LGBT, Politics and religion

I don't know if you live in America or not, but over here we have a thing called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA.

Basically, the act was originally passed to protect religious freedoms. When it was enacted, it basically made it illegal to do stuff like have your city government outlaw Muslims praying in public or Christians having a nativity display on their own property.

It got its start in the state of Oregon in 1989. A couple of Native Americans got fired from their jobs because they were caught getting high on peyote.Peyote is often used in religious ceremonies by Native American tribes. They took the incident to court because they saw getting fired for doing drugs as an infringement on their religious rights, but the state's drug laws won out.

This got both the democrats and the republicans pissed off, because since tripping balls is part of their religious traditions, this was pretty much the government saying "you're not allowed to practice this part of your religion," which is an infringement of the First Amendment (right to practice religion). This led to RFRA getting created. However, RFRA was decided to only exist on a federal government level. So a bunch of states passed their own state-only versions of RFRA to protect religious rights on the state government level. And then Hobby Lobby happened.

I'm not sure if you're American or not, but in case you've never seen one, Hobby Lobby is a franchise of arts-and-crafts stores run by a conservative Christian family. In 2014, they got into hot water for not providing female employees with birth control pills as part of their health insurance, even though they were supposed to get them according to the law. Since Hobby Lobby's run by Christians (who believe that unborn babies are people too, and contraceptives are evil), they flat-out refused to give them out to the ladies they had employed. The government decided in favor of Hobby Lobby, and that's when RFRA got twisted.

>>193569
(Can't continue at the moment because I have to go do something with family, but I should be back in a few hours if the thread's still alive.)

>>193532
>college research about how religion affects the political decisions regarding the LGBT community in various countrys

Dude, that's like, a PhD research topic. You can write books about the influence of religions on politics. Actually, I'm pretty sure people have written such books.

Is that your PhD research?

Oh boy... In my country (France), two years ago, the currently left-wing government finally opened marriage to couples of non-heterosexual partners, after months of turning around the pot. Now France is a notoriously non-religious country, quite unlike the US, for reasons related to the French Revolution and the importance of socialism/communism in the XIXth/early XXth century (another PhD research topic): separation of religion and the state is strictly enforced, everyone frowns when politicians dare mention religion in their talk, and church services are mostly attended by the elderly - churches are mostly empty. But despite its apparent lack of power and the apparently large amount of people who say they're atheist or non-religious, the Roman Catholic church still has a lot of weight on social issues. A lot of otherwise non-religious people, who don't often put foot in a church, will - even unconsciously - follow and/or care about what the Christian right and/or the Roman Catholic bishops say on society. In other words: the church hasn't any power on French society in writing, but it still has quite a lot in practice.

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>>193618
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And this is how the Paris and Lyon bishops and the Christian right managed to mobilize several millions people to fight against gay marriage, from interventions in the media to the largest demonstrations the country has ever known. The arguments used were exactly the same as those used in every other country, from the US to (recently) Italy: two guys are not an actual couple, won't somebody think of the children, I'm not homophobic but, the (heterosexual) family is the nucleus of society and cannot be changed, you name it, they've used them all.

Homophobia suddenly went on the rise, gay people were more often attacked in the street, straight people were complaining about "gay stuff" being "shoved down their throats", and in front of the massive mobilisation organized by the Catholic church (unofficially, of course), the government backed away several times on important issues: our left-wing president (who never cared about equality between straights and gays, and still doesn't) promised mayors would have "freedom of conscience" and would be able to refuse marrying gay people (instead of applying the law of the Republic as they are elected to do), and he also buried his promise of making it possible for lesbian couples to benefit from IVF like straigth couples (and let's not talk about surrogacy).

So yes, in short, the Roman Catholic church still has a lot of influence on French society and French politics, despite all claims to the contrary.

And I hate it for that.

You probably can learn more about that troubled period in the wikipedia article I guess?

>>193622
PS: not mentioning other religions such as protestant Christians and Muslims because they are a very small minority in France, and have indeed no political influence. I would suppose protestant churches have more influence in e.g. Germany or Switzerland.