Compliments of Andrew Heller, Saginaw News 12/09/2014, Page A07 When this is law, don’t tell me how to live my life Thank heavens the Michigan House passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which will finally allow my religious beliefs to trump the law. Once the Senate follows suit and the governor signs the act into law, I will, in theory, be free to drive 120 mph, jaywalk with impunity and declare myself exempt from state taxes and regulations. For I am the founder of the Church of Andy, whose operating philosophy is What Andy Wants, Andy Gets and, as we know, my deeply held religious views, antisocial as they may seem, are far more important than mere law. So sayeth the Republicans with this latest bit of lame duck legislation. Yes, yes, some people think giving people the right to ignore laws they disagree with on religious grounds pretty much creates a bad, bad precedent. All anyone has to do, according to the act, is prove that a law burdened their free expression of a sincerely held religious belief. And how hard is that? Religions are built on belief systems, not laws. And as Captain Barbossa said in “Pirates of the Caribbean,” what some believe to be rules are really more like guidelines, meaning they’re wide open to interpretation. So, don’t want Muslims or Christians or Jews or Wiccans or Heaven’s Gate UFO worshippers in your restaurant? Just claim that according to your interpretation of your religion, you shouldn’t have to serve heathens. Don’t want gay or transgender people living in your apartment complex? Same thing. Just say renting to blasphemers is against your religion. Who’s going to say it’s not? Don’t want to offer birth control through your company’s health insurance plan because you believe life begins at leer? Just say “Gee, I’d like to but I got a memo from God and, well, sorry, not gonna happen.” Of course, Republicans bristle at the notion that bad or unintended precedents could result from their bill. They’re doing it for our own good, after all. Right? But if so, how come they killed an amendment to clarify that their proposed law could not be used to challenge the state’s antidiscrimination law? Then there’s the companion bill offered by House Speaker Jase Bolger that would have expanded Michigan’s civil rights acts to include the LGBT community. That didn’t even make it out of committee. “I’m sad (about that),” Bolger said. I’ll bet. So what do those things tell you? It tells me critics who call this bill a license to discriminate were right on the money, and that if this passes religious views will essentially trump the law. It also tells me I’m never going to have to pay a parking ticket ever again. So sayeth me.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 12:00:02 +0000
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