Christian Science Monitor - The United States Supreme Court on Monday ended the first legal challenge to a Republican-backed Mississippi law that permits businesses and government employees to refuse to serve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people because of their religious beliefs.
The justices left in place a June ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals that the plaintiffs – same-sex couples, civil rights advocates including the head of the state NAACP chapter, a church and others – did not have legal standing to bring the lawsuit.
The law, passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Phillip Bryant with the backing of conservative Christian activists, has not yet been implemented and more legal challenges are expected, according to gay rights lawyers.
"We will keep fighting in Mississippi until we overturn this harmful law, and in any state where antigay legislators pass laws to roll back LGBT civil rights," said Beth Littrell, a lawyer with gay rights group Lambda Legal. How much do you know about gay rights in America? Take the quiz!
2 comments:
Full Employment for Lesbigay Lawyers, apparently. Mississippi, like Alabama and, except during Huey's time, Louisiana, has always been a state that is all but canonically awful. Most [lesbians and gays] in the past just pulled up stakes and left such places, on foot if need be.
Sam, I wrote that comment you bowlderised, and am a dyke. The terms you suppressed are used routinely by people who so self-describe, as a way to take the curse off. Cf. "n*gg*r".
Usually those who would use those terms pejoratively would not rely on them to do all the work -- there'd be real offence in the rest of their text.
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