Right-Wing Activists: Yep, ‘Religious Freedom’ Protects Discrimination Against Jews

Jay Michaelson

In two separate incidents, conservative activists have been unable to explain why their desired ability to discriminate against gays wouldn’t also apply to Jews. Then they finally admit it: there’s fundamentally no difference.

“I don’t think about—things I don’t think about.” So said William Jennings Bryan, the lawyer arguing against evolution, at the infamous Scopes “monkey trial.” The question was about Cain’s wife; the answer was about willful ignorance.

The same philosophy was on display this week in Congress, when Mat Staver of the U.S. Liberty Counsel—which, like its better-known cousin the Alliance Defending Freedom, works in courts and legislatures to carve out religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws—struggled to distinguish between a wedding photographer turning away gay customers and one turning away black or Jewish ones.



“I think that’s fundamentally different,” Staver said, when asked by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who is Jewish. Why? Because “she’s not saying ‘I don’t want to go to a wedding where there are people who are gay or lesbian.’ She’s saying she doesn’t want to photograph a celebration of same-sex unions.”

Ah, so as long as gay people marry people of the opposite sex, they’re perfectly welcome. Just not when they get gay-married.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/right-wing-activists-yep-religious-freedom-protects-discrimination-against-jews.html