Phil Bryant: Who Cares About 80s Rockers? [VIDEO] - https://t.co/TF5yaIf9Ht pic.twitter.com/3lLbbp50jZ
— JoeMyGod (@JoeMyGod) April 21, 2016
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant took time out of his day to be interviewed by Tim Wildmon, head of the Mississippi-based anti-gay hate group the American Family Association…. [T]he governor said that he didn’t understand why the [radical anti-LGBT] law provoked so much outrage, since it was just an effort to balance the scales of justice by allowing people to openly discriminate in the name of “religious liberty.”….”This is about the churches,” Bryant said. “The next stop will be American Family Radio and it will be Mississippi College, it will be St. Dominic’s Hospital as lawsuits will be filed; it will be churches where pastors can say, ‘I can’t perform that ceremony,’ a lawsuit will be filed, it will go to a federal court and the federal court will say, yes, they should be a protected class, those who choose to marry and want to be married in the church and that church might lose its tax-exempt status and they’ll have to close. And church after church after church across this country will close.”
It’s an interesting- and as self-serving as it is inaccurate- justification for haters and bigots who believe their faith allows them to use it as a bludgeon with which to beat down those they consider “less than.” To hear Gov. Bryant talk about it, Christians deal with a truly horrible degree of persecution. From coast to coast, good, God-fearing, patriotic, Conservative Christians are denied the right to…wait for it…deny others their rights.
For some reason, the American Taliban have convinced themselves that while all men are created equal, some (heterosexual, Conservative, and Christian) men are by virtue of their religious faith more equal than others. They’re so convinced of the righteousness and rectitude of their sincerely held religious convictions that they believe it grants them the right to force those convictions upons all Americans, most of whom happen not to share them.
When you believe God is on your side, you never have to worry about the rights of other, lesser mortals. Your God is a mighty God who’s convinced you that, as a superior moral being, you have the absolute right to give your narrow moral/ideological/theological framework the force of law. Anyone who happens to stand in your way and resist your godly efforts are the real haters and bigots.
WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE CHRISTIANS SO???
“We think people of faith have rights,” he continued. “I know that’s a strange notion, but we believe the scales of justice must be balanced for those people of faith and those that have other ideas about their desires in life. And that’s what the scales of justice must do is be balanced and we believe that this is a step in protecting the civil liberties of people of faith just as the First Amendment of the Constitution does.”
No one’s disputing that people of faith have rights…because they’re the same rights those of us who consider ourselves good without God have- the right to free speech, free expression, and to practice whatever faith (or lackthereof) we choose. Equal rights for the LGBT community aren’t “special rights,” the dismissive phrase Conservatives so often use to justify their hatefulness and intransigence.
Where Gov. Bryant goes wrong in his argument is his assertion that being a person of faith comes with the right to judge others and force your faith upon those who don’t share your beliefs. Contrary to what Gov. Bryant is trying to justify, being a Christian doesn’t come with the right to deny others their human rights. There’s no right to dictate which restrooms transgender individuals may use. All that claiming the Divine Right to discriminate against those you deem “less than” will accomplish is to expose the breadth and depth of the self-righteousness and superiority too many Christians seem to believe is their God-given right.
Despite Gov. Bryant’s breathless declarations on the subject, it’s not about “balancing the scales of justice.” It’s not about “protecting religious freedom.” It’s not even about protecting privacy or preserving the sanctity and safety of public restrooms. It has nothing at all to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ or any other aspect of religious faith. No, it’s purely and simply about fear, homophobia, intolerance, and hatred. It’s an inept and despicable effort to single out a minority class of people as the target of officially sanctioned discrimination.
No matter how much lipstick Gov. Bryant assiduously applies to this pig, what he has remains a shining example of porcine excess. He can dress it up with flowery language and appeals to respecting the rights of Christians to exercise “religious freedom”…but he can’t change the truth that what he’s attempting to justify is in the final analysis not at all about protecting the rights of Christians to practice their faith and live by their convictions.
What he’s justifying is discrimination and oppression wrapped in the warm embrace of Christianity…which seems about as reprehensible as it gets.
