Religion

Heddi

(18,312 posts) Wed Mar 22, 2017, 04:15 PM Mar 2017

Kentuckys religious freedom law gives students the green light to discriminate against LGBTQ peers

http://www.vox.com/identities/2017/3/21/14999558/kentucky-lgbtq-religious-freedom-school

Kentucky’s religious freedom law gives students the green light to discriminate against LGBTQ peers
The new law comes after the governor declared 2017 the “Year of the Bible.”

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin and his Republican peers in the state legislature want to make certain that students in public schools can discriminate against LGBTQ kids.

So even though the states’ civil rights laws already fail to protect LGBTQ people, the governor — who declared 2017 the “Year of the Bible” — signed a religious freedom bill that will effectively let students cite their religious beliefs as a reason to discriminate.

The law, SB17, is meant to protect religious expression in school, generally adding all sorts of protections to this end — in reaction to a school cutting a Bible verse from a production of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

One of the provisions in SB17 also lets student groups discriminate against would-be members: “No recognized religious or political student organization is hindered or discriminated against in the ordering of its internal affairs, selection of leaders and members, defining of doctrines and principles, and resolving of organizational disputes in the furtherance of its mission, or in its determination that only persons committed to its mission should conduct these activities.”

...
LGBTQ advocacy groups claim that a student group in a taxpayer-funded school could use this section to argue that it can now prohibit LGBTQ members. The group can, for example, say that it religiously opposes homosexuality, and ban any gay students from the group since their existence would go against such a belief. And the student group could do this, LGBTQ groups argue, even if school or other on-campus policies ban anti-LGBTQ discrimination, because state law takes precedence.

...
But here’s the thing: As alarming as this may sound, a student group could already discriminate against LGBTQ peers under Kentucky law. So while a school on its own could ban anti-LGBTQ discrimination within its campus, state law offered no such protections. That’s because Kentucky, like most states, already fails to protect LGBTQ people in its nondiscrimination laws. And while LGBTQ groups argue that a creative reading of federal law should prohibit such discrimination, courts have yet to fully uphold that view — leaving anti-LGBTQ discrimination legal in most of the country.