The GOP: Recycling Hate Because It's What They Do

A recent poll revealed that most Americans don’t think we need all these Religious Freedom Restoration Acts [RFRA] that have become all the rage of the GOP and their conservative wacknut followers, so, yeah, they’re over, right? Nope, the ‘Baggers and GOPers and conservatives are still trying to peddle discrimination based on God.

Senator Marco Rubio, who just Game of Throne’d his way into the presidential campaign, said he supports the “license to discriminate” provisions in these RFRAs:

“I think there’s a difference between not providing services to a person because of their identity, who they are or who they love, and saying, I’m not going to participate in an event, a same-sex wedding, because that violates my religious beliefs. There’s a distinction between those two things. We’re not talking about discriminating against a person because of who they are, we’re talking about someone who’s saying ... I just don’t want to participate as a vendor for an event, a specific event that violates the tenets of my faith.”

Okay, Marco, let me see if I can put this into plain English for you:

If, as a gay man, I am having a same-sex wedding and I ask your business, be it floral or bakery or tuxedo rental, to sell me flowers, bake me a cake, fit me for a suit, I am not asking you to participate in my wedding. I am asking for your services in exchange for payment. You are not my friend, my family, you are a florist, a baker or a tailor and I neither need your participation in my wedding, nor do I ask that you condone it.

Can you see how that works, Marco? Or are you sticking to your argument because it panders to your base of religious wingnuts?

And then we have Wingnut Grand Poobah, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who is also expected to launch a sure-to-fail presidential campaign, and is pushing for his own RFRA in Louisiana called the “Marriage and Conscience Act” would explicitly shield individuals — the religious kind, only, of course — from any consequences if they hold true to their belief that marriage is for different-sex couples only. This would hypothetically allow both private businesses and non-profit organizations like adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples:

“This legislation DOES NOT allow a restaurant or industry to refuse service to a gay or lesbian person. The law merely ensures the state cannot deny a license, certification, accreditation, or contracts, to a person or a business on the basis of their sincerely held religious belief about marriage.”

In other words, if you say God doesn't want you to bake that cake in exchange for a monetary fee, then you don’t have to because, you know, its gay and its icky.

Here’s the deal, Jindal; go back up and read what I told Marco Rubio and get that through your thick head. I neither need nor want you at my wedding; I just want a cake. And if you want to be a Bigot Baker [or florist or whatever] let me, let us all, know, by posting your discriminatory polices in your shop windows so we can all go somewhere else. But, Bobby, be aware that once you open up legalized discrimination to one group, you'll need to be ready for legalized discrimination for others.

And then we have Bush 3.0 and Ted Cruz, who defend these RFRAs because, well, pandering; well they don't admit to pandering they call it a matter of “conscience” and “religious freedom.”

Funny how someone else's freedom gets to trample on mine. But that's what the GOP wants; they are heading back to what Bush 2.0 did in 2004, by making a The Gays a wedge issue. Remember how W tried to use the far-fetched — at the time — notion that The Gays might somehow get married, to stir up his religious right base and help him slide into a second term as Moron in Chief?

Well, this new crop of GOP contenders are using Religion versus The Gays as their new wedge issue, hoping that when the election rolls around they’ll be able to use divisiveness as a way to win an election.

The trouble is, support for marriage equality is up, and as more and more people realize that same-sex marriage is no different than opposite sex marriage, and doesn't  hurt anyone, the more people are going to see that the RFRAs are ridiculous and unnecessary …

...  like those GOP candidates who offer nothing new, just the same old hate.