Arkansas senate passes bill to allow pharmacists & nursing home staff to turn away LGBTQ patients

[Behind the Aegis]

Source: LGBTQ Nation

Arkansas’s senate just passed a religious exemptions bill for medical personnel that’s so expansive that it would allow any medical professional to refuse to help LGBTQ people – or even refer them to someone else – and face no consequences for that discrimination.

The bill “is a blatantly discriminatory attempt to strip LGBTQ people of basic rights,” said HRC’s Eric Reece. “Health care should be available to all who need it, not withheld by providers because of hate and fear.”

The “Medical Ethics and Diversity Act” (S.B. 289) just passed its third reading in the state senate this week and has been sent to committee in the state House.

The law defines “discrimination” as taking any action against someone at all, and then says that medical professionals should not be discriminated against for their “religious, moral, ethical, or philosophical beliefs.”

Read more: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/02/arkansas-senate-passes-bill-allow-pharmacists-nursing-home-staff-turn-away-lgbtq-patients/

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These are the same people who DEMAND that mask-holes be allowed to enter businesses without masks and not be denied service.

[dchill]

1. They all took the Hypocritic Oath.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. LOL! Yup.

[Dem2theMax]

3. I am truly ashamed of this country.

[angrychair]

4. Why not people of color?

Or national origin?
Or another religion?

Just trying to understand how it allows LGBTQ to be discriminated against but not also other groups.

I mean a White Nationalist has a philosophical belief against people of color.

Why couldn't a Democrat refuse to help a republican?
Also a philosophical belief.
Undefined that is a pretty wide open to interpretation.

[atreides1]

9. Give them time

I'm pretty sure that they have their staff looking for any loopholes that might be available!!!

[yardwork]

22. The goal is definitely to roll back all the Civil Rights laws and restore segregation.

Gay people are not their only target. Discriminating against us is just phase one.

[Karadeniz]

5. So much for equality under the law. I hope the Supreme Court votes this out. Remember when

Southern hospitals were segregated and a white one wouldn't accept a Black emergency. It will be disappointing if SCOTUS overturns it because healthy related servers can't refuse to help anyone. That will sound like religious bigotry is fine, just not in this narrow sense.

[vercetti2021]

6. Good thing I don't live there

Another Armpit of America living in the past

[cayugafalls]

7. The ACLU needs to sue the cow shit off their boots.

F'ing backwards fuckwits.

Once they are done suing them to oblivion, they need to use a firehose and flush them down the sewer.

[Thekaspervote]

8. Shameful

[Nocturnowl]

10. Headline Below: "Tennessee Lawmakers Introduce Bill To Allow Fathers To Veto Abortions"

Expel. Not kidding. With the exception of Virginia, every state from the Old Confederacy should be booted out of the Union.

[OldBaldy1701E]

13. There was a time

when Virginia (the capitol of the confederacy) would have led your list of states. This past election, Georgia gave us the Senate. Give the southern states time. Those old idiotic conservatives are dying out. Racial demographics have changed. (I can tell you that, as someone who was born and lived in the south until four years ago, I had never been in a race riot, or a protest clash, or had bombings happen near me... until I moved up north, so I'd say every state has its good points and its bad, eh?)

[Solly Mack]

11. K&R

Words/language can shape how a person thinks. Thoughts can become actions. Some actions are intended to hurt others. It is why words matter.

[riversedge]

12. whow. sometimes I can not believe it is 2021!!

[Roy Rolling]

14. Exemption

The individual claiming that exemption should have to prove it in court. Then let’s measure if they follow all of the restrictions of their faith or whether they cherry-pick convenient and popular grievances.

I know it’s impossible, I just wanna see these hypocrite assholes exposed.

[OldBaldy1701E]

15. Okay fine

Every single LGBTQ owned business should immediately start doing the same thing. The right to refuse service is ingrained in our corporate lives, so let them see how it feels from the other side. No court can toss out one side of this without the other side looking illegal, so in the words of Dr. Sarazowa, "Let Them Fight!" (I await the attorney's argument on how a pharmacist refusing to fill a prescription is 'ethical' or 'moral'.)

[Lonestarblue]

16. I can't wait for the Republican brand of religion to die out.

White evangelicals have sold their souls to the devil to gain political power because they think the government should regulate morality according to their beliefs. The SC made a very bad decision with its Hobby Lobby decision and the decision to allow the Christian baker to discriminate against LGBTQ. Now the right-wing states are pushing that precedent to the edge of any sane behavior. And these people wonder why so many in the US are rejecting religion entirely!

Congress needs to pass a law stating that personal religious belief cannot be used to discriminate by anyone operating a business or service for the public. That is separation of church and state. The current SC would probably overturn it, but let’s have a fight where the public sees that the court itself is placing a specific religion above the law.

[sinkingfeeling]

17. Arkansas and the rest of the South have the largest percentages of Southern

Baptist followers and this is why they pass this sh*t and voted for MF45, form militias, and join QAnon.

https://www.thearda.com/ql2010/QL_S_ALL_2_1168c.asp

Mississippi and Alabama are 1 and 2 and have been for decades. At least, they're losing ground in Arkansas.

[Jimbo S]

18. Disappointing

[renate]

19. the blue states are contaminated badly enough by GOP morons....

I can't imagine how stressful it must be for a decent person--not even necessarily Democratic, just decent--to live in a place like this.

My Democratic cousin lives in rural Arkansas and loves it for its natural beauty, but this kind of stuff must be really hard on her. And she's not even LGBTQ... it must be unendurable for the people who are so actively discriminated against.

[Vivienne235729]

20. I see a lawsuit in the near future. I can't see how this can be legally maintained.

[Gregory Peccary]

21. Evil fucks. How could a pharmacy clerk even prove that someone is gay?