Sooner be a Hoosier

Sooner be a Hoosier

©2015  Ross Williams

Indiana recently passed a bill stained with the self-pitying tears of a religious minority called The Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  Such a law would be completely unnecessary if our nation's courts were doing their job in vacating laws which deny someone the ability to practice his religion as he sees fit over the objections of those around him.  But as we've seen over and over and over again, they aren't.  Hence, the need for specific laws.

To be honest, when I first heard of this new law, I assumed it was a yet another Hobby Lobby swipe against Obamacare, pitting a state law to not be compelled to provide birth control coverage due to the religious sentiments of a business owner against the federal law which compels all business owners to provide birth control coverage despite their religious sentiments, thus setting up a court showdown over federal incursions into state matters.  Lo and behold, however, the liberal orthodoxy and its media lapdogs has defined it as a christian bigot swipe against the rights of homosexuals to compel a bakery to bake a wedding cake with two grooms — or two brides, as it may be — on top.

I've already made my position on this so clear as to be transparent: the Constitution conveys no power of the [federal] government to control who can and who cannot be married, and therefore, because of Section 1 of the 14thAM, neither can the states' governments; ergo, gays cannot be legitimately denied the right to a future divorce, and laws [state or federal ] which prevent it must be voided … if our courts were to obey the Constitution.  But the Constitution also does not convey any power of the [federal] government to compel a business owner to do business with someone he doesn't want to do business with and therefore [etc] neither can the states'; ergo, if a bakery, florist, photographer, et cetera, doesn't want to be hired into gay nuptials, no power can legitimately compel him there, and laws which do must also be voided … if our courts were, again, to obey the Constitution.  Let the business risk bankruptcy.  It's the owner's business if he wants to deliberately turn away the business of homosexuals and the growing legions of their family, friends and other sympathizers … which includes me.

Lining up to predictably, if tediously, spout their own self-pitying tears and denounce Indiana as christian bigots are the usual liberal suspects in politics and Hollywood, but also Angie of Angie's List fame which is foregoing plans to expand its internet service to Indiana [because Indiana obviously doesn't yet have an Internet Service Provider], and the band Wilco which I'd never heard of until it made headlines by cancelling its Indianapolis concert over the matter.

The mayor of Seattle and the governor of Washington have imposed travel bans of municipal and state employees to Indiana in the performance of official business.  My guess is that this move is designed to be symbolic, as I would hope — for the fiscal sake of Seattlites and Washingtoners — that the opportunity to perform "official" city or state business in Indiana is vanishingly rare.  Connecticut has followed Washington into pointless spitefulness, and my hopes for fiscal sanity extend to Connecticants as well.

I will do my best to ignore the nation as it descends into the inevitably faddish and boring orgy of sanctimonious accusation and recrimination in this matter.  Instead, I'll use the time to remind everyone of what happened just five short years ago in Oklahoma, and hope that some people will pull their heads out of their asses long enough to stop being hypocrites.  Yes, I know: doubtful.

In response to a group of muslims in, I recall, Oklahoma City asserting the superior authority of islamic Sharia Law over state law in settling the divorce of a muslim couple, the Oklahoma legislature passed, and the Oklahoma governor signed into law, a bill that would prohibit the courts from entertaining the validity of "Sharia or international law" in Oklahoma's state courts.  In the divorce in question, the husband — a muslim — claimed that his wife was duty-bound to submit to the one-sided terms he offered her; the wife, whose muslimity was either gone or never there to begin with, claimed otherwise.  The state court ruled that Sharia Law was superior to Oklahoma's divorce statutes in this case, due to the husband at least being muslim, over the objections of the wife and every sane person in the state.  Soon thereafter, the Oklahoma legislature passed the law designed to prevent this from happening again.

The law which would have prevented further idiocies of this type was later struck down by a federal judge in Oklahoma; the ruling claimed that it would deny muslims their religious freedom manifest in the subjugation of women, even in defiance of state laws which would prevent the subjugation.  The United States apparently cannot deny a person his religion and prevent him from practicing it on those around him, no matter how repressive his religion may be.

Liberals were immediately thrown into a quandry!  Do they support the federal court's ruling as the enlightened validation of muslims?  Or do they denounce the ruling as a benighted backlash against women's rights?  [Liberals were not moved to question whether the entire fiasco impinged upon American constitutional democratic republicanism; liberals don't seem to recognize the concept exists].

Further questions plagued liberals in the aftermath of this federal court ruling: Sharia Law permits — indeed requires — the exclusion of many, many people from the daily activities of good muslims going about their business.  People such as: Jews.  People such as: atheists.  People such as: homosexuals.  Under islamic law, the only people permitted to be treated equally are other muslims, and then only if they are male.  Muslim women are only millimeters above dogs and Jews in second-classhood.

A few liberal contrarians posited the notion that if muslims could subjugate women during a divorce in defiance of state laws prohibiting such, then they could also, as businessmen, deny service to improperly-clad women, atheists at all, Jews not willing to pay double, and — yes — to homosexuals who may wish to rent a canopy for their gay wedding reception from Omar the Oklahoma Tent-Maker.  This denial of service would meet the "religious freedom" mandate of the federal court ruling which asserted that Sharia Law is superior to domestic law when the person desiring the Sharia outcome is a muslim, regardless of who any other party may be.

But these liberal contrarians were immediately shushed by the liberal establishment.  No, the establishment claimed, Oklahoma is a conservative, redneck state full of snake-handling bible thumpers and the only reason their legislature passed a law prohibiting Sharia's superiority over state law was because they are religious bigots and racists who hate muslims … even though islam is not a race, but a religion; one cannot be racist toward a religion.  Liberals have a duty to support muslims over a perceived christian majority no matter what backward bigotries muslims impose on everyone around them. …because christian bigotry is far, far worse.  Obviously.

Need proof?  Okay:

Did Angie's List pull out of Oklahoma in 2010, after learning that muslims are permitted, with federal protection, to be religiously free to treat women as chattel?  No.  Angie believes that the christian religious freedom to refuse a wedding cake to a gay wedding is far worse than the muslim religious freedom to treat women like dogs.

Did Wilco cancel their Oklahoma concerts, and did their lead singer's wife, actress Megan Mullaly, whose acting style consists of turning every character she ever plays into Megan Mullaly, issue condescending scolds of Oklahoma over muslims there being religiously free to treat Jews as fully-formed second-class citizens?  No.  Wilco and Megan — the sweetie — support muslims' religious freedom to be anti-semites but not christians' same to be anti-gay marriage.

Did self-satisfied liberal politicians and Hollywood simpletons issue their trite, canned, scripted screeds about the religious intolerance of muslims in their doctrinal denunciation of atheists now permitted to be enacted in Oklahoma under federally-protected Sharia Law?  No.

Did the self-aggrandizing "progressive" governors of various "progressive" states issue pious, sniffling, self-aggrandizing travel bans to Oklahoma in protest of the Oklahoma muslims' religious freedom to deny service to homosexuals that Sharia Law, now protected by federal court ruling, requires?  No.  It is religious freedom for muslims to be homophobes, but it is plain old bigotry for a christian.

The liberal mindset, such as it may be, deems it permissible, outright obligatory, to allow muslims to defy local, state and federal laws in their vassal-like treatment of the general [i.e., non-muslim] public required by their religious convictions as a testament to American-style religious freedom, and American-style "tolerance" of different ethno-cultural values.   Yet that same liberal mindset sees any other religion being granted the same privilege as a dog-vomit stew of every bigotry imaginable.

…with one notable exception: anti-christian bigotry.  That bigotry is owned by liberals.