Friday, June 12, 2015

NC Legislature Overrides Veto of Marriage Discrimination Bill

To no one’s surprise, the North Carolina legislature has overridden Gov. Pat McCrory’s veto of a bill that allows government officials to refuse to perform same-sex weddings even though they are legal in that state. Because they think it’s okay for the government officials to pick and choose which laws they’ll follow.

Government officials in North Carolina can refuse to perform same-sex marriages by citing religious objections under a new law pushed through on Thursday by the Republican-led legislature, which voted to override the governor’s veto.

The law protects the jobs of magistrates and other officials who refuse to perform marriages of gay couples by citing a “sincerely held religious objection.”

Governor Pat McCrory, also a Republican, had said the officials who swore to defend the Constitution and perform their duties of office should not be exempt from upholding their oath.

The state House of Representatives on Thursday overrode his veto by reaching the three-fifths majority in a 69-41 vote. The state Senate held a similar vote earlier this month.

North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore said in a statement after the vote that the law “protects sincerely held religious beliefs while also ensuring that magistrates are available in all jurisdictions to perform lawful marriages.”

So if a Muslim DMV clerk has a “sincerely held religious belief” that women shouldn’t drive cars and refuses to issue driver’s licenses to all women, you’d be okay with that, right? Hell no, he wouldn’t. He’d be screaming “SHARIA LAW! THE MUSLIMS ARE TAKING OVER!” As always, when the religious right says “religious freedom” what they really mean is “Christian privilege” — we don’t have to follow the same rules everyone else does.

The good news is that this law is almost certainly going to be struck down in court very shortly.

No comments:

Post a Comment