Indiana Republicans Introduce The Most Anti-LGBT LGBT Rights Bill Ever
After last spring’s disastrous “religious liberty” legislation and months of chatter, Indiana Republicans have cooked up some new legislation to protect LGBT people from discrimination. Unfortunately, a draft of the new bill reveals that it is designed to accomplish the complete opposite.
The bill, which will be known as Senate Bill 100, does add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the state’s nondiscrimination laws as it claims to. However, it expends far more words to limit the extent of those protections, making them all but worthless to most plaintiffs.
Religious organizations are free to discriminate.
All religious or religious-affiliated organizations are exempt from the bill’s provisions related to sexual orientation and gender identity only. A clear attempt to borrow from the “Utah compromise,” this alone guarantees that LGBT protections would be sub-par compared to the state’s other protect classes.
Small businesses are free to discriminate.
Further enabling special discrimination against LGBT people, the Indiana bill contains special exemptions for businesses with fewer than four full-time employees to refuse to serve same-sex couples. Specifically, they may refuse to provide any goods or services “for any solemnization, rehearsal, reception, celebration, or social event for a marriage ceremony, renewal of marriage vows, or marriage anniversary.”
More: http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/11/18/3723348/indiana-lgbt-road-map-to-discrimination/
