Providing more evidence that the most vicious homophobes on the Christian Right simply do not believe in our free American system of government, notorious hate group leader and widely discredited “historian” Scott Lively has announced a campaign to effectively dismantle the First Amendment if the exercise thereof in any way hurts the fee wees or cramps the style of extremist right-wing Christians. The horror he is trying to address is the possibility that his cohort might have to abide by the same laws as everyone else, and he’s calling his proposal the First Amendment White Heterosexual Extremist Christian Supremacy Clause:
The First Amendment Supremacy Clause
In no circumstance shall sexual orientation regulations supersede the First Amendment rights of individuals, churches and religious organizations to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion.
For the purpose of this statute religious organizations are those whose policies or culture are substantially influenced by religious values, including but not limited to Christian bookstores, adoption agencies, hospitals, businesses, social organizations and student clubs on college campuses.
Statement of legislative intent: The First Amendment Supremacy Clause is designed to ensure that the first principles of the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution, namely religious liberty and freedom of expression, are preserved and honored as essential values deeply rooted in our history and laws, as against the claims and reach of the newly invented category of law known as Sexual Orientation Regulations. It is the purpose of this legislation to clearly recognize and affirm that laws and policies based on sexual orientation, gender identity or like terms have no power to infringe upon or otherwise restrict the inalienable rights of Americans which are enshrined in the First Amendment, and which many generations of our citizens have shed their precious blood to protect.
This is a bunch of flowery language to essentially assert that extremist religious fanatics should have the right to discriminate against anyone they please, because they think they’re better than the rest of America. Where they got this idea, I’m not quite sure, since they haven’t contributed anything positive to American society that I can put my finger on.
Like many religious extremists over the course of our history, and like Jim Crow racists, they believe that the Constitution affords them guarantees that never were there. No one (no one!) wants to infringe on the rights of religious organizations to act as they see fit, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. The rub, of course, does come in when religious organizations receive federal money, and then expect to be given carte blanche to discriminate against people. If such organizations want to be treated like churches, then fine. Give back the federal money.
[h/t Joe]
