KENTUCKY: State Senate Committee Advances Bill To Nullify All Local Pro-LGBT Ordinances Because Jesus

From Fairness Kentucky:

A “License to Discriminate” bill that would sanction discrimination against LGBT Kentuckians passed out of the Senate Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection Committee this morning. Senate Bill 180, introduced by Senator Albert Robinson of London, seeks to gut local LGBT Fairness Ordinances passed by eight Kentucky cities. Those cities include Covington, Danville, the State Capital Frankfort, Lexington, Louisville, Midway, Morehead, and the small Appalachian town of Vicco.

“Senate Bill 180 is nothing but a license to discriminate,” shared Fairness Campaign director Chris Hartman. “This legislation seeks to undo the hard work of eight Kentucky cities that chose to protect all their residents from discrimination. These cities, like nearly 200 local employers in the Kentucky Competitive Workforce Coalition, know that discrimination is bad for business. Should the Kentucky General Assembly pass this license to discriminate, it will have untold negative effects on our commonwealth’s tourism, economics, and business development.”

From the Lexington Herald-Leader:



Robinson said he’s also responding to the case of Hands On Originals, a Lexington business that refused to print T-shirts in 2012 for the Lexington Pride Festival, citing the owner’s religious objections. The Lexington Human Rights Commission found that Hands On Originals violated the city’s Fairness Ordinance requiring service to gays and lesbians. But a Fayette Circuit Court judge overturned that decision; the case is now on appeal.

“There is an agenda at work here that seeks to force people with sincerely held religious convictions to either abandon these beliefs or violate them or face state action that could close their businesses and destroy them financially,” Robinson told his colleagues.

Tolerance can go too far, testified Stan Cave, an attorney for the Family Foundation of Kentucky, who said he helped Robinson draft the bill. “Over the last 20 years, we’ve heard a lot of conversation about tolerance,” Cave told the committee. “All of us want to be tolerant. But there comes a point where one person’s rights infringe with being tolerant of another person’s beliefs.”