RFRA RAH RAH / Conservative Rifraff

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RFRA is not a justification for discrimination, no matter how conservatives try to use and abuse it.  This use of RFRA and of religious belief are wrong, bad, and flat out evil.  It is also generally, broadly illegal.

Those conservatives who seem to be bent on misusing freedom of religion are wrong, but they also tend to be the riffraff, the fringe, the mouth breathers, knuckle daggers, Bible-thumping mouth-foamers of the radical right who are too cray-cray to merit serious consideration. 

These are the extremists who have hijacked the GOP.  The GOP needs to hijack their party back, they need to expel these crazy extremists, or the party will fracture and die out, like the Whigs which preceded them.

That does not seem to stop them from trying to get attention or their evil and hateful way.

Conservatives as the right side of the political spectrum, regardless of parties, has always been pro-discrimination, pro-unequal treatment,pro-injustice,  pro-subordination of others.  We have had to pass civil rights laws, and had ill treatment adjudicated BECAUSE conservatives won't treat people fairly and equally without the coercion of law.  Rather we see conservatives having used terrible violence to coerce conformity to their discrimination.

Conservatives also believe in an 'immaculate conception' notion of business creation, by which I mean the belief that any business can be created without the contribution of others, notably government provided services like infrastructure (roads, utilities, educated workforce, customers, fire and police services, etc.).  Nope, it's just the business owner and divine fertilization, in the minds of conservatives.

This is factually false.  But it is also the core premise underlying the current attempt by conservatives to claim a right of businesses to discriminate, and to assert a religious right to treat people differently by refusing service to some (aka public accommodation).

I cannot come up with a better definition of public accommodation than that offered by wikipedia:

Within U.S. law, public accommodations are generally defined as entities, both public and private, that are used by the public. Examples include retail stores, rental establishments and service establishments, as well as educational institutions, recreational facilities and service centers. Private clubs and religious institutions were exempt. However, in 1984, the United States Supreme Court declared the previously all-male Junior Chamber International, a chamber of Commerce organization for persons between the ages of eighteen and thirty-six, to be a public accommodation, which compelled the admission of women into the ranks.

One of the premises of a right of the public to service is that the public provides the context and framework, the infrastructure, in which business operates, and which are essential to business to exist.  But more than that, it is a foundational premise of equality that people be able to expect equal treatment in the public sphere, that separate is not equal, that disparate or inferior is not fair or equal, and that refusal of service causes harm.

Courtesy of Findlaw for a partial list of court cases relating to civil rights decisions relating to the conservative laws being overturned that mandated or gave legal cover to discriminate, INCLUDING ON THE BASIS OF SINCERELY HELD RELIGIOUS BELIEFS:

Shelley v Kramer, 1948, overturned the right to exclude property sales on the basis of race, used to keep neighborhoods segregated;  

Brown v Board of Education 1954 and 55(I and II) ended segregated education, invalidating separate but equal (hint: it was never equal, but consistently inferior);

Bailey v Patterson, 1962, overturned segregation of transportation facilities (public or private, inter and intrastate);

Loving v Virginia, 1967, overturned prohibitions of inter-racial marriage, in which the Bible and sincerely held religious beliefs about the separation of the races figured prominently;

Jones v Mayer, 1968, another decision that prohibits in property sales and property rentals, (regardless of sincerely held religious belief, or any other pretext or justification);

Griggs v Duke Power Co., 1971, (yes - THAT Duke Power that funds/ owns conservative candidates) overturned discriminatory education and IQ testing for employment (again, based in part on a sincerely held religious-based belief in racial differences);

Oncale v Sundowner Offshore Serv., Inc. 1987 banned same-sex sexual harassment violated the provision of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964  (the court did not make an exception for sincerely held religious beliefs motivating harassment or bullying);

Add to this list any of the Bob Jones University court decisions that religion or religious beliefs (sincere or otherwise) was not an excuse or legal pretext for discrimination; also

Heart of Atlanta Motel Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964),  that the U.S. Congress could use the Constitution's Commerce Clause to force private businesses to abide by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

This has not been an encyclopedic listing of cases, rather it is a sampling only.  Religion is not a legitimate or legal basis for discrimination.  In some locations, like the state of Oregon, these protections extend to gender and sexual orientation, and this has been the trend in civil rights.

The right to accommodation, the right regardless of race to service by businesses was settled in the last century -- and not the END of the last century either.  In the latter 19th and first half of the 20th century, sincerely held religious beliefs that the races should be separate, (because 'the Bible') was a large part of the justification used by conservative bigots to find ways to subordinate and restrict and oppress black Americans, and to exercise prejudice against other groups, notably Jews and Catholics, and atheists.  Now that is extending to those Jews and Christians and other groups who do not conform to their interpretation of religious belief.

That is not decent or spiritual, that is not freedom, that is not "all men (and women) are created equal".  That is not our constitution, that is contrary to the essence of community and contrary to the concept of majority rule (with protections for minorities).

We saw in the last election Mitts-on-our-Money Romney's big GOP convention stressed empty chairs and "I created that" notions of businesses being solely the creation of their founders. The premise totally and completely ignored the essential community support and services - and customers - that were essential to the creation and growth of those businesses.  There was a denial that any other factors, from services to labor, contributed to the creation of business.

We're seeing the bitter end of bigotry being stripped of legal cover in discrimination against members for the LGBT community.  ENDA is inevitable, the only question becomes when not if.  It may or may not happen as the SCOTUS is currently constituted, given it is the most conservative court in our history, but it is unlikely that the SCOTUS will remain that conservative or that religion will trump civil rights in the public sphere.

Bully!

The word "Bully!" has more than one meaning. It has positive meanings, like 'bull market' for a rising stock market. Or for another example it was a pet phrase of President Teddy Roosevelt; his terminology for presidential leadership, 'bully pulpit' is one instance. In that sense, "Bully for you, in other words, "good for you", Governor Dayton, for signing the recent anti-bullying (the bad kind)

And then we have the foaming-at-the-mouth hysteria from conservatives and the radical religious right, particularly the homophobes. Sure, we see plenty of rending of garments and wailing, or running around with hair-on-fire from them over everything from faux religious liberty to funding for the legislation. Neither is a plausible gripe. Claiming religious dispensation to discriminate or harass, including in giving cover for bullying, is not a legitimate function of religion. We saw that back in the 70's and 80's, with all the racial discrimination law suits lost Bob Jones University. It is a failure on moral and ethical grounds as well.

But I would like to address some of the more factually and intellectually deficient arguments made by the conservative legislators in opposing this legislation -- and I'd also like to underline that conservatives never gave this much attention, or came up with any good ideas of their own. They retain their title of the party of 'no' and obstruction, not the party of any new ideas or good and effective solutions.

There were three videos of testimony that stood out as egregiously deplorable. One was Rep. Gruenhagen, the MN GOP's attempt to come up with a state level equivalent of Louis Gohmert (NOT a compliment), who apparently believes that staff, including bus drivers, hitting children is a good idea - and a solution. This seems on the face of it, to be an intrusion of government into parental perogatives - something the conservatives claim to hate, and it should clearly be recognized as a potential source of huge legal liability. And most of all, there is zero evidence that hitting kids like this solves anything, least of all aggression and bullying - in spite of the anecdotal recollections of Gruenhagen. Rather there is a good argument to be made that this demonstrates only that bigger people get away with hitting smaller people. However conservatives as a group LOVE LOVE LOVE any form of punishment, in spite of the evidence showing that it is not particularly effective as a deterrent or consequence in producing desired behaviors. (Quite the opposite, see below.)

But we have seen all too often that facts, and especially science, are anathema to conservatives; they want to do what George W. Bush did, and operate from the gut, not the brain. Garnish, if possible, with a sprinkle of humiliation, serve on a platter of flaming stupid, and conservatives are delighted. But it is a horrifically BAD solution to a real problem; conservatives want to drag us, kicking and screaming, back into the bad old days of the 19th century. What we do NOT want in our schools is a place where students worry about a teacher 'punching them out', OR other kids bullying them; those are both completely contrary to a good learning environment. But there is no denying this garbage appeals to conservative emotions.

From Psychology Today (emphasis in bold is my addition):

I began to think about this issue once again when a new study appeared in the journal Pediatrics. This study dealt with human children, not dogs, and looked at the effects of spanking. Spanking is the most common form of punishment used to control the behavior of human children. Based on data from nearly 2,500 children, Catherine Taylor and her associates at Tulane University report that children that were spanked more frequently at age 3 were much more likely to be aggressive by age 5. "The odds of a child being more aggressive at age 5 increased by 50 percent if he had been spanked more than twice in the month before the study began," said Taylor. Such negative effects of punishment have been reported so often in the scientific literature that the American Academy of Pediatrics has chosen not to endorse spanking under any circumstance. According to the Academy, it's a form of punishment that becomes less effective with repeated use and also makes discipline more difficult as the child outgrows it.

Here is the Gruenhagen video:



And then we have Tweedle-dumb, the equally ignorant and offensive Rep. Jim Newberger, who went to the popular conservative well for another bucket of ludicrous and inapplicable Hitler comparisons, this time frosted with a frothy whip of equally inapplicable and inappropriate references to 1984.



Apparently Jim Newberger is stuck in the first half of the twentieth century, and equally apparent is that he represents a failure of our school system - and his own efforts - because he is clearly poorly educated.

Again we have the lust for violence and retribution, never mind that escalation is the opposite of our desideratum.

I'm particularly sick of the deficient claims by the radical right, not just in Minnesota, that misrepresents WW I and WW II history. Although he was born in the 1960's, apparently Newberger has not caught up with the release of classified documents that show that Chamberlain in fact did the right thing as regards Hitler, and that he did not attempt to appease Hitler so much as stall for time to rebuild the military capacity of the UK, which lagged badly behind that of Germany. At the same time Chamberlain tried to institute precisely the containment of Germany that he was accused of NOT doing. Rather it has been the criticism of Chamberlain that is not standing up well as factual. Perhaps Newberger is unaware that Chamberlain was himself a conservative - but a British conservative, not one of the 21st century variety of conservatives that ignore any facts that do not fit their theories or ideology, or that they did not have spoon fed to them in the context of their radical right wing propaganda. Likewise, the reference to 1984, written in 1949 by George Orwell, is not really an apt analogy to holding students accountable for use of social media or other electronic or cyber bullying they do that continues or is initiated off school grounds of a fellow student. School is the primary nexus point for problems relating to bullying, and it is at school that they interfere with learning. That not all school-related bullying originates during the school day or on school grounds does not alter that it is very much a school problem.

And then for the final video in our trifecta of MN GOP bigoted homophobia and flaming stupidity, we have the repugnant Rep. Mary Franson, who apparently doesn't actually know what the heck fascism is, theoretically or historically. That this woman has done child care is tragic; apparently this is another example of the pro-violence from conservatives. One might argue that their solution to bullying is more bullying, certainly that appears to be how Franson defines freedom of religion - the freedom to harass and disparage the LGBT community. Because she clearly does NOT want ALL students (or their families) treated with kindness or respect - or equality. Shame on Franson for according more importance to an inanimate book than to people. Like a true conservative, Franson apparently has no fear about conservative suggestions that kids be hit, but she objects to adults holding other adults accountable for their words and actions that were highly offensive and very damaging to members of the LGBT community, on a par with the equivalent use of the 'n' word to African-Americans. There were more than just words thrown around; a lot of money was spent to actively harm the civil rights of LGBT Americans. Conservatives consistently believe things that are not true, and consistently mis-identify who is and is not the victim, and who is the abuser.

This is the same Rep. Mary Franson who showed herself anything but kind and Christian previously, but that doesn't stop her claiming to be so now when it comes to anti-bullying legislation. More of the whole faux victim / holier than thou crap that is standard operating propaganda from the radical rotten right. I hope she doesn't strain her shoulder, while patting herself on the back for her own goodness so vigorously.



 Because Jesus loves bullying?:

A Poke in the metaphorical eye for Bullying

Minnesota has come more fully into the 21st century with an anti-bullying bill that passed the state legislature today.  Provisions address not only what takes place on school grounds, during school hours, but of students bullied through social media by fellow students.

Governor Dayton has announced he will sign it later today.

Conservatives hate it; they want to be able to continue gender and sexual orientation (real or just suspected) because Jesus loves bullying / religious belief.

From the STrib:

The Minnesota House passed a bill aimed at toughening the state's anti-bullying law by a vote of 69-63 early Wednesday.
The bill - the Safe and Supportive Schools Act - defines bullying, in part, as behavior that causes physical harm or fear of physical harm and "constitutes intentional infliction of emotional distress."
"This provides a strong set of tools to create a strong local anti-bullying policy and create safe educational climates in Minnesota," said Rep. Jim Davnie, DFL-Minneapolis, the bill's sponsor.
The measure already has cleared the Senate. Gov. Mark Dayton plans to sign the bill into law in a public ceremony at 4 p.m. today on State Capitol steps.
The bill would require school districts to track and investigate cases of bullying and require schools to better train staff and teachers on how to prevent it. Current law requires school districts to have a bullying policy but omits details on what the policy should contain.