The Kentucky Human Rights Commission was on of the groups that sent letters to Gov. Beshear asking him to veto HB 279 the Religious Freedom Act.
Now let's think about this for a minute. This is a government commission whose stated purpose is to enforce the Kentucky Civil Rights Act. Now the Kentucky Civil Rights Act covers pretty much all the things the Federal Civil Rights Act covers. Here's what it says it's for:
To safeguard all individuals within the state from discrimination because of familial status, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age forty (40) and over, or because of the person's status as a qualified individual with a disability as defined in KRS 344.010 and KRS 344.030.Notice what it includes: religion. Part of the Human Rights Commission's purpose, in other words, is to protect against religious discrimination. But instead of doing this, they used their taxpayer-derived resources to fight a bill that would help protect against religious discrimination!
In the most egregious recent case of religious discrimination in Kentucky, the Human Rights Commission was either asleep at the switch or just simply not interested in getting involved. It involved Martin Gaskell, who sued the University of Kentucky for denying him a job because, as the e-mail of one UK professor put it, he was a "potential evangelical." As a result, Gaskell filed a religious discrimination complaint with the Human Rights Commission.
He never heard back.
Apparently the Commission was just too busy doing what the Kentucky Civil Rights Act gives them absolutely no authority to do: engage in gay rights activism. The Kentucky Civil Rights Act does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. There have been proposed laws to change this, but so far the State Legislature has chosen not to pass them.
Your taxpayer dollars--at play.
Of course, any rational thinking person not blinded by a ravenous zeal of pushing a fundamentalist, morally oppressive agenda would have the acuity to read this:
ReplyDelete'To safeguard all individuals within the state from discrimination because of familial status, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age forty (40) and over...'
and realize that this commission wrote the letter precisely because it is worried that the bill will allow discrimination based on familial status, race, color, national origin, sex, age (40) and over and disability.
In Kentucky, religion trumps everything else, apparently, never mind that secular constitution in which religion is already expressly protected by the 1st Amendment.
'Apparently the Commission was just too busy doing what the Kentucky Civil Rights Act gives them absolutely no authority to do: engage in gay rights activism.'
Oh - so now the bill is about gay rights after all. But didn't you just write a post claiming Kathy Stein lied about you when she said you admit this is about gay rights?
You just couldn't make this stuff up.
Singring,
ReplyDeleteActually you can make stuff up. Just like the opponents of the bill in fact did.
Maybe you could tell me how the bill violated the provision you quote. No one else was able to.
And I guess you missed the debate over the bill. It was the opponents who said it was about gay rights. I was simply talking about that the Commission was engaged in before the bill was even introduced.
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ReplyDelete"In Kentucky, religion trumps everything else, apparently, never mind that secular constitution in which religion is already expressly protected by the 1st Amendment."
ReplyDeleteWhat part of protecting religious freedom causes the law to stop protecting "familial status, race, color, national origin, sex, [or] age"?
The fact of the matter, however, is that religion does trump everything else. This is precisely why it has special protection by the Constitution in the first amendment. Religion, or "Conscience" as originally thought for the first amendment, includes all beliefs a person might have about the world.
What good is your family status, your race, your color, your national origin, your sex, or your age if you can't be free to hold your own beliefs? What good is the freedom of press or association if you are restricted in what you can print or associate with?
Religion/Belief/Philosophy/Worldview/Etc certainly enjoys special privilege because it, unlike all the rest, is intensely personal and yet concerns objective reality. To restrict it is tantamount to restricting the soul.