Let’s Play With RFRA
These laws will harm queer people and sanction prejudice in the name of faith.
I’m Alexander Cheves, and this is LOVE, BEASTLY—a blog about sex, feelings, and manhood. It’s written mostly for men—gay, straight, bi, MSM, or just curious—but some readers are women, and some don’t fit into categories. Everyone’s welcome here.
Friend, we're on the frontlines. My home state, Georgia, just tried to pass another RFRA bill—“RFRA” stands for “Religious Freedom Restoration Act”. These bills are the next gay battleground, and I fear it will get ugly.
Georgia comes as no surprise. If such a bill passes, Georgia will further disenfranchise its queer citizens, and this, in the end, will just hurt its economy. Queers are Georgia's business owners and industry leaders. We made Atlanta what it is. Atlanta is a film destination—several Marvel blockbusters are slated to film there, and many hit TV shows already do. We'll see how these businesses, which are funnelling enormous revenue into the state, will respond when their queer employees no longer feel safe moving here for work.
As for me, I’m ready to leave. I’m of the mind to abandon the red state to the detritus of history. In thirty years, the children of homophobic lawmakers will vote away these bills. The children of today's lawmakers will see them for what they are: relics of an ageing population's last stand against a minority that the rest of the country has come around on. But of course, it's not so simple. These laws should be terrifying to anyone who remembers what state-sanctioned discrimination looks like—anyone who remembers Jim Crow laws and other racist laws we are still working to dismantle decades later. Once these things pass, they're hard to do away with later.
The LGBTQ community threatens our enemies because we’re winning. This modern far-right conservatism is a response movement—they are unnerved at seeing a Black president and queers on TV, and they recognise a perceptible shift in public opinion. According to statistics, support for LGBT rights has doubled among people of all ages in the United States since 2000. With more exposure and conversation happening about our lives in mainstream media, attitudes are changing. And that's good.
But it’s not enough. Good TV won’t stem the tide of hate, and I suspect we have years of backlash coming, maybe even a conservative generation—a period lasting many decades. Some fear the political tide turning even more and a highly conservative, populist government rising into power—a responsive movement against the woke, a crackdown that will be more severe than anything in the past. Fascism has a way of following progress, particularly when it comes too quickly.
I don't know where you live, but if you're in a conservative state, it has likely already proposed a bill claiming to strengthen protections for "religious freedom,” or has already passed one. To kill these bills, we must call state representatives. Write to your legislators. Vote for the progressive party and the progressive candidate. The population of this country that is the most socially liberal—millennials and anyone born in the late 80s and early 90s—is the same populace that statistically does not show up at the polls, certainly not for midterm elections. That has to change.
If you have religious friends who embrace you but support these measures, ask them why. Be confrontational. Ask them to explain why they think you're a second-class citizen, and why they want to give antigay businesses the legally-protected freedom to refuse you service. We don't know how these bills will work in practice, but theoretically, a doctor will be able to claim "religious freedom" and say it's against his faith to perform life-saving surgery on a gay or transgender patient, and will be legally protected from ramifications in doing so.
Let's not mince words: these bills will cause the deaths of queer people. It was never about a wedding cake. It was always about principles: Do we allow state-sanctioned prejudice against a minority population, or do we not? Will we allow our long, dark history of prejudice to continue, or can we do better? Your move, America.
Love, Beastly