Michigan Republicans have delayed progress on a measure to include sexual orientation as a legally protected category in the 1976 Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, the state’s anti-discrimination law. State representative-elect Todd Courser has emerged as one of the leading opponents of the effort, warning this week that the measure would give “special rights to the LGBT community, while placing the rights of religious groups and individuals in peril.”
His Thanksgiving message to supporters last week was even more blunt, citing the story of the Pilgrims, or at least the myth that they came in search of religious freedom, as a reason to oppose protections for gays and lesbians.
“Thanksgiving is about the impossible journey of a small group of worshipers who took flight from oppression to have the freedom to practice their religion without the interference of government,” Courser wrote in the message, “we are now, if this expansion to Elliott Larsen passes at the hands of my own party, at the point where the group that will be discriminated against is Christians and any other faith that chooses to stand against the LGBT activists — we will no longer have the freedom to practice our religion or have freedom of speech that our Founders personally sacrificed to give us.”
Warning of an attempt to “destroy freedoms of religion and speech for our children and their children” and “institutionalize discrimination against Christians and other faiths,” Courser wrote that lawmakers who back the effort are “promoting evil.”
Happy Thanksgiving!
I would normally send a message from my family to yours and avoid any talk about politics on Thanksgiving, but I feel impressed to take this moment and speak about the end of religious liberty and freedom of speech at the hands of our Republican Speaker in the State House. Thanksgiving is about the impossible journey of a small group of worshipers who took flight from oppression to have the freedom to practice their religion without the interference of government; we are now, if this expansion to Elliott Larsen passes at the hands of my own party, at the point where the group that will be discriminated against is Christians and any other faith that chooses to stand against the LGBT activists – we will no longer have the freedom to practice our religion or have freedom of speech that our Founders personally sacrificed to give us.
The Effort by the GOP to wrap this Expansion of Elliott Larsen in some weak religious exemption is akin to taking a Cheap Pig and Slapping a Cheap Lipstick Makeover on it; it is still a pig and it still has cheap lipstick on it. This is the granting of protected class status to the LGBT community and in doing so, it kills religious liberty and freedom of speech! Don’t be fooled…and don’t let your rep off the hook for standing SILENT as this rolls through the House. Ask them where their press releases on this issue are…encourage them to stand against this rouge action by the Republican Speaker who has been paid a small fortune and is partnering with the LGBT activists to destroy religious liberty and freedom of speech!
If this expansion to Elliott Larsen passes it will institutionalize discrimination against Christians and other faiths and make freedom of religion and freedom of speech subservient to the wishes of the homosexual lobby.
…
Please do not lose sight of this; it is the Republican Leadership actively moving the Democrat’s agenda, having partnered with the LGBT community to move this liberty killing legislation forward. If you don’t tell your rep how you feel it’s going to happen! Then two years from now they will simply tell you they stood against it quietly.
“To not speak is to speak and to not act is to act…” For me it is time to speak…
…
We, as Republican Elected Officials cannot allow leaders, who exist by the power they derived from our districts, to promote evil, without standing up and forcing the issues into the public; if we do then we ourselves are complicit in this unholy alliance. Right now, it is the Republican, not the Democrat, leadership who is moving to grant protected class status to the LGBT community and in so doing destroy freedoms of religion and speech for our children and their children. We cannot stand silently as this happens as it is the very principle that founded this great nation. It is the Republicans, who are now termed out and leaving that are amassing capital for themselves to pursue cushy lobbying jobs or next election runs, who are promoting this evil. We, as leaders, are held to account for how and when we use our influence, especially when we refuse to stand up and call these actions out in our own party as evil.
