Sen. Kirk Defends the Free Exercise Act and Encourages Governor Deal to Sign It Into Law
Senator Kirk cited several publications he had read concerning the possible effects of same sex marriage, including a study by the Witherspoon Institute that listed how changes in free speech laws, parental rights in education, and other portions of civic life changed following the 2002 legalization of same-sex civil marriage in Canada. Kirk also described an article in Western Journalism written just before the Supreme Court decision last June legalizing marriage equality that predicted unintended consequences following legalization:
The same people who first claimed only to want tolerance of their behavior will allow no toleration for other views. Will a physician be forced to perform an artificial insemination for a lesbian couple? Will a lawyer be forced to take a case defending gay marriage? Lawyers are already losing their “traditional prerogative to exercise absolute discretion in the selection of clients….” Provisions designed to advance the homosexual agenda have been incorporated into many state legal ethics codes.
Senator Kirk announced the results of a statewide poll of 720 Georgians by Rosetta Stone Communications conducted on March 21st. The poll found that 55.6% of the respondents are neutral on the portion of the Free Exercise Protection Act that contains First Amendment Protection Act provisions. 61.3% of Georgians support traditional marriage, while 27.1% support same sex marriage, and another 11.3% have no opinion.
When asked if government or employers should not be able to discriminate against those who hold traditional views of marriage, 44.7% agreed, while 29.1% were neutral, and 26.2% opposed. 43.1% of the survey responsents were Republican, 33.9% were Democrats, and 20.2% were independents. The survey had a 3.7% Margin of error.
The senator explained how the he had listened to criticism of the First Amendment Defense Act and modified several provisions in the original bill to assuage concerns, including making it clear that probate judges couldn’t use the law to deny someone a marriage license, limiting the definition of a religious organization to 501-C3 nonprofits, and tightening the definition of a sincerely held religious belief to make it less ambiguous, all in an effort to ensure the bill was non-discriminatory. Despite these efforts, however, at least one analysis of the final measure by former U.S. Prosecutor found reason to believe that the bill could enable discrimination.
Senator Kirk wrapped up his presser with a plea to Governor Deal to sign the measure:
It’s time for our governor to step forward and sign the bill that the people of Georgia clearly want. THe bill has been vetted thoroughly through both chambers of the General Assembly. I appreciate the fact that our governor has taken a slow and methodical view of the bill before he signs it. But in the end, I’m sure that he’ll find that this is the best bill to protect everyone in Georgia.
Will our state and nation going forward be a state and nation that is intolerant of those that express a sincerely held belief that marriage is between a man and a woman, and will expression of that belief in the workplace or marketplace lead to sanctions by local state or federal governments in the name of tolerance? I say no. That’s not the America that I grew up in, and by the governor signing this bill into law, it preserves freedom. Georgia is not a state of intolerance.
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Jon Richards
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It’s amazing there are still people who say this bill has nothing to do with gay folks.
I have a few poll questions:
Would you support a bill that will take away 1 to 2 billions dollars a year of economic activity in our state?
Would you support a bill that guarantees we will no longer be in the running for national events like the Supper Bowl, Final 4 etc?
Would you support a bill that is a cornerstone reason why the gay teenage suicide rate is 4 to 5 times the normal rate?
Would you support a bill that will waste tax payers money defending a poorly written legislation?
Would you support a bill that will have us fighting lawsuits and running verse fixing infrastructure ie dangerous bridges needing repair, traffic etc?
Would you support a bill that will put one of our fastest growing industries in jeopardy ie film?
You can hold a sincerely held belief until the cows come home but the Supreme Court has spoken.
Poor poor Senator Kirk. Surrounded by gays. Gays getting married. Gays having children. Gays doing what everybody else does freely and openly and he can’t stop it. Poor poor Senator Kirk.
Making a group of Georgians fair game for discrimination is not discriminatory, according to Kirk. I’m sure he’d say it’s the Christian thing to do.
Not just Kirk’s reasoning but his sources are suspect. Both Western Journalism and Witherspoon are part of the great right-wing money raising apparatus. WJ is founder and majority owner of WorldNetDaily. Witherspoon has published methodologically suspect ‘studies’ according to many professional groups.
btw, I believe I was one of the respondents in the Rosetta Stone survey Monday night. I thought some of the questions, especially about employer rights over employees, were confusingly worded.
At least he didn’t call out the erotic liberty lobby, although the day’s still young.
My guess is that the revised bill would not have gotten through if there had been either wording saying the local laws wee a compelling government interest, or wording saying that local laws could not be used as a compelling government interest. I’m told that instead of either of those statements, the authors of the compromise were silent on local ordinances. And as Sen. Kirk pointed out during his remarks, decisions by judges in RFRA cases can go either way., meaning that a decision could go either way.
Senator Kirk is not a lawyer. That being said, I’ve also heard conflicting opinions from legislators about the effect of the language saying no person is required to attend a marriage ceremony, and whether a baker, florist, etc gains protection from that language. There’s lots to be resolved here should the bill become law.
Jon,
As I said from the start when Sen McKoon (lawyer) opened up this can of worms, it would be dream for lawyers, while us tax payers get stuck with the cost. This bill is nothing more than a fund raising tool, and waste of tax payer money, while putting jobs and industries at risk.
“There’s lots to be resolved here should the bill become law.”
That is the heart of the argument the Governor can legitimately run with in his reasoning for the veto. No law should go onto the books that does more to complicate as opposed to resolving conflict.
Of course it wouldn’t have gotten through if it had said that local ordinances were a compelling interest. As we saw last year, including non-discrimination language would “gut the bill.”
The latest version of HB 757 received input from the various parties involved, from those who proposed the First Amendment Defense Act to the business community to those in the LGBT community. I think there was an effort to work out the best bill that everyone could agree on, even though they might not have been 100% happy with the measure.
Local ordinances in Atlanta and other places offer civil rights protections to the LGBT community, and they obviously don’t want to lose those protections. The argument from Josh and those who objected to the “Jacobs Amendment’ of SB 129 said that having local laws included might mean hundreds of separate interpretations of the RFRA.
There was a conscious decision to leave local ordinances out of the bill. Whether that means that its supporters are pro or anti LGBT, I’ll let you decide. I’m just trying to report what happened.
No one from the LGBT community was asked for input or worked on this bill.
Maybe that anonymous gay friend of his that he consulted with and that approved of the legislation is an attorney too.
Jon,
Are you serious? You’ve been defending this idea for some time – or at least trying to justify it. Now you put in writing that there’s a lot that the courts would need to figure out about it. Isn’t that the absolute worst type of law there could possibly be -unclear and ambiguous the day it’s adopted. But let’s just throw it out there not knowing what it’s really about.
That’s the worst thing that I’ve read on pp or gapol – perhaps ever.
Mike, I’m not sure which idea you are talking about that I’m defending. Reporting on the progress of the bill, which for better or worse has become one of the most significant of the session. And I would argue that based on what I’ve seen and heard about the latest version, which combines three separate bills into one, there are several interpretations as to what the various sections mean.
TL;dr: Don’t blame the messenger for the content of the bill.
If I try to apply logic here…Deal isnt running for Governor again. His next move is going to have to be to the business community. The business community hates this bill. Deal will veto because he has no real political barrier to doing so (not running again). He is going to want a nicely salaried job though. Then again…when has Deal acted logically…but I have to think he is going to veto it. I wish he’d just get on with it.
Vetoing it before the end of the legislative session when the numbers favor an override would be beyond stupid.
That being said I don’t expect him to veto it tomorrow either. He will let it marinate as if the fix wasn’t already in and veto it later in April with still plenty of time for the crocodile tears to roll from certain legislators prior to the primaries. I could be wrong however and he may give Ralph Reed time to make a counter offer. Who needs a salary when you can pay cash for a St. Simons’ compound? This is the least likely scenario however because a veto helps Ralph pound his lucrative drum for another year and Josh to beat the bishop up for more money as well.