Washington Post:
America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business. At Apple, we are in business to empower and enrich our customers’ lives. We strive to do business in a way that is just and fair. That’s why, on behalf of Apple, I’m standing up to oppose this new wave of legislation — wherever it emerges.
Another example of Tim Cook making Apple a company in his own image. And that’s a good thing.
Another example of something that Steve Jobs would absolutely not have done.
Until it’s something you don’t agree with and then it’s a bad thing.
Yep. Dorothy we’re not in Kansas anymore.
What Tim Cook is doing is great, and a good example of how more and more tech CEOs are stepping up to exert their influence in social issues. But … in his own image? Pray at the Apple altar all you want, but please be careful talking about “image” when it comes to issues where getting it right is everyone’s image.
How ridiculous it is to conflate products with social issues of much greater magnitude. Shame on you.
What you are talking about? Tim Cook has written an op-ed. Don’t make it sound like he has taken an extraordinary act that would bring consequences to himself or Apple. Puleeeze.
If you think their involvement in social issues is the reason their products do not live up to your expectations, my answer is LOL!
I am glad they are using their status to exert social and political pressure. I just find it ridiculous that fanboyz think this makes Apple stand taller.
This man is the real leader.
Good man.
Not publicly, anyway.
Oh, the melodrama. If you don’t like Apple products, don’t buy them.
And yet while Steve Jobs was alive Apple came out against California’s Proposition 8 which was designed to stop same-sex marriage. There have been plenty of other times Jobs and Apple have supported diversity against bigotry. This is just one article available on the topic: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2224198/data-center/apple-and-steve-jobs-have-long-been-champions-for-gay-rights.html
In short, you are wrong in so many ways.
If there were absolutely no perceived consequences for doing such a thing, more CEOs would probably be doing them, if only for the publicity.
This guy’s got all the answers. I’m glad you know exactly what goes into designing and engineering products, why certain decisions were made, and what Apple as a company is doing with their time. You’ve got it all figured out, more than the experts with all the talent.
good thing discrimination based on race, gender, religion, or sexuality isnt one of those things. YMMV
Well, that op-ed espouses a position that approx half his prospective customers in MANY states, not just Indiana, reject. Or more precisely, have allowed some pandering politicians, to put into law at the behest of some deep bigots, who’ve used “religious freedom” as a cover for “hate thy neighbor” policies.
Yes, many people of faith, on reading Cook’s arguments, might be swayed to contact their politicians and say they side with Cook and the 21st century. (That’s kind of the point, no?) No, that doesn’t mean that Cook’s work was without risk of possible short-term harm to Apple.
I expect that actual religious leaders will denounce these exercises in bigotry — their obvious application is against a small minority of “sinners” according to the Old Testament—and be struck down as granting impermissible discrimination rights, the first time some yahoo attempts to use the law as part of his defense.
Meanwhile, both the pros and cons will remember that Cook got out in front of one side of it.
if the mere existence of a low-end iPad Mini is “sickening” to your life, then you have it pretty good, bud.
the lack of equal civil rights for everyone is far more sickening to me. good on tim.
trolls gonna troll. enjoy your android
yup. nice post, walt.
no! i must complain about everything that bothers me, even items which have no direct impact on my life since im not even using them, such as the original low-end iPad Mini!
if open civil rights for all are part of that image, then i think we can talk about it with very little risk of getting it wrong. apple & cook are on the right side of history, here. the intolerant asshats hiding behind their religion are on the wrong side of history.
If there were no consequences, there would be no publicity, either.
Allow me to dissent. The media and most Apple commenters act as though there aren’t two competing goods here. There are. Yes, gay people should be free from discrimination. But religious people shouldn’t be compelled through force of law to violate their sincere consciences, either. People are all in favor of that government force when it’s used against beliefs with which they disagree.
But that’s not what religious freedom — literally the founding principle of the United States — is about. It’s about finding a way for people of all faiths and beliefs to live together in harmony. Lawsuits against small business owners like bakers and photographers are hardly pursuing that ideal.
Tim Cook may claim that RFRA laws are only “pretending” to be about religious freedom. But it’s easy to say the other side is “pretending” when you don’t agree with them. True tolerance and compassion would embrace a real “live and let live” policy — which would no more try to force a Christian baker to provide service for a gay wedding than it would force a Muslim baker to serve the National Pig Farmers’ Association, or a Quaker to register for the draft.
Go ahead and side with the activist gay marriage lobby if you want. But don’t pretend that they’re unequivocally the “live and let live” crowd. In some cases, they may be, but in these types of lawsuits, they are not. It’s one thing for Tim Cook to support gay pride parades and ecological issues and all that stuff. But this is another issue entirely, and it is disturbing to me that he has clearly sided against religious freedom.
I’m not in favor of Apple taking political stands on anything, but I have gritted my teeth and considered it none of my business — you know, tolerated it — up to now. But now, for the first time ever, I am seriously considering whether I can in good conscience ever give Apple another cent again. If they’re going to take an activist stance opposed to freedom of conscience, then they’re no better than the other tyrants who have tried to coerce people into violating their beliefs.
Or maybe I’m overreacting, and it’s not a big deal at all. Hey, when the Apple Car comes out, let’s force the Amish to drive it! What’s the harm? They need to get with modern times and their buggies on the road are endangering public safety.
The same arguments were made in opposition to integration. The religious card was played then and it didn’t work. I suggest reading up on court decisions striking down segregation and see how they were applied to private businesses. Using you logic it is OK to refuse to serve a “mixed race couple” or Jews, as long as you have a religious beliefs backing you up.
Proponents of religious freedom reject the analogy of gay marriage to the civil rights of African Anericans. The argument is that there is a difference between not serving a person (which I have seen no arguments in favor of) and not serving a specific event. All of the cases I’ve read about have featured vendors happy to serve the people involved but not for the specific event of a gay wedding.
Not to mention the rather significant distinction that the Jim Crow laws were actual laws on the books enforcing discrimination. And the absurdity of comparing the plight of people looking for a wedding cake to people struggling to overturn laws officially discriminating against them.
To disabuse you of the notion that these are open and shut victories for the gay marriage lobby, I would refer you to Hobby Lobby v Sebelius and the recent Hosanna Tabor Supreme Court case (among others) in which the court ruled strongly in favor of religious freedom trumping other protections in law. Religious freedom is incredibly important in America. It’s enshrined in the constitution in a way other things aren’t. If it doesn’t protect views that the elite or even the majority find misguided, then it has no meaning.
No, it’s not a good thing for a CEO to be injecting one’s politics into a publicly held corporation. And I say that as a 20+ year AAPL stockholder.
Jesus H, are any of these tech bloggers not libtards?
Exactly. I wonder what King thinks about conservative Christians like Hobby Lobby espousing their views publicly. Or Whole Foods. Suddenly it’s fire and boycott time!
Good thing liberals respect beliefs different from their own. Oh, wait…
Name me one publicly-held corporation’s CEO whose politics don’t affect the business they conduct. Preferably without name-calling, please.
Stop trying to speak reason to libs who feel with their hearts instead of think with their brains.
They are right and no other view has legitimacy in their little pea brains, so you are wasting your time.
“All of the cases I’ve read about have featured vendors happy to serve the people involved but not for the specific event of a gay wedding.”
This is so much bullshit.
If you read the stories, it’s quite clear that some of the vendors had established relationships with the customers whose ceremonies they felt compelled not to sell for on religious principles. So, yes, they did genuinely and sincerely distinguish between person and event. Some clients, if I recall, even bore no ill will to the vendors. It’s very easy to attribute bad faith to those with whom one disagrees. It’s wiser not to do so.
The state of Utah (yes, Utah!) recently hammered out a law that tried to strike a compromise between gay marriage proponents and religious objections. I think that is a much more intriguing and respectful model to follow:
http://news.yahoo.com/utah-lgbt-antidiscrimination-law-could-chart-path-compromise-202900679.html
Sorry, society has ALWAYS compelled people to act in ways the state controls. And hopefully, always will, because “conscience” objections have to be carefully limited to keep dishonest people from BS claims that aren’t religious in any way, shape or form.
Examples: obligation to pay taxes that finance organized killing. Obligation to national service despite war. Prevention of sex with 11-year-olds, or marriage to a dozen 14-year-olds.
Now unfortunately, RFRA is in fact a cover for bigotry. I believe that people of faith will be appalled when they realize how their sincere beliefs have been turned into “hate thy neighbor” justification.
First, I think it is true that most religious prohibitions against gay sex arise from Deuteronomy etc. Unfortunately, the same Book also denounces as offenses suitable for stoning, relations between unmarried couples, or with another man’s wife. Since divorce was disallowed, that means that approximately 98% of adult Americans are fornicators in the same box with gays.
If it is exercise of religious belief to refuse service to gays, then that identical belief would refuse service to essentially everybody else. But no! Individuals get to pick and choose which religious strictures they actually care about. This copy/paste type of justification has a long and disgusting history of justifying genocides, racial discrimination, and other ills, making it obvious that we are NOT talking about religious practice, we are talking about bigots pretending to be religious so they can carry out their foul work.
Meanwhile, courts have time and again seen thru this transparent dishonesty. FIFTY years ago, the Civil Rights Act made racial and religious discrimination illegal in most forms of daily business, no matter how much state laws (in certain…ahem…places with a history of complete abuse of individuals’ “God-given” rights) might give cover.
Think it’s wrong/immoral/sinful for a black man to marry a white woman? Opinion polls in some 2012 primaries showed about 1/3 of the Republican voters felt miscegenation should be prohibited. Tough: if those people run a motel, they can’t refuse mixed couples. Or rather, they will soon find themselves sued out of the blatantly discriminatory practices that our society cannot tolerate.
A person who pretends to be acting religiously by refusing to do business with people who appear to be gay, while ignoring similar injunctions against the other 95% of his customers, is simply being hypocritical. There’s a long list of places in the Bible where such hypocrisy is written as itself a wrong. http://www.openbible.info/topics/hypocrisy is a fine list and I find Matt 7:1-5 relevant.
I won’t even bother with your straw man Amish example; you are only marking yourself as a low-grade sophist with such sneering silliness. But people who have only been getting your side of the story might not have considered why it is that Indiana is only now putting into effect state support for a tiny fraction of what most people’s Bible prohibits: it’s well worth thinking about the charlatans who’ve promoted it and how terribly it will eventually embarrass Christians.
They are hypocrites then. If Jesus acted as those people do, he wouldn’t have been running around ministering to prostitutes and criminals. They don’t know the very thing they profess to believe.
This is like the friend who makes a crack about stupid niggers or lazy wetbacks or crazy woman drivers, then looks at the black/latino/woman friend standing next to them and says, “I don’t mean you, of course.” I call bullshit on it.
I’d say there is nothing worse than a hypocritical bigot, but really there is. (For example murderers, people who act violently on their hate, and more.) They still rank pretty high on the bad person scale, though, despite how pious they might think they are.
You’re eager to point to straw men. Allow me to point out, then, that your vision of a world in which businesses refuse to serve gay people on that basis alone and hide behind religious exemptions is not based in reality — and is quite clearly not covered by RFRA laws. The recent cases have been about differences of opinion on gay marriage (that ne plus ultra of human rights that wasn’t even a gleam in anyone’s eye for all of human history until incredibly recently, so recently that as left-oriented a president as the current one had to pretend he was against it).
You are unable to see a distinction between disapproving of a person and disapproving of a practice. But people do it every day.
People who claim to be the paragons of tolerance, yet can’t even make a gesture to understand people who disagree with them, just leave me shaking my head. If gay marriage weren’t at issue, but instead these Christian cake bakers and photographers were atheists being compelled by legal action to participate in some church-related event, the same people who want to hang them out to dry would be the first in line to defend their artistic freedom.
What’s more intolerant? To tell someone that you can’t offer your services at a particular function? Or to threaten to ruin someone’s life and business in order to force compliance with your own beliefs?
Jesus said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Many modern people like to forget that he added, to the woman caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more.”
Telling Christians they don’t know their religion is a dicey proposition. And legally irrelevant.
If people who call themselves “Christians” are cherry-picking scripture as a basis for real-world legislation, it damned well is legally relevant.
And again you ignore the lessons of the 1950s and 60s where all of this has already been debated and put to rest. Your very argument about people versus practices was already used. It was, according to the bigot, a religious objection to interracial marriage and had nothing to do with the a person being black. After all, the black person probably was their “friend” after all!
The problem is, it was exactly about the people, just as it is this time. You cannot divorce the race or the sexual orientation from the person, just as you claim one cannot divorce the religious persuasion from a believer.
Own your bigotry and prepare to follow laws that will wipe it out. You can’t hide behind hypocrisy forever.
Tons of Christians don’t understand their religion or their Bible and they follow pastors who learned all they all they know from crackerjack boxes basically.
“But religious people shouldn’t be compelled through force of law to violate their sincere consciences, either.”
And in most (all?) states, they’re not. Public accommodations laws, on the whole, only affect you if you CHOOSE to operate a public accommodation. If you want to open your business up to the larger pubic market and rake in the larger public’s cash, the opportunity cost of that decision is that the government compels you to serve the entire public. (Or, more accurately, the people you like plus any member of a recognized protected class.)
You’re generally perfectly free to operate a membership-based business, or only take referrals, or operate a “private” business in a number of other ways and thus serve whatever hand-picked market fits your “sincere conscience.” Only want to serve members of your church? Go hog wild. But if you don’t want to render unto Caesar, then you don’t get to lust after Caesar’s larger lucre.
That’s before you even get into the fact that in Indiana, as in most states today, neither sexual orientation nor gender identity are protected classes. So what’s been created today, under today’s legislation, is a law that says it’s totally cool not to serve those uppity negroes so long as it’s your sincerely-held personal belief.
I’m an idiot. I keep having to relearn that lesson.
one neednt be tolerant of intolerance. hating gays or other races or similar asshattery is not an acceptable belief system when it comes to public policy. youre free to hate in your basement all day long, tho.
i cant believe im replying to this dense asshatery, but — religious freedom doesnt allow you to refuse someone else’s inalienable rights. this is not up for debate.
for example — race is a protected class under the US constitution. that is, every citizen is born with an “inalienable right” (google it) to equal protection free from discrimination based on race. if you operate a public business that is open to the public, you may not revoke someone else’s inalienable right, such as race. even if your god told you to. you can try, but then you can be shut down.
if you dont like the concept of inalienable rights, then the US is not the place for you. it’s the foundation of our system of government.
making broad, sweeping, blanket generalizations of entire populations of people is a fool’s errand.
the fact that you have to use insults shows that youve got no argument to make.
numbnuts – as an atheist i would absolutely no problem selling cakes or flowers to your nutty religious event. because if i were a baker or florist, THATS HOW I MAKE MY LIVING.
being an old foggey who owns a few shares of AAPL doesnt make you an authority on anything, other than general asshattery.
Obviously you have no interest in discussing this subject if you use the word “libtards.” You only want to demean everyone who disagrees with you.
Yes, let’s talk about “tolerance.”
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/03/30/connecticut-state-boycottindianas-rfra.html
Americans have to get over their founding principles. The founding fathers were not Gods. Their principles were flawed and incomplete. Stop using founding principles as the basis of arguments for what is right or wrong socially today. Just do the right thing.
Face it. Libs are taking over your world, kicking, screaming. You are a dinosaur. Buhahahahahahahaha
If discrimination is bad for business—and I believe that it is—then you don’t need a law against it.
Not everything that is objectionable needs to be made illegal, and I doubt that anyone really wants to live in a world that tightly controlled. Likewise, defending someone’s right to exercise objectionable opinions is not the same as condoning those opinions.
If we actually believe in tolerance—and not just a sanitized-for-our-protection world—then we must also be willing to tolerate the views of those we disagree with. This includes the baker who doesn’t want to provide a cake for a gay wedding, as well as the gay partners who wished to get married.
Live and let live is advice that everyone would be wise to heed.
Another cry for one-sided tolerance. I’ll guess that you’ve never needed anti-discrimination laws because you’ve never personally been discriminated against. How convenient for you.
No, not at all. It’s a call for universal tolerance. I am not religious, but I still tolerate and respect those that are. Likewise, I’m not homosexual, but I tolerate and respect those that are. I do not want to force my views on anyone. Anyone who wishes to force their views on someone—or wishes for government to do so—is not practicing tolerance at all.
As for my own experiences with discrimination, it’s not relevant to this discussion nor do you have any knowledge of it whatsoever.
Then go ahead and go it. But should atheists be forced to provide their service if they, unlike you, would rather not? Why not just accept that some people—for reasons good or bad—have different preferences than you and I and allow them the freedom to exercise those preferences?
Of course it’s up for debate, as evidenced by court cases, this law, and this discussion right here.
Being served by a business is not, incidentally, an inalienable right.
If your business is benefiting from the protection and support of a society that is contributed to by atheists and homosexuals you’d better have a much better reason to refuse service to someone than “my pastor doesn’t like the way they pray” or “this Bible I’ve barely read says they’re sinners.”
“Freedom” isn’t the freedom to exclude.
A business operator who discriminates against homosexuals or atheists, or whatever other group, probably won’t receive the support of those groups for long. As Cook says, discrimination is bad for business. So let those who discriminate suffer the consequences.
Meanwhile, those who feel they were discriminated against can give their money to someone who doesn’t object. Think about it, does a gay couple really want to give their money to a business that finds them morally wrong, and is only doing business with them because they are forced to?
Non controversial opinions don’t need protection. If we are truly in favor of freedom and tolerance, then we must tolerate even those opinions we disagree with, just as we don’t want our freedoms trampled upon by those who disagree with us. And, if we want freedom for ourselves, we must accept that others may hold views that are objectionable to us.
Ah, “the free, unregulated market will fix everything.” A staple of privileged Libertarians everywhere.
Too bad for that gay couple if they needed something more important or immediate than a cake. Like a gallon of gas or a place to stay for the night. Or a meal in a public restaurant.
You’re still speaking for yourself.
Speaking for oneself is something more people should learn to do instead of attempting to force their opinions on everyone.
“But religious people shouldn’t be compelled through force of law to violate their sincere consciences, either.”
There’s no law in this country as to what qualifies for a “sincerely held religious belief.” (There was some around the draft, but when Ali & others challenged the religious qualification, it collapsed.)
So there’s nothing to keep from sneering adherents of Wiccanism to claim their faith requires them to refuse service at their cafe to, e.g., Muslims. Or, indeed, to prevent a Hindu motel owner from canceling a reservation at 11pm when she realizes the guests are Chinese.
Except the law, which takes the attitude that refusing accommodations is criminal no matter what cockeyed justification you give.
Not that religious beliefs are cockeyed, but it’s almost guaranteed that if this law is ever cited, it’ll be by somebody who claims religious reason—and whose claims can’t really be tested—no matter how disgusting and anti-Christian (or anti-Buddhist, etc) they actually are.
THIS RFRA can’t actually overturn the Federal laws against discrimination, but it apparently CAN make Indianapolis’s law unenforceable. And even worse, it gives encouragement to exactly the people it shouldn’t, while adding zero protection to people of faith who aren’t hating on others as a way of dealing with notions of their personal sins.
Not only were the founding fathers not gods, but many of them sadly realized the need to keep their Deist beliefs to themselves while aspiring to public office.
You have got to be kidding.
I am tired and sick of Apple executives talking on media
Because no one is doing that except Apple.
Of course it’s relevant to this discussion, since you’re probably arguing from a position of relative privilege and convenience.
“I don’t want to serve Negroes or Jews sitting at the lunch counter. Personally I’m not prejudiced, but that’s just what God wants me to do.”
We’ve been down this road before, haven’t we?
I’m going to set aside most of the slippery slope nonsense, and focus on the point that makes some sense: “forcing” someone to go against their beliefs. As a Christian, I’m quite familiar the parts of the Bible that folks usually point to to claim that homosexuality is wrong. There are a lot of things that part of the Bible says that are wrong that I’m sure are not being used as a litmus test for deciding to whom to provide services. Where are the bakers who have refused to bake cakes for remarriages? Let alone, where are the bakers refusing service to people who don’t keep kosher, shave their beards, have tattoos, or wear blended materials?
Oh, well, that’s Old Testament. We’re all about the New Testament now.
Great.
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’
Tell you what: when someone refuses to bake a cake for a Bank of America executive for all the pain that company has conflicted, or when Sarah Palin’s kid can’t find a photographer for the upcoming nuptials due to religious reasons, I’ll start thinking people who support this law aren’t just finding loopholes to get around the fact they think gay people are yucky.
Convenient! “I completely reject your very strong argument because I reject your strong argument.” Also “it’s not that I hate you, it’s that I hate everything about you.”
Oh, goodness, you two. Get a room.
So long as you’re not both of the same sex.
For the simple reason that if people, even a sizeable minority, acted like that, positive societal change would be impossible. Some of those people would think that black people, or jews, or, heck, Irish, are lesser beings than them. Some people don’t think women should be in the workforce. One American politician even though child labour laws were too much regulation. Why should we let the opinions and attitudes of the worst of us have such an outsized impact on society?
And if you trot out the “market will decide” issue, well, America still has enough people who think “miscegenation” is wrong that you could probably build a business on being, say, the “No Mixed Race Café” in some places. Did the market decide right?
A convenient dodge past the issue raised. What do you say to the gay couple in the only hospital in a rural area where one person is in critical care, and the other has no visitation rights? How will the market address that?
Goodness, your beliefs are SO strongly held that you engage in an awful lot of blasphemy. (To go with the childish name calling).
The market would address it by staying out of marriage altogether. It’s not the market that denies same sex couples the same rights are married, heterosexual couples: It’s government. A live-and-let-live ethos, as I advocate, would not have lead to this problem.
As far as a dodge, I didn’t address those examples because they are ridiculous. But fine: To the best of my knowledge, straight people’s cars use the same types of fuel as gay people’s cars, so I don’t see how this supposed discrimination would be enforced anyway. Besides, as Tim points out, discrimination is bad for business. A restaurant that turned down gay people’s money would surely face a backlash. While that business suffers, the discriminated people are free to go to the any of the 99.99% other restaurants that are happy to accept their patronage.
Now, I suppose you’d like to stereotype about rural rednecks again, wouldn’t you?
Good shot at the derail shaming, but I’m pretty sure you’re the person who stereotyped “rednecks”. I used “rural” to demonstrate a situation where you face a lack of choice. I grew up in a rural area; if the local gas station had decided they wouldn’t want to serve me, life would have been very difficult. I would have had to ensure that I top up when I was in town, which would have meant making trips to town just for gas. I just used the vehicle to get around, imagine if it was something I required for work! Being denied service by someone in an urban area, with a lot of choice, isn’t a big deal. Being denied service in small town could actually lead to a lot of suffering. And I’m not using that word lightly. It could literally have an impact on your ability to live in a region.
Sure, that would have an negative impact, no question. IF it were to happen. But why do you assume that the rural gas station owner would a) not want to accept a gay person as a customer, b) know that the customer is gay, c) be apt to enforce his prejudice, when even in rural areas, pay-at-the-pump is the norm?
Sometimes freedom has unfortunate consequences. But I don’t believe we should violate freedom—including the freedom of association—because of some unlikely hypotheticals.
I’m not assuming anything; you keep ascribing beliefs to me. I’m simply putting forward what I believe is a completely plausible situation. However I think the divide is clear: I believe that the market can’t always decide in these situations, and needs the kind of pushes it did in the civil rights era toward what I am convinced is the right thing to do. I’m not sure you’re as far from me as I first thought, but I think you are pretty absolute regarding your ability for the market to decide. I believe that assumes a level playing field that simply doesn’t–maybe can’t–exist. I also stand firm in the belief that if we let the market decide, very little social change will ever happen. Take the Americans with Disabilities act, one of the US great modern pieces of legislation. If accessibility issues were left only up to businesses, you can bet your bottom dollar that the Invisible Hand of the Free Market would never be able to move things in the right direction. Too costly, too time consuming, too small a market.
If you don’t like the news, you should go out and make some of your own.
Maybe you could be a Thinkfluencer about poverty or AGW. Or start a petition to get all US forces out of Afghanistan. Whatever!
Instead of whining that the silver platter on which people bring you things is tarnished.
Yes. They. Should.
Because discrimination against minorities is invidious, we outlawed many forms of it a half-century ago. And you know what? We have a better world, one where people are all the more conscious of “love thy neighbor” type acceptance, thanks to the little reminder from authorities who no longer take their direction from the hate-mongers.
We have “free speech” in the US but you can’t get a pass on shouting “FIRE!” in a crowded theater. Common sense prevents idiot absolutism. Likewise, we have freedom of worship, but not freedom of any practice whatsoever—allowing “because God told me to” as for instance suicide bombers use, is an invitation to fundamentalist anarchy.
The actual religious protections in the US are unique and valuable. We have utter freedom of conscience—heresy and even apostasy is a capital offense in many nations—and we have a guarantee that the State will not corruptly privilege one Church’s status over another, forcing us to pay taxes for an institution that likely dishonors our own faiths.
But claiming that religion trumps everything is such an invitation to abuse that it is suspect on the face. The fact that well-known anti-gay crusaders were authors, promoters and participants in the signing clearly warns us that the purpose of RFRA is not to give individuals more religious rights, but to legitimize limiting gays’ rights from what almost every religion teaches about living with your fellow man.