The Kentucky House of Representatives is swerving away from a freedom-to-hate bill — thanks in part to businesses pushing back.
House Bill 372 would have given churches and religious organizations the right to ignore the municipal LGBTQ protections now in nine Kentucky cities.
The original bill had 46 sponsors among 100 state representatives. But State Rep. Jason Nemes, a Louisville Republican, has led a rewrite of the bill, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. The proposed legislation now only clarifies that churches and ministers can cite religious objections and not provide weddings for same-sex couples. Federal law already allows church leaders to decline to marry anyone; the issue was already settled in a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Among the Kentucky cities with civil-rights protections for LGBTQ people are Louisville, with a quarter of the state’s population, Lexington, with the University of Kentucky, and Frankfort, the state capital. In January, Paducah became the first city in western Kentucky to do so, the Louisville Courier Journal reports.
However, Kentucky may be seeing what other states have learned — that businesses can pay dearly for such religious-freedom legislation that allows LGBTQ discrimination.
Read the full story at LGBTQ Nation
