How Anti-Gay Will Mississippi’s ‘New’ Religious Freedom Bill Be?

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/11/how-anti-gay-will-mississippi-s-new-religious-freedom-bill-be.html

The Mississippi state House has modified an anti-gay bill that’s similar to the one vetoed in Arizona. But with the vote approaching, is the new version as discriminatory as the old one?


Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty

Jay Michaelson
U.S. NEWS 03.11.14

Just two months ago, the Mississippi Senate unanimously passed a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” The state House Judiciary committee referred the bill to the full House, which has until midnight Wednesday to vote on it. Yet with the deadline approaching, the committee gutted the bill's language.

Is this a victory for LGBT equality? Read the fine print. The new version of the bill is so ambiguously written, it might be almost as discriminatory as the old version.

One thing we know for sure: the defeat of a similar bill in Arizona has changed the Right's strategic calculations.

“This is not going to be like what we saw in Arizona,” said Andy Gipson, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Gipson is no liberal: a Southern Baptist minister, he once tweeted, in response to President Obama’s support for same-sex marriage, that “the only opinion that counts is God’s.” But after the firestorm in Arizona, even Gipson has backed off. Well, a little bit. And for now.

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