“I call on every Mississippian, no matter what our race or region or party, to rise above our petty differences and build together the Mississippi our citizens deserve.”
These are the words shown on Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant’s website. Governor Bryant, it must feel ironic when you talk about rising above our petty differences. You’re morally repugnant and you should rethink your values.
On April 5, Governor Bryant signed into law a bill permitting LGBT discrimination based on religious faith. His argument insinuates your religion gives you the right to take away other people’s rights. This particular law is disgusting and anyone who supports it should take a long look at themselves.
This law clears the way for employers to cite religion while determining the workplace policies on dress code, grooming, and bathroom and locker access. Governor Bryant said in a statement that he signed the law, “to protect sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions of individuals, organizations and private associations from discriminatory action by state government.”
What this law is saying is that if you walk into a restaurant, and you’re a part of the LGBT community, they can refuse to serve you and kick you out. If you’re a part of the LGBT community and you work for someone who doesn’t like your sexual preference, they can fire you for it.
This law doesn’t simply give a cake shop owner shop the ability to deny baking a cake for a gay wedding, this law gives the cake shop owner the ability to kick the LGBT community out at the door.
So if you do not pretend to be so straight it hurts, you will be punished.
Can you imagine what would happen if the Mississippi government supported discrimination against any other group—such as Christians? There would be a holy war against the Mississippi government.
To really provide context to how bad this law is, let’s take out the LGBT aspect of the issue and lets replace it with, say, discrimination of people because of their race. Is this starting to sound like history repeating itself? The reason why the discrimination against LGBT is similar to the discrimination of blacks is because both groups are oppressed for something they are born with.
During your childhood, did you ever learn about the discrimination against blacks? Were you as appalled as I was that people who are nice, law abiding citizens, who just so happened to be black, could be subject to such a high level of hate and intolerance? Well, guess what, people are using the same arguments to justify their hate and discrimination against the LGBT community.
However, now is different from the past, we have the opportunity to reflect on our history and realize that an individual’s right to deny someone is just a nice way of supporting discrimination against anyone who is different. So lets call it what it is: you’re supporting your “rights” even if it is at the expense of other people’s.
If you really call yourself a supporter of rights, it should be with all law-abiding citizens, not just the ones you approve of.
Do these individuals who want to discriminate against the LGBT community propose continuing to live in a segregated society? Do they want to take everyone who considers themselves a part of the LGBT community and ship them off to their own island?
We cannot continue to allow our society to preach intolerance and discrimination against those who are different. Our country is guilty of extreme discrimination and hate in the past, and we are now continuing to move in that direction.
Although this article is focused on the law in Mississippi, this is not just a one-state issue, this is a societal issue that each one of us must address. We can either be the generation who works to end this discrimination, or we can be marked in the history books as another generation who hated other people just because they’re different.
