Tag: RFRA

More than 78 percent of Americans identify as Christian. Less than three percent of Americans identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.

I have to admit it: I’m RFRA’d out. I felt at least somewhat engaged in the topic when Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act first came rumbling into America’s media landscape.

Just as America is finally inching closer to marriage equality, (c’mon, SCOTUS, don’t let us down!) states like Arkansas and North Carolina are passing, what are incorrectly termed, Religious Freedom Restoration Acts.

On Nov. 16, 1993, then-President Bill Clinton signed the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law, calling religious freedom, “the most precious of all American liberties.” But things have changed considerably since then.

Even though religious freedom laws may not usher in mass discrimination, it essentially allows people to pass judgment on others and discriminate against them.

A local Spokane man organized a small rally in Riverfront late Saturday morning in order to protest the recent passing of Indiana and Arkansas’s Religious Freedom Restoration Acts.

Before this week, few people had heard of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act or could even pronounce its acronym, RFRA (Riff-ra), even though there’s a federal version of the law and 20 states have passed their own versions. Is it a “license to discriminate,” as liberals claim, or a “protection of religious freedom,” as conservatives claim?