Conservative religious groups and Republican lawmakers have launched a concerted effort to allow discrimination based on prejudices born of faith.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:

Kansas set off a national firestorm last week when the GOP-controlled House passed a bill that would have allowed anyone to refuse to do business with same-sex couples by citing religious beliefs. The bill, which covered both private businesses and individuals, including government employees, would have barred same-sex couples from suing anyone who denies them food service, hotel rooms, social services, adoption rights, or employment—as long as the person denying the service said he or she had a religious objection to homosexuality. As of this week, the legislation was dead in the Senate. But the Kansas bill is not a one-off effort. 

Republicans lawmakers and a network of conservative religious groups has been pushing similar bills in other states, essentially forging a national campaign that, critics say, would legalize discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Republicans in Idaho, Oregon, South Dakota, and Tennessee recently introduced provisions that mimic the Kansas legislation. And Arizona, Hawaii, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Mississippi have introduced broader "religious freedom" bills with a unique provision that would also allow people to deny services or employment to LGBT Americans, legal experts say. 

"This is a concerted campaign that the religious Right has been hinting at for a couple of years now," says Evan Hurst, associate director of Truth Wins Out, a Chicago-based nonprofit that promotes gay rights. "The fact that they're doing it Jim Crow-style is remarkable, considering the fact that one would think the GOP would like to be electable among people under 50 sometime in the near future."

The article goes on to give examples from Idaho, to South Dakota, to Tennessee of states that have introduced bills that would allow businesses to refuse service to anybody whose lifestyle insulted their religious beliefs. 

Which by the way was one of the arguments used during the Jim Crow era to refuse service to blacks and to prevent interracial marriages.

So let me address the elephant in the room.

I get quite a lot of negative feedback for my promotion of secular ideals and my attacks on religion. And I understand why it might upset certain people.

However what everybody has to recognize is that ALL of these recent attacks on our human rights and personal freedoms are the result of religion.

What other reason is ever given for denying women access to abortion? The belief that it is against God's wishes.

What other reason is given for keeping gays from getting married? That it is against the teachings of the Bible. 

What other reason is given for the attacks on science that we have seen lately? The fact that Evolution disproves the Genesis account of creation and the evidence that man can destroy the climate on the planet that religious people believe God provided to his people.

That is pretty much it in a nutshell.

So please tell me how to fight against all of this WITHOUT attacking it at its source.

Religion played a very important part in the development of mankind on this planet, there is no real argument against that. However today, in my opinion, that benefit is greatly reduced, and the negative impact seems to be growing exponentially.

So forgive me if I step on a few of your toes, but the battle is bigger than you.

And what we are fighting for is bigger than any one religion, or any one religion's god.

We are fighting for our very futures. And the future of our children. And our children's children.