Finally, as purely a matter of law, I don’t like this bill at all. I can’t see where an objective legal test can be made for “sincerely held religious beliefs” and, hence, this law is crying out to be voided solely on those grounds by the Courts.

Tags: Activism | America | Homosexuals | Jim Crow | Law | LGBT | Politics | Queers | Religion | Society

This entry was posted on Friday, February 14th, 2014 at 11:50 am and is filed under Politics, Religion, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Michelle Alexander’s new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, is exactly what most Americans would expect it be after reading the title or seeing the cover of the book. It’s a well-crafted and articulate piece of extreme race-baiting and grievance-mongering that totally and utterly ignores reality, the antisocial, criminal, and self-destructive behaviors of the “Black Community,” and the negative consequences they suffer as a direct result of those behaviors.

The New Jim Crow is one those uncommon situation where one can judge a book by its cover.

In The New Jim Crow, Alexander systematically argues that America’s judicial system “operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.” The War on Drugs, she contends, has created “a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society.” Mass incarceration, and the disabilities that come with the label “felon,” serve, metaphorically, as the new Jim Crow. She further posits that “Race plays a major role-indeed, a defining role – in the current system, but not because of what is commonly understood as old-fashioned, hostile bigotry. This system of control depends far more on racial indifference (defined as a lack of compassion and caring about race and racial groups) than racial hostility – a feature it actually shares with its predecessors.”

The underlying flaw in her work and her thesis is that Mrs. Alexander willfully ignored the reality that Blacks per capita commit far more crimes than any other cultural group in America. If they being wholesale disenfranchised, and they are, it’s by their own devices and not due to any Jim Crow-esque government conspiracy of control over their population. She, like most race-baiters, Black apologists, and purveyors of “Social Justice,” always seem to see the enactment and enforcement of laws as a “lack of compassion and caring about race and racial groups” when Blacks, due to their apparent propensity for criminality, are disproportionately impacted by those laws.

To follow Alexander’s logic to it’s natural conclusion we would have to declare all laws pertaining to violent crime – except, of course, any instance where the crime is White-on-Black – as racist and strike them from the books as Blacks commit approx. 50% of the violent crimes in the US despite being only 13% of the population.

However, I will without reservation concede one critical point to the author.  The sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine has been proven to serve no purpose and to have been a reactionary measure that needs to properly reach its sunset.

~*~

Contrary to what one might expect, I do suggest that Americans read Michell Alexander’s work. The New Jim Crow is very well written and researched. Because it is so and because it shows exactly how professional race-baiters will match facts to their own agendas, biases, and false postulates, its an important work for Americans to read.

Tags: America | Blacks | Books & Reading | Cocaine | Crack | Crime | Drugs | Felons | Franchise | Jim Crow | Law | Michell Alexander | Politics | Race Baiting | Racial Activism | Racial Politics | Racism | Society

This entry was posted on Monday, September 2nd, 2013 at 10:07 am and is filed under Books & Reading, Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.