The Gay Thing: After Extreme Silliness, Louisiana Deadly, Seriously Anti-Gay

Even though I haven't blogged very much of late, most of it has been on the same theme: anti-gay legislation by Republicans. There is a "gay panic" going on over the perceived imminence of a Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality. Religious conservatives are desperate for a way to wiggle out of having to recognize, acknowledge, "participate in" or even catch a glimpse of legal same-sex marriage.

Some of these new stories manage to take hold in the public, and take over news cycles, but they veer wildly from righteous indignation (on the LGBT/ally side) to hyperbolic shrieking (on the religious nutbar side), to extreme knee-jerk overreaction (on both sides) to extraordinarily stupid analogies (mostly on the nutbar side), and eventual subject burnout. I'm exhausted by the subject at the moment. But then, it suddenly gets real again.

Now, I've written in this space how difficult a topic this is to tackle, because there is so much wrong with the right's straw man arguments. There is sort of a field full of straw men, each assembled from so much wrong stuff, there's no straight-ahead approach to mow them all down. I keep trying, but it ain't easy. Suffice it to say that the conservative case for discrimination-as-freedom side is 10 kinds of wrong. Check my previous recent posts for further info on the subject, the tangent is too long to get back into here.

No, the subject of this post shows that the silliness of the pizza place (now fat with cash, thanks to bigot-bred fundraising) story was an aberration. The real danger is still steaming down the tracks, and the latest train comes from Louisiana, which is poised to go "full Indiana" on us, only they've cranked it up to 11. They've done us the favor of actually singling out gay people though, which may finally unwittingly shine a truth flashlight on this thing, that can't be dodged.

[Excerpt]

Extreme ‘Religious Liberty’ Bill Could Make Louisiana The Next Indiana

Louisiana is the latest state considering adopting a religious freedom bill, after state Rep. Mike Johnson (R) introduced legislation Friday that could allow businesses to refuse service for same-sex weddings and deny benefits to employees in same-sex marriages. The legislation follows bills passed in Indiana and Arkansas that led to outcry from an array of businesses and conventions, and according to experts who spoke to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “would be a license to the private sector to refuse, for religious or moral reasons, to recognize same-sex marriages.” But while Indiana and Arkansa’s Religious Freedom Restoration Acts safeguard business owners who might discriminate, the Louisiana bill, titled the “Marriage and Conscience Act,” specifically endorses that discrimination. . .

Read more at: Think Progress