Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant in 2013.
Gospel Of Mark: Why Doesn't Kim Davis Deny Marriage Licenses To The Previously Divorced?
Mississippi governor signs law allowing businesses to refuse service to gay people
Mark Berman WAPO
Mississippi’s governor on Tuesday signed into law a bill that allows businesses to refuse services to gay couples based on religious objections.
This bill states that it protects “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions,” including a belief that marriage is only between a man and a woman. It also says that a person’s gender is that “determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth” and goes on to say that businesses can determine who is allowed to access bathrooms, dressing rooms and locker rooms.
Gov. Phil Bryant (R) said in a statement that he was signing the bill “to protect sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions,” arguing that the new legislation is meant to allow people to exercise their religious freedom.
“This bill does not limit any constitutionally protected rights or actions of any citizens of this state under federal or state laws,” he said. Bryant added: “The legislation is designed in the most targeted manner possible to prevent government interference in the lives of the people from which all power to the state is derived.”
A host of groups had called on Bryant to veto the bill, arguing that the legislation allows for state-sanctioned discrimination. Lawmakers and others who supported the bill echoed Bryant in saying that the bill only protects the rights of people with religious beliefs.
“This is a sad day for the state of Mississippi and for the thousands of Mississippians who can now be turned away from businesses, refused marriage licenses, or denied housing, essential services and needed care based on who they are,” Jennifer Riley-Collins, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, said in a statement. “This bill flies in the face of the basic American principles of fairness, justice and equality and will not protect anyone’s religious liberty.”
Before the bill was signed by the governor, the state’s lieutenant governor, Tate Reeves, said it was needed after the Supreme Court ruled last year that gay couples have a right to marriage.
“In the wake of last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision, many Mississippians, including pastors, wanted protection to exercise their religious liberties,” Reeves, a Republican, said in a statement last week. “This bill simply protects those individuals from government interference when practicing their religious beliefs.”
Mississippi’s new law is set to take effect in July.
Similar laws have been proposed or enacted in other states, leading to heated controversies — and, in several cases, an outcry from business groups that scuttled or changed the bills.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) last week vetoed a religious liberty bill there, a decision that came after the National Football League and Hollywood productions criticized the measure and suggested it could cost the state business. Similar bills were quashed or altered for similar reasons in Arizona,Indiana and Arkansas.
Some business leaders and groups in Mississippi have spoken out against the bill there. IBM said it in a statement that the company was “disappointed” that Bryant signed a bill that “will permit discrimination against people based on marriage status, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression.”
But in some other states where religious liberty bills were proposed, businesses and organizations had considerable cudgels to wield: Arizona was set to host a Super Bowl as well as a new Apple manufacturing plant; Indiana, home to the NCAA, was also where the organization was holding the men’s basketball Final Four amid the uproar over that state’s bill. Georgia, like North Carolina, faced threats from professional sports leagues hosting major events in their states.
“Big business and Hollywood have engaged in economic blackmail in Mississippi just like they have in Indiana, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas to try to force government discrimination of those who support natural marriage,” Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said in a statement. “However, unlike Indiana and Georgia, leaders in Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas have chosen to defend the fundamental freedom of their citizens to believe and live according to those beliefs, rather than capitulate to the economic threats of big business and entertainment.”
Perkins said Mississippi’s law “gives fresh momentum to efforts on the federal and state level to stop government discrimination against people who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.”
Bryant’s decision on Tuesday was also praised by the Rev. Franklin Graham, a North Carolina evangelist and the son of the Rev. Billy Graham.
Missouri lawmakers had approved a religious freedom bill last month, not long after South Dakota’s Republican governor vetoed a bill that would have required schoolchildren to use bathrooms matching their biological sex.
Bryant signed the “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act” in Mississippi not long after PayPal, the California-based online payments firm, announced that it would abandon plans to expand to North Carolina due to a controversial law there. PayPal had planned to open a facility in Charlotte that state officials said would bring 400 jobs and millions of dollars to the local economy there.
The North Carolina law bars local governments from extending civil rights protections to gay and transgender people. Federal agencies have said they are reviewing federal funding to North Carolina due to that legislation. Legislators in North Carolina have defended the bill in the face of what that state’s governor called a “smear campaign.”
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