Mississippi's law is being misinterpreted by the media
When Mississippi governor Phil Bryant signed the Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act earlier this month, the storm of opprobrium from the other 49 states was overwhelming. The new law, which specifically ensures the rights of religious organizations and individuals to adhere to their beliefs without government punishment, was immediately excoriated as an “anti-LGBT hate law” in the national press. Some compared the law to a resurgence of the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation half a century ago. Dire warnings of LGBT people losing their jobs, being denied housing, and even being turned away from emergency medical treatment filled the air. Tellingly, nearly every news article about the law put the words “religious freedom” in quotation marks, as if to indicate that such freedom doesn’t really exist. Businesses have announced that they will not expand into Mississippi and musicians have canceled performances there.
Clearly there are plenty of people who want to do something about this law. The one thing they all consistently refuse to do is actually read the thing.
There’s no excuse for this kind of ignorance. The text of the law, in all its forms up to and including the form the governor signed, is readily available on the State of Mississippi’s website. It’s not written in some arcane, confusing legal jargon. It’s simple, clear, and entirely different from what most people think.
Nobody will be fired from their jobs for their sexual orientation under this law. Nobody will be denied housing. The law explicitly prohibits refusing medical services to anybody. The only thing the new law does is affirm rights that already exist.
Take the employment issue. It is standard practice for religious and non-profit organizations to require their employees to sign a lifestyle agreement affirming that they will conduct themselves according to the organization’s principles. Many churches and religious schools expect their employees to refrain from smoking, drinking alcohol or engaging in extramarital sex in their private lives. Think what you will of such policies, they’re legal and if an employee violates the terms of that agreement, he or she can be fired without retaliation from the government. The new law merely acknowledges that engaging in homosexual acts, considered gravely sinful by many churches, is not the sole exception.
In the past, this went without saying. A web designer would not be punished for refusing to create a neo-Nazi site. A rabbi could not be coerced into celebrating Mass. A pacifist cannot be required to carry a firearm. Everyone is entitled to live by their beliefs regardless of whether the next person shares them or not.
But now there’s an exception. The recent changes in marriage laws to include same-sex marriages have turned LGBT orientation into a weapon to be used against religious organizations who will not change their tenets on sexual morality. LGBT activists have targeted businesses and organizations for their beliefs in ways that nobody else is permitted to do, and courts have backed them up. No other religious belief is subject to the approval of others. Nobody is subject to prosecution for believing in the Virgin Birth or the Law of Moses or the Five Pillars of Islam. Only when a belief crosses the interests of an LGBT person can it be punished.
This inequality is what the Mississippi law is meant to correct. It specifies that religious beliefs related to sex and marriage are every bit as protected as any other tenet. Far from instituting discrimination, the law prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion in the same way as on the basis of race or gender. But you’d never know that from the hysterical coverage it’s received. The text of the law and the way it’s portrayed in the media are nearly diametrically opposite.
Is it reasonable to disagree with Mississippi’s new legislation? Certainly. But only if you actually know what it says first.
Note: the text of the law is at http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2016/pdf/HB/1500-1599/HB1523SG.pdf
— Editorial Board