Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee have all vowed to sign the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) to allow business owners to once again discriminate if they believe:
“marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman [or] [that] sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”
The financiers of the project are three known conservative groups including, The American Principles Project, Heritage Action for America, and Family Research Council Action.
One of the group leaders actually spoke out and it just got disgusting. The leader of the American Principles Project Maggie Gallagher said:
“It has become clear that the First Amendment Defense Act is rapidly becoming a signature issue that unifies the GOP. [And] real concrete protection for gay marriage dissenters appears to be one election victory away.
What Gallagher is actually saying is that “dissenters” will once again be able to discriminate against somebody because they are gay and choose not to serve them. It’s absurd. You don’t get to choose which laws you obey.
It would even allow public sector workers to once again discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and then the Kim Davis battle would have been for nothing. Public dollars should never be used to discriminate against anybody.
The American Civil Liberties Union has even called it:
“a Pandora’s Box of taxpayer-funded discrimination against same-sex couples and their children.”
The scary thing is that this isn’t the first time a bill like this has been pushed to be enacted. A senator from Utah and Idaho had a similar idea but called it the “Marriage and Religious Freedom Act” which would have allowed business owners to discriminate without any penalization. Another example of picking what laws you want to obey.
It’s become an agenda that Conservatives are having no hard time justifying. Ellen Barrosse, RNC chair of the Conservative Steering Committee said the bill is discrimination rather:
“an attempt, for those of us who are people of faith, to protect religious organizations. Does Catholic Charities have to place children with gay couples, or will they have to shut down? This is a free market, there are other agencies that will place children with them.”
Barrosse neglected to say that when these Catholic Charities have faced this conflict the organization still believed they were entitled to state funding while discriminating against couples the states lawfully recognized as married. And in cases of shutdown, they did so because they couldn’t operate without state funding.
This law isn’t surprising as the party is continuing to falter. They can’t even produce an emerging candidate and are on the brink of the first brokered convention since 1948. The party is continually losing traction and their way of gaining it is trying to push archaic legislation that won’t pass. Similar legislation has already been passed in Michigan and Indiana, and has proven very unpopular among the majority of voters.
Which all the more reason not to vote Republican come Election Day.
Link to original article from Americans Against the Tea Party