Let’s Play With RFRA
This is the Right's new attempt to write anti-LGBT hate into law — and they might win.
Comrade, we're on the frontlines again. My home state, Georgia, just tried to pass another RFRA bill (Religious Freedom Restoration Act). These bills are the next gay battleground. 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 only 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, respond when their queer employees no longer feel safe moving here for work.
As for me, I am ready to leave. I can 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 aging population's final stand against a minority that the rest of the country has come around on. But sadly, it's not so simple. Queer Jim Crow laws should be terrifying to anyone who remembers what state-sanctioned discrimination looks like — anyone old enough to remember actual Jim Crow laws and other racist laws we are still working to dismantle decades — even centuries — later. Once these things pass, they're very hard to kill.
The LGBTQ community threatens our enemies because we are winning. This modern far-right conservatism is a response movement — they are unnerved at seeing queers on TV and they recognize a tectonic and irreversible 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 about LGBT Rights happening in mainstream media, attitudes across generations are changing. And that's good.
I don't know where you live, but if you're in a conservative state, it has likely already proposed a bill claiming to protect "religious freedom" — or has already passed one. To kill these bills, we must call our state representatives. Write to your legislators. And most importantly, 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 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. 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 would 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 be better — and stop embarrassing our country on the global stage? Your move, America.
Love, Beastly
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