The
Arizona State Legislature is like a pus-filled, blistering, oozing chancre on
the face of America. The outrageous gall
displayed by this domineering gang of goons marks a low point in the downward
spiral of religious conservatism in the United States. As the vitriol inherent in the belief
structures of fundamentalists isolates them further away from contemporary
society, they grow more desperate to cast their oppressive control over a
nation that is slowly but surely escaping their negative influence.
The
Religious Freedom Restoration Act is clearly nothing more than state-sanctioned
bigotry. Lawmakers in Arizona clearly do
not understand that your religious freedom ends when you begin to deal with the
citizens of the Republic in business arrangements. Religious freedom – as defended by the
Constitution – allows you to practice your faith only up to the point where it
does not have a negative effect on other people. You are free to be whatever manner of
closed-minded beast you desire to be, but if you want to sell cupcakes in
America, you have to sell to all customers equally and may not legally deny any
product or service to any customer based on your religion or on theirs.
The
exalted positions of power and privilege enjoyed by these politicians remove
them from the real world. Without the
humbling experience of reality, it is easy to impose the delusions of their
fantasy upon others without ever realizing that there would be serious
consequences for actual human beings.
One legislator even cried that, “we should not have to sacrifice our
freedoms to work…or do business…” and yet the combined knowledge of all workers
and business owners recognize that this statement – while somewhat hopeful – is
woefully untrue.
Every
worker knows that they have to hang up their rights when they go to work, this
is especially true in a state like North Carolina that practices the “Right to
Work” – which means an employer can fire you for any reason and never have to
explain their rationale. They can even
fire you on the basis of their own religious prejudice – although they do
expose themselves to a potential lawsuit if you can prove that is why they did
it, as opposed to some made-up excuse like not taking your hat off when you
came into the building.
The
very idea that they are restoring a religious freedom is ludicrous – nobody
ever had such a freedom, and even in the past when such bigotry was openly
practiced, it was still recognized as wrong and then corrected in more recent
times to create a more inclusive America.
And
that, of course, is what the Arizona State Legislature and most of the old-south
conservative and overly prayerful states are so upset about. America continues its slow laborious slog
toward inclusion of all peoples of all types (a very democratic idea), and conservatives
hate this. The fundamentalist whack-jobs
particularly hate this, because they neither want to be included nor do they
wish to include others. More inclusion
means more independent thinking, less group-think. More inclusion means more divergence among
family make-ups. More inclusion means
greater freedom and justice and peace – and even profitability – and less
control, fewer unfair life events, and less fear. More inclusion also means it gets harder to
take unified action – it is rather like herding cats, but at least action taken
benefits many instead of an elite few.
Inclusion
also means including people who worship in different ways – as there are clearly
people of faith on the democratic side opposing the state-sanctioned bigotry of
the unruly mob in Phoenix – and more believers could be included in the future
of America if they would simply release their grip on hateful beliefs and
harmful practices and join the nation in celebrating a rebirth of freedom.
