MS SB2681- Not Just Against the Gays

The Mississippi legislature is in the process of enacting SB2681, a so-called Mississippi Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This law is not just about shop owners being able to discriminate against homosexuals, lesbians, transgenders, and bi-sexuals. It's an open assault on everyone's civil liberties.

 Look at the wording in this section:

 58         (c)"Exercise of religion" means the practice or
 59 observance of religion. "Exercise of religion" includes, but is
 60 not limited to, the ability to act or the refusal to act in a
 61 manner that is substantially motivated by one's sincerely held
 62 religious belief, whether or not the exercise is compulsory or
 63 central to a larger system of religious belief.

This is going back to the times when hospitals could refuse treatment of blacks.  This is going back to a time when businesses had signs hanging in their windows that Jews were not allowed.

The Founding Fathers knew what great harm religions could do.  I believe they wrote the 1st Amendment because the US was a haven for those who could not practice their religion freely in other countries.  Baptists, Quakers, Calvinists, and other Protestant sects flocked here.  So did Jews and other non-Christians.  They wanted people of faith to be able to worship as  they wanted without interference from the government.

This intended law can have dire consequences and to me is a danger to all.  This law can be used to discriminate against Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, and others as long as the person doing the discriminating is acting on "the refusal to act in a manner that is substantially motivated by one's sincerely held religious belief".

My grandfather at the age of 10, with his family, immigrated to this country because of real persecution and not the made up persecution of Fox News .  As Jews living in Ukraine they were unable to hold certain jobs, land, etc.  They faced pogroms were their villages were burned to the ground, women were raped, and all could be killed.  It was especially bad around Easter.

They came to this country because they knew that there was freedom.  There was religious freedom and they didn't have to worry about government interference.  There was bigotry.  Jews were not allowed in certain places but it was not government sanctioned discrimination.

This proposed law would allow government sanctioned discrimination against the LGBT community, non-Christians, non-whites, atheists, and even against Christians.  It must be stopped if the US is truly to be the Land of the Free.

Impressions of The Help

I saw The Help yesterday. The overwhelming I've had is anger followed by disbelieve and horror. The reviews of this movie seem to imply that it is a feel good movie. To me, it just showed the hateful and willful ignorance of bigots. It also showed how a group mentality can very easily take hold. When some dared to to speak out against the horrible laws, they were murdered. Mississippi has a long, bloody history against those who try to uphold justice. No, this wasn't a feel good movie at all. It brought home to me in a way that reading of the murder of Edgar Mevers and the murders of Civil Rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwermer, and James Chaney never could.

It is the insidious and relentless message hammered home that you don't speak out against the injustice of the Jim Crow laws and the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission.

One scene that made me so damn angry was Minnie, one of the help, had to use the bathroom . It was very stormy. The old white woman was okay with her using the toilet inside but her daughter, Hilly, totally freaked out and wanted the maid to go outside and use the toilet built especially for the help. But her mother told Minnie it was okay to use the inside toilet. When Hilly realized Minnie has used the inside toilet, she fired her.

I don't know why this one shred of lack of human decency made me so angry. Perhaps it was the buildup to the scene. Hilly, the one who said no to Minnie, was trying to get new legislation passed that special toilets would have to be built for the help. It is the piecemeal by piecemeal taking away of a person's dignity that is so troublesome.

It is also the hive mind that such actions possible that gets to me. It is the inability to see someone as person and keep heaping on degradation after degradation.


Governor Barbour may think that the White Citizens Council was benign but it wasn't. The whole purpose of these laws were to further degrade blacks and to punish whites who seemed to be too friendly.

This cartoon was published by the Mississippi Citizens' Council. Click on the link and see if the cartoon doesn't remind you of some of the arguments we are hearing today. Let me know what you think.

American Fears

I've become very disheartened in the direction the United States has been going since President Bush was president. At the time, I agreed with some of his policies. I did protest the invasion of Iraq but once troops were on the ground, I fully supported them. In an effort to understand the Islamic faith I began reading a website by Robert Spencer. He equates all Muslims with the radicals. I stopped reading after I had emailed him a question regarding Muslim prayers. In it, I said you gain a lot of understanding by a faith's prayer. I never received a response from him and this led me to believe he really wasn't really an expert on Muslims.

After 9-11, Americans, myself included, seemed content to just forget about all the things that used to make us a beacon of freedom for those oppressed by intolerance because of religious and political beliefs. One good President Bush did do was state over and over that the vast majority of Muslims do not believe in the cause of the radicals who flew the planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

However, because of fears of another attack some of our most cherished principles have been submerged. It didn't start with the War on Terror. It started with the War on Drugs. With those laws, our 4th, 5th, 7th and 8th Amendment rights have been encroached upon. With the War on Terror, even more encroachment has been seen.

These laws can be changed. What cannot be changed is the torture that was employed in order to gain information from captives. It used to be that the US was the one country where torture did not occur. Fears led us to torture and the imprisonment of detainees.

Now fears, anger, and hate-mongering are being fueled across the country by those who do not believe in the 1st Amendment. Protestors in California, Tennessee, and New York are protesting the building of mosques and religious centers. I try to be understanding of those who are protesting the Islamic center close to Ground Zero. There is a mosque already there. But I think a lesson can be learned from the Pentagon. A prayer chapel was built in the Pentagon in the area where the plane from that awful day flew in. Different religious use the chapel including Muslims.



We can keep the above image in our mind as standing for the ideals of our country or we can be:



and willing to deny follow Americans their rights:



We are the United States of America. Let us remain the home of the free and the brave and not let our fears get the better of us.