Turn Away the Gays in Tennessee is Dead on Water

                                                                       

Turn Away the Gays bill in Tennessee is dead for now as it seems to be in other states in the south. If it happens to show it’s ugly head again Im sure the courts will snip snip it away.

 The notion that there would be a law to discriminate and allow a business to go around anti discrimination laws is not getting traction. Even if it passed somewhere it is certain that it would be turned on appeal.  It simply makes no sense to have anti discrimination laws and then laws to allow discrimination because is a church running a business or a homophobe that decides that he/ she is not going to sell a cake that anybody else could buy but not a gay couple because they don’t like gay people for whatever reason they can come up with under the universe. 

The two most famous cases have been in England in the bed and breakfast and in the United States on the wedding cake issue. All these cases have been turn down on appeal and then the business’s have been sued in civil court and have been penalized with the best answer to discrimination which is money; Mightier than any religious believes or hatred feelings. 

It’s a real easy case to make before a court that if you have public business you don’t get to choose who your customers might be and you don’t get to be the judge of the lives that those individual’s might have. I don’t recall of a candy store not selling candy to pedophiles yet some people encouraged by churches and money from thinkers alike for legal fees, thought that they had a shoe in for discrimination. As time goes on and the fight continues on the common sense and fairness side that discrimination does not have any other name. For the good of society in the western world and because people can not be trusted to do the right thing all the time, there are laws based on common sense which say if you are in business to get money from people for a service the only thing that should matter to you is that you get paid. 

 The bill shielding people and businessesfrom lawsuits for refusing service to same-sex couples was shelved Tuesday by its new sponsor, who said current Tennessee law is adequate.

The bill generated controversy across the state two weeks ago when it was filed by state Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown. Less than a week after issuing a news release touting his sponsorship of the bill, he withdrew his name from the measure last Thursday and transferred sponsorship to Sen. Mike Bell, R-Athens. Opponents labeled it the "Turn Away the Gays" bill.

The bill was to be heard Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee but at the start of the meeting, Kelsey and Bell read from prepared statements saying the bill was being sent to the committee’s “general subcommittee.” That means Senate Bill 2566 is alive, can be called up anytime but its sponsor indicates he will not try to pass it this year.

The two gave possibly conflicting views about who the bill was intended to protect.

Kelsey, who declined to say last week why he withdrew, said the bill that he called the Religious Freedom Act “never allowed a restaurant or a hospital to refuse service to anyone. I would never introduce legislation that attempts to limit the civil rights of any Tennessean, whether straight or gay. The bill was defined to protect a pastor, a rabbi or a singer from being sued and forced to participate in a same-sex ceremony against their will.”

Bell said several times that it was to protect business owners.

“I took on this bill with the idea of protecting the religious freedom of our state’s business owners.” He cited a “baker in Colorado, a photographer in New Mexico and a venue owner in New Jersey” all sued for refusing to provide services to same-sex couples seeking to marry.

Bell said that after consulting three judges and a lawyer over the weekend, “I’m convinced that current Tennessee law protects our business owners from the type of lawsuit harassment we’ve seen in other states ... It’s my belief that current Tennessee law does allow business owners to choose to provide or refuse services based on consumer conduct.”

The original text of the bill filed by Kelsey defined the entities that it shielded from lawsuits as “any natural person, partnership, trust, estate, corporation, association, joint venture, joint stock company, or other organization excluding employees of this state or local government,” and “religious or denominational organizations, regardless of non-profit or for-profit status, and regardless of whether its activities are deemed wholly or partly religious, that is a religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society; an entity operated, supervised, controlled by, or connected to” such religious or denominational organizations, “or a privately held business operating consistently with its sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Adam Gonzalez, Publisher

Source for the Tenn case: commercialappeal.com

pic: adamfoxie,blog