A Reaction Of Near Hysteria Nationally And By The Press
Mississippi’s “Religious Freedom” Law (HB 1523) passed overwhelming by the Senate and House and was signed into law by Gov. Phil Bryant: The legislation was useless, worthless, dumb and should never have been passed and signed into law. Passage of HB 1523 could be described as political pandering. Yet, what is almost worse is the near hysterical reaction to the law by many people, various organizations, the LGBT community, national corporations and most of all, the press. Some of the same corporations that have spoken out against HB 1523, often with indignation and outrage, are companies that do business in countries that stone homosexuals. On the front page of the daily newspaper serving the Gulf Coast, it was headlined that a “No Hate In Our State” rally is planned in Gulfport. The law has nothing to d0 with “hate” and no supporter of the legislation has advocated hate of anybody. On Tuesday we learned that John Grisham and other Mississippi writers (however, Grisham lives in Virginia) released a statement calling for the repeal of HB 1523. Grisham and the others will have as much success with this line of advocacy as they did with their calls to change the state flag. In the same Clarion.Ledger article, a booking agent expressed concerned about gay friends finding a place to stay in Mississippi. Let me assure him, there is not one hotel or motel in the state that will ask if a person is gay when they make a reservation. No one dining out at any restaurant will be asked if they are gay before they are seated. The statement by Grisham and the other writers also talked about the “rhetoric of hate.” There is no rhetoric of hate in the HB 1523 or from those legislators who supported the bill.
North Carolina was the first state to get hit with the political correctness of the LGBT agenda. That state passed a law that prevents cities and counties from forcing businesses to give transgender people access to the bathroom of their choice. It is commonly called the “bathroom bill.” Do you really want a person who is biologically a male to have access to a restroom for women and female children? Of course, the governor of New York banned state employee travel to North Carolina, and now added Mississippi. This is the same governor that is promoting travel and trade with communist Cuba and its brutal regime that jails opponents left and right.
Pay Pal cancelled a major expansion in North Carolina because of the bathroom bill. PayPal might want to explain why its international headquarters is in Singapore where people engaged in private consensual same-sex acts can face two years in jail. It might also want to explain why it announced in 2012 that it would open offices in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While North Carolina placed some common sense limits on public bathrooms, the UAE reportedly jails gay and transgender people. On the subject of New York, it is laughable that Mississippi ex-pats living in NYC cancelled the annual Mississippi Picnic in Central Park citing the passage of HB 1523 and expected protestors if the event was held as it has been for almost 40 years. Not so laughable: the Clarion.Ledger’s making a big deal of the comments about HB 1523 by the gay brother of a state senator who voted for the bill. On Tuesday, the daily Clarion.Ledger email to subscribers noted that “Lawmakers call for do-over on religious objection bill” and that first-term Rep. Jay Hughes of Oxford was calling a press conference on the issue. Not much chance of a do-over of a bill already signed into law. When he grows up, Hughes wants to be Nancy Pelosi. I am also confident that a lot of people who are outraged about HB 1523 have not read the full bill. Earlier this week I had lunch with a friend who agreed with me that the bill should not have been passed by the legislature. On the other hand he noted the hypocrisy of some opponents of the legislation. He told some people opposed to HB 1523 to read the entire bill and then let him know why they had problems with it. He added that they should read the bill and not go by what liberal Clarion.Ledger executive editor Sam Hall and others say what the bill says. He didn’t hear back from them. There is one positive side to the uproar over HB 1523. Because of the Clarion.Ledger’s own hysteria and obsession with HB 1523, at least the constant barrage of change the state flag stories has slowed.
Let’s be clear on one thing. The current LGBT issues and HB 1523 are not the same thing as the 50s and 60s in Mississippi. Those were days of segregation, racism and violence that will always be a terrible mark on our state’s history. Colin Powell had it right when he was chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff and Bill Clinton pushed his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Although Powell has since changed his tune on gay marriage, at the time Powell said, “Skin color is a benign, nonbehavioral characteristic. Comparison of the two (black civil rights and gay rights) is a convenient but invalid argument.”