Here’s something you may not believe.
A South Carolina restaurant owner named Maurice Bessinger refused to serve black customers claiming that it violated his religious beliefs to do so.
His lawyer took the case all the way to the Supreme Court after his argument that Bessinger’s right to refuse service was protected under the First Amendment had been rejected several times.
“I’m just a fair man,” Bessinger said in a public statement. “I want to be known as a hard-working, Christian man that loves God and wants to further (God’s) work throughout the world as I have been doing throughout the last 25 years.”
The Supreme Court finally refused to hear the case…in 1968.
That’s right. The same argument evangelical business owners are making today to justify refusing service to same-sex couples is the same argument racist business owners made during the civil rights era.
But times have changed and conservative Christians and politicians, with the help of a previously conservative majority on the Supreme Court, are trying to turn back the clock.
They want to make discrimination legal again, only aimed at a different group.
Why is this happening? Discrimination on the basis of race is not a position any business owner is going to make today. What is different about discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation?
Here’s what I think. What’s different is that homosexuality has not yet gained equal status with heterosexuality in the way blacks have gained equal status with whites. It is true that racial discrimination still exists, but racial equality enjoys strong public support.
Homosexual equality has not yet reached that level of acceptance. Thus, people who would serve customers regardless of their sexual orientation are not yet ready to say those who won’t are guilty of discrimination.
Deep down many Americans, maybe most, are still not sure if homosexuality is morally right or wrong. This is why they are silent in the face of yet another example of an injustice that in a few years will be seen as incomprehensible.
But that equivocation is all that is needed for a society to tolerant injustice, and opens the door once again to religious beliefs being used to justify Christians doing terrible things as they have done in the past.
Because a belief is religious does not mean it deserves “rights” beyond a person being able to hold them. Once your beliefs get into the public arena your personal rights are tempered by the rights of others.
More than even that, though, is the sad reality that evangelicals apparently do not understand that being “Christian” does mean they are not guilty of being unjust in their actions.
Need I say it again? Religious beliefs have always been used to justify Christians doing terrible things.
That is what is going on with these so-called “religious freedom” laws being passed. Evangelicals are asking states to pass laws that protect their “right” to do terrible things again.
I can only hope they lose when these laws are challenged in court the same way they have already lost in the court of public opinion.
When Christians do terrible things they only succeed in making themselves look terrible.
It’s déjà vu all over again.
linnposts.com 
From what I have seen, it appears to me that.these religious freedom laws are designed to legalize a multitude of sins
Good way of putting it, Wally.
Jan,
I have come to see evangelicals as “equal opportunity” purveyors of bias and often hate. Hiding behind what they believe their God has told them is right, they feel free to demean, exclude, even demonize those who are “different” from them. Well, the Jesus that I have come to understand tells another story — one of compassion, acceptance, and love for all people.
Bill, your assessment of evangelicals is shared widely, which is why they do their cause more harm than good as they try to take the nation with them.
What ever happened to “live and let live” and “do unto others”?
Liza, evangelicals can’t do that because they are too busy saving your soul.
Someone wrote on facebook, “As a black person I find it almost offensive that one would compare the LGBT issue to that of black civil rights.”
I wrote, ” to be crass, the idea that women might get raped and based on a threat that’s statistically not valid which gets codified into law doesn’t sound at all like civil rights? That’s the basis for this anti-trans law. Put white in front of women and that doesn’t ring any bells?
Or ‘religious liberty’ being used as an execute for Jim Crow? Seriously? This sounds nothing like what we’re seeing now?”
How short a history we have. How awful we put blinders on to the suffering of those we don’t like or are fearful of.
I thought the Gospel called us to move beyond that. Who knows, maybe I’m the one that’s wrong.