We hadn't heard from Rep. Steve King (R-IA) for a while. I had assumed that was because he had gotten his arms caught in two vending machines, but I see that is not the case. He surfaced this week to warn us that the momentary failure of Arizona nutcases to legalize religious-based discrimination against gay people
will bring doom to us all.
“When you’re in the private sector and you’re an individual entrepreneur with God-given rights that our founding fathers defined in the Declaration, you should be able to make our own decisions on what you do in that private business,” King said.
He quickly clarified that he saw civil rights laws as an exception to that rule, but one that shouldn’t be expanded to protect LGBT people. “There’s nothing mentioned in [civil rights laws] about self-professed behavior,” he said, “and that’s what they’re trying to protect is special rights for self-professed behavior.”
Not sure what "self-professed" means in this context. Oh wait, he's gonna explain it to us.
The congressman went on to imply that LGBT people are making their identities known in order to entrap business owners into discriminating against them.
“The one thing that I reference when I say ‘self-professed,’” he said, “is how do you know who to discriminate against? They have to tell you. And are they then setting up a case? Is this about bringing a grievance or is it actually about a service that they’d like to have?”
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Ah, I see. It's all a plot by gay Americans to trick businesses into discriminating against them, probably by going in there and saying "I'm gay and I would like a hamburger and/or wedding cake" and stuff, thus driving innocent godbotherers to ruin. In fact, it's possible that straight people will start going into businesses claiming to be gay just to see if they get discriminated against. Where will the madness end?
He then implied that homosexuality cannot be “independently verified” and can be “willfully changed.”
“If it’s not specifically protected in the Constitution,” he said of civil rights protections, “then it’s got to be an immutable characteristic, that being a characteristic that can be independently verified and cannot be willfully changed.”
A characteristic that cannot be independently verified and
can be willfully changed? Hmm, that sounds like a religious belief. It sounds a
lot like a religious "belief," actually.
It would be a terrible thing if American businesses started pretending to have religious convictions in order to, say, claim immunity to certain laws or get out of certain business expenses. Soon you'd have places that sell model airplane kits pretending their whole business depended on the proper management of employee ovaries, or restaurants claiming that their religion forbids them from washing the salad tongs because that's what Salad Bar Satan would want. Luckily for all of us, those things probably would never happen because everybody knows American business owners are scrupulously honest.
Gotta watch out for those gay folks, though.