Mississippi's Senate just approved a sweeping 'reiigious liberty' bill
that critics say is the worst yet fot LGBT rights
Meridian resident Nykolas Alford waves a rainbow-colored flag designed with the U.S. flag during a Human Rights Campaign protest of House Bill 1523 on the Mississippi State Capitol steps in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, March 29, 2016. (Justin Sellers/The Clarion-Ledger via AP)
By Sarah Kaplan
March 31 at 2:45 AM
Mississippi’s House Bill 1523 says, among other things, that public employees, businesses, and social workers cannot be punished for denying services based on the belief that marriage is strictly between a man and a woman. Same goes for people who act on the belief that “sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage” and that gender is determined at birth. It says the government can’t prevent businesses from firing a transgender employee, clerks from refusing to license a same-sex marriage, or adoption agencies from refusing to place a child with a couple who they believe may be having premarital sex.
As of Wednesday, HB 1523 has passed Mississippi’s House and Senate.
The “Religious Liberty Accommodations Act” must return to the House for to resolve differences, according to the Mississippi Business Journal. But it is expected to be approved there (it passed 80 votes to 39 in February). Then it will go to the desk of Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, who has championed religious liberty bills in the past.
Ben Needham, director of the southern LGBT advocacy group Project One America, told Buzzfeed Wednesday that the measure “is probably the worst religious freedom bill to date.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/03/31/mississippis-senate-just-approved-a-sweeping-religious-liberty-bill-that-critics-say-is-the-worst-yet-for-lgbt-rights/
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that the business community reacts forcefully to this law taking effect just as it has in Georgia and NC.
There should be significant monetary consequences to this silly and overreaching act by the legislature. 
