Mayor’s Actions Elevate Chamber Above Church

Current Events, , , ,

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, August 29, 2014

On Friday, the Mayor of Fayetteville announced the establishment of a ten-member advisory board at the request of the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce to receive input on the city’s controversial nondiscrimination ordinance passed on August 20.

Family Council President Jerry Cox released a statement, saying, “This is very troubling. Here you have an ordinance that is extremely unpopular and that citizens are actively working to repeal. Now that it has passed, the mayor says he is open to input, not because of concerns over public safety or religious liberties, but because the local Chamber of Commerce sent him a letter.”

Cox questioned why the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce waited until after the ordinance passed to make its concerns known. “This ordinance was no secret. It was read and discussed at three separate City Council meetings. One of those meetings lasted nine hours. Hundreds of citizens and church leaders came out to voice their concerns about the ordinance, but most of those concerns were ignored. The council passed the ordinance. If the Chamber of Commerce had concerns about ambiguities in the ordinance, they should have made those concerns known before it passed.”

Cox said the mayor’s actions send the wrong message to local residents. “There’s little doubt in my mind this ordinance is bad for business, but the message the mayor is sending is that business leaders get special treatment other citizens do not get. They get a second chance to speak on the ordinance. I really wonder if the mayor would be doing this if the request had come from anyone else.”

Cox said this latest situation highlights some of the unintended consequences his group has discussed concerning the ordinance. “We said this would expand government and create unforeseen problems for the City of Fayetteville. That’s what is happening here. This is just one controversy Chapter 119 has caused, and the ordinance hasn’t even been engrossed into the city code yet.”

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Polygamists Win in Court Using Trail Blazed by Same-Sex Marriage

Marriage, ,

Last December U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups issued a ruling effectively decriminalizing polygamy in Utah.

Under Utah law, a person may not file for more than one marriage license or cohabit with more than one “spouse.” The law is intended to prevent both state-recognized polygamy and the unofficial polygamy practiced by some people in which a man is legally married to one woman, but has other “wives” to which he is not legally married.

Kody Brown and his wives, stars of the reality TV show “Sister Wives” depicting their polygamous lifestyle, filed suit against the State of Utah over the law, and last December Judge Clark Waddoups struck the portion of the law preventing people from living together in polygamous relationships; Judge Waddoups did, however, leave the portion of the law preventing a person from filing for more than one marriage license. Since most polygamous groups do not typically file for multiple state marriage licenses anyway, this effectively decriminalizes polygamy in the State of Utah.

A stay was placed on Judge Waddoups’ initial ruling last year, pending a decision on whether or not Utah owed the Browns any financial compensation. This week, Judge Waddoups ruled the State of Utah must pay the Browns’ attorney fees, and put the full force of his December ruling into effect.

This ruling is significant, because the logic employed by Judge Waddoups decriminalizing polygamy is the very same logic being used to advance same-sex marriage around the country. Gay activists have long dismissed claims that same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy as “fear mongering.” However, Judge Waddoups’ ruling owes a lot to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas ruling which has been used over and over again in court to argue against everything from the federal Defense of Marriage Act to state marriage amendments.

Judge Waddoups’ ruling largely hinges on the following: (more…)

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Atheist Group Goes After Arkansas Pizza Parlor

Religious Freedom, , ,

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is drumming up controversy in Arkansas again–this time over pizza.

You may recall in 2013 FFRF threatened legal action against Conway public schools because school administrators allowed youth pastors to visit students on campus the same way it allowed other visitors to meet with students. The schools (and youth pastors) won that debate; now the group is back, and this time they are going after a private pizzeria in Searcy.

According to KTHV in Little Rock, Bailey’s Pizza of Searcy received a letter from the atheist group after the group learned Bailey’s offered a 10% discount to anyone who brought a church bulletin into the restaurant on Sundays.

Freedom From Religion Foundation claims this discount discriminates against people who do not go to church, and that it violates the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. We feel that argument simply does not hold water. Giving someone a discount because they have a church bulletin with them does not discriminate against atheists any more than giving a senior citizen a discount discriminates against young people. It’s simply another way businesses can attract customers. No one is being denied service because of their faith or lack thereof.

Freedom From Religion Foundation’s argument against Bailey’s Pizza is so bizarre it’s almost laughable. How “religiously neutral” does a business have to be? If Bailey’s prepares all its pizzas in a kitchen with pork products (like pepperoni, for example), that’s liable to prevent people with religious objections to pork from eating there. Is that “discrimination”? No, it simply means “places of public accommodation” (to borrow from the Civil Rights Act) can’t always please every member of the public.

When President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I’m not sure the goal was to stop pizzerias from giving nominal discounts to anyone who walks in with a church bulletin. Giving a discount to someone is not religious discrimination, but trying to tell a business owner his private restaurant must be a religion-free zone arguably is.

Photo Credit: “Flickr – cyclonebill – Kartoffelpizza med rosmarinpesto” by cyclonebill – Kartoffelpizza med rosmarinpesto. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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