Quick Note(s): Same-sex Rights This Week - One Loss, Two Wins

With one misstep, laws restricting same-sex rights continue to crumble...

Kansas (the misstep)  
When he was elected, Governor Sam Brownback (R) pledged to bring a conservative revolution to his state.  For the past three years, he has supported far right Republicans and uber-conservative causes over moderates and common decency. 

This week, Kansas took an unprecedented step backwards on human rights.  The Kansas House advanced a bill that will allow employers and businesses, both public and private, to refuse service to anyone they believed to be gay.  The bill would allow any employer to fire someone, or even refuse to hire them in the first place, based solely on their sexual orientation.  Fired gay employees could be denied their right to unemployment benefits.  A same-sex couple could be refused service at restaurants, movie theaters, bookstores, grocery stores, florists, etc. without repercussion. Government agencies would still be required to serve members of the LGBT community, but individual clerks would be empowered to refuse their assistance. 

Republicans frame this as an issue of religious freedom, a necessary protection for those whose religious beliefs condemn gays and lesbians as heretical.   State Representative Charles Macheers (R), one of the most ardent supporters of the measure, explained the Republican position this way:  "Discrimination is horrible.  It's hurtful...It has no place in civilized society, and that's precisely why we're moving this bill."

Yes, "discrimination is horrible", and dressing it up in a new suit and calling it "protection" doesn't change that fact.  Moreover, advancing a bill that effectively hands the religiously righteous' a tool contrived to legally disenfranchise an entire segment of our society simply because they don't like them takes that egregiousness to a whole new level.  Didn't we have enough of this in the last century?

Virginia (the crumbles)
In Wednesday's post, I noted that Virginia's new Attorney General Mark Herring (D) said he believed his state's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.  Yesterday, federal Judge Arenda Wright agreed with him.  In her ruling, she joined federal judges in other states by citing the 14th Amendment:  "These laws deny Plaintiffs their rights to due process and equal protection guaranteed under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."

Kentucky
This week, Judge John G. Heyburn III, federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, struck down part of his state's 2004 same-sex marriage ban.  His ruling says that Kentucky must recognize same-sex marriages that have been performed in other states or other countries where same-sex marriage is legal.  

The state had argued that marriage, which they identified as between one man and one woman, was part of "Kentucky's tradition." 

Judge Heyburn's ruling addressed their argument by saying: "For years, many states had a tradition of segregation and even articulated reasons why it created a better, more stable society.  In time, even the most strident supporters of these views understood that they could not enforce their particular moral views to the detriment of other's constitutional rights.  Here as well, sometime in the not too distant future, the same understanding will come to pass."

Amen! ...and please, someone tell Kansas.