{"id":858,"date":"2014-02-27T10:15:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-27T10:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/02\/when-religious-liberty-was-used-to-justify-racism-instead-of-homophobia.html"},"modified":"2014-02-27T10:15:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T10:15:00","slug":"when-religious-liberty-was-used-to-justify-racism-instead-of-homophobia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/02\/when-religious-liberty-was-used-to-justify-racism-instead-of-homophobia.html","title":{"rendered":"When \u2018Religious Liberty\u2019 Was Used To Justify Racism Instead Of Homophobia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\n
\u201cAlmighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
\u2013\u00a0Judge Leon M. Bazile, January 6, 1959<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The most remarkable thing about\u00a0Arizona\u2019s \u201cLicense To Discriminate\u201d bill<\/a>\u00a0is how quickly it became anathema,\u00a0even among Republicans<\/a>. Both 2008 GOP presidential candidate John McCain and 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney called upon Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to veto this effort to protect businesses that want to discriminate against gay people. So did Arizona\u2019s other senator, Jeff Flake. And\u00a0former House Speaker Newt Gingrich<\/a>. Indeed, three state senators who voted for this very bill urged Brewer to veto it before she finally did so on Wednesday, confessing that they\u00a0\u201cmade a mistake\u201d when they voted for it to become law<\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n
The premise of the bill is that discrimination becomes acceptable so long as it is packaged inside a religious wrapper. As Arizona state Rep. Eddie Farnsworth (R) explained, lawmakers introduced it in response to instances where anti-gay business owners in other states were \u201cpunished for their religious beliefs<\/a>\u201d after they denied service to gay customers in violation of a state anti-discrimination law.<\/span><\/div>\n
Yet, while LGBT Americans are the current target of this effort to repackage prejudice as \u201creligious liberty,\u201d they are hardly the first. To the contrary, as Wake Forest law Professor Michael Kent Curtis\u00a0explained in a 2012 law review article<\/a>, many segregationists justified racial bigotry on the very same grounds that religious conservatives now hope to justify anti-gay animus. In the words of one professor at a prominent Mississippi Baptist institution, \u201cour Southern segregation way is the Christian way . . . . [God] was the original segregationist.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n

God Of The Segregationists<\/span><\/h4>\n
Theodore Bilbo was one of Mississippi\u2019s great demagogues. After two non-consecutive terms as governor, Bilbo won a U.S. Senate seat campaigning against \u201cfarmer murderers, corrupters of Southern womanhood, [skunks] who steal Gideon Bibles from hotel rooms<\/a>\u201d and a host of other, equally colorful foes. In a year where just 47 Mississippi voters cast a ballot for a communist candidate, Bilbo railed against a looming communist takeover of the state \u2014 and offered himself up as the solution to this red onslaught.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Bilbo was also a virulent racist. \u201cI\u00a0call on every red-blooded white man to use any means to keep the n[*]ggers away from the polls<\/a>,\u201d Bilbo proclaimed during his successful reelection campaign in 1946. He was a proud member of the Ku Klux Klan, telling Meet the Press that same year that \u201c[n]o man can leave the Klan. He takes an oath not to do that.
\nOnce a Ku Klux, always a Ku Klux.\u201d During a\u00a0filibuster of an anti-lynching bill<\/a>, Bilbo claimed that the bill\u00a0will open the floodgates of hell in the South. Raping, mobbing, lynching, race riots, and crime will be increased a thousandfold; and upon your garments and the garments of those who are responsible for the passage of the measure will be the blood of the raped and outraged daughters of Dixie, as well as the blood of the perpetrators of these crimes that the red-blooded Anglo-Saxon White Southern men will not tolerate.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAlmighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Judge Leon M. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen \u2018Religious Liberty\u2019 Was Used To Justify Racism Instead Of Homophobia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cAlmighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. 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