Kansas Resorts to Legalized Discrimination
CAROLINE REN
Editor in Chief
A prominent figure at all times and especially so during Black History Month, Martin Luther King, Jr. is oftentimes celebrated for leading a significant civil rights movement and helping end segregation. Because of the historical importance of his actions, it’s a real slap in the face for Kansas to, in essence, attempt to revive segregation for a different group of people at a time meant to be spent rejoicing in how far we’ve come.
On Feb. 11, Kansas lawmakers passed a bill that would allow government employees and businesses to deny service to same-sex couples, according to Time magazine. The given justification for the law, known as House Bill 2453, is that serving gay couples may violate some workers’ religious beliefs. Moreover, any person who denies someone service based on sexual orientation would be doing so legally and would not be charged with discrimination.
Under this new law, employers can fire employees based on sexuality; hotels, movie theaters and restaurants can deny entry to same-sex couples; state hospitals can refuse treatment and police officers can refuse assistance. Essentially, any institution or individual operating under the Kansas state government is legally protected if they choose to discriminate based on sexuality, and any gay couple who sues will lose their case and also be forced to pay attorney fees for the opposing side.
Besides being outright disgusting, House Bill 2453 is a chilling reminder that too many people still hold on to long-ago fears of interacting with those who are different, a remnant of the pre-60’s era when public facilities were blatantly labeled “white” and “colored.” By bringing back repulsive elements from a time period riddled with legalized discrimination, especially in February of all months, lawmakers from the Kansas House of Representatives who voted for this law are practically spitting on both blacks and members of the LGBT community, and even more so to those who belong to both groups.
From skin color to sexual preference, the central idea is the same: discrimination in any form is unacceptable, and institutionalizing it is downright vindictive and childish, a means for grown adults to tilt society’s playing field in their advantage and to cover their ears and scream until the people they don’t like go away. However, House Representatives are not children, and House Bill 2453 is far more sinister than bullying on the playground—it is a callous destruction of the stairway to equality that has been in construction for decades, if not centuries, with nothing to stop other states like Arizona from following suit or from including other minority groups in legalized discrimination as well.
Ultimately, the fact that people are willing to go this far to protect their own bigoted views is ludicrous, and to claim it as religious freedom is blatantly faulty reasoning when so many other elements of lifestyle contradict religious beliefs but only one is singled out and focused on. Civil rights activists fought half a century ago so that what happened then would not happen again, yet it is clear that portions of the land of the free are still overwhelmingly only free to those who fit the criteria.