How Religious 'Liberty' Has Been Used to Justify Racism, Sexism and Slavery Throughout History
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Using religion to deny people rights is an old routine that harms both the church and the state.
By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet April 6, 2015[/center]
There has been an enormous backlash from Indiana's decision to enact a law that would allow businesses to discriminate if they invoke religious liberty. Responding to a flurry of boycott threats, Republican Governor Mike Pence signed a “fix” to the bill he says would prevent it from being used to discriminate.
But for the religious right, the battle lines have been drawn. 2016 presidential contenders like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Ben Carson and others have all rushed to defend Indiana's legislation, as a number of state legislatures continue to debate enacting similar measures. In Louisiana, one Republican lawmaker is introducing a narrower bill specifically taking aim at marriage, with the intent to allow businesses to discriminate against same-sex weddings and deny benefits to employees in same-sex marriages.
In all of these examples, religious belief is invoked to justify a right to discriminate. Proponents argue that constitutional protections for religious freedom are insufficient, and these new laws—aimed at granting businesses themselves exemptions from laws based on the invocation of religion—are necessary. It's no surprise that these laws are proliferating around the same time marriage equality is slowly becoming the law of the land in most of the country. However, cries of religious liberty and a religious-based right to discriminatory and harmful behavior are not new. For centuries, religion has been used and abused as a shield for harmful behavior, to justify everything from slavery to sexist violence to racism in the Jim Crow South.
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Normally not my type of article to post but a really bad toupee I saw changed my mind.[/font]
= new reply since forum marked as read
How to effing vote:
http://www.ringoffireradio.com/2015/04/this-is-why-church-tax-exemptions-should-be-ended-watch-this-preacher-politico/
This burns me up!
"granting businesses themselves exemptions from laws based on the invocation of religion"
Wait. exemptions from "laws based on the invocation of religion". What laws are based on the invocation of religion?
Misplaced modifier!!!!
How about: "granting businesses themselves exemptions based on the invocation of religion from laws"
Sorry...I can't help it.
Anyway... these new laws are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Religion and its ideas cannot trump the law. The law is supposed to be secular... like our government. If personal convictions trumped laws....well lets just say it's really important to my being to expose myself to strangers....so....
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Actually grammar isn't my forte either.... but unusual mistakes seem to catch my eye.
Spelling...forget it. That's why I edit all my posts 8 or 9 times 
The Seneca Falls Woman's Rights Convention of 1848 was one of the major gatherings of the women's movement, and is considered to have been one of the turning points for suffragists in particular. In the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions the activists there compiled, they specifically included a provision condemning those who would use the Bible to suppress their rights: “Resolved, That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.”
Clinging to verses in the Bible that gave unequal status to men and women, opponents of the suffragists justified their beliefs with religious teaching. “Who demand the ballot for woman? They are not the lovers of God, nor are they believers in Christ, as a class. There may be exceptions, but the majority prefer an infidel's cheer to the favor of God and the love of the Christian community. It is because of this tendency that the majority of those who contend for the ballot for woman cut loose from the legislation of Heaven, from the enjoyments of home, and drift to infidelity and ruin,” intoned Justin Fulton, a prominent reverend in 1869.
The religious-based bigotry against women was so intense that Elizabeth Cady Stanton actually wrote The Woman's Bible to directly challenge religious oppression of women. The book's critique of using religion to justify discrimination against women was considered so controversial it not only was denounced by sexists, but also by the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which saw the book as a mistake for the movement.
BIG Elizabeth Cady Stanton fan here.
Blows my mind how many self-proclaimed feminists quickly become apologists for the same religion that forces second class citizenship upon them whenever atheists criticize it.
