WHY Arizona's SB1062 is bad policy.

I thought it worthy of poring over and explaining just how bad SB1062 was, but frankly, almost all of ARS Article 9 (41-1493) had already partially codified bigotry.  So of course, Republicans had to make it worse.   I won't cover the additionally vague language that was inserted; just the crap.

The bill does four things:

Expansion of "exercise of religion"
Firstly, it expands what the "exercise of religion" means, from having the freedom to act in a manner that is "substantially motivated by a religious belief", to a broadly defined "practice or observance of religion".

So, let's say that I'm not even Christian, but I nonetheless like Christmas.  I can now kick you out of my establishment because you're a Jew.  They didn't just lower the bar; they dropped it on the ground.

Expansion of personhood to allow everyone to discriminate
Secondly, it expands the definition of what a "person" is, from a, "religious assembly or institution" to, "any individual, association, partnership, corporation, church, religious assembly or institution, estate, trust, foundation or other legal entity."

Aside from the obvious original mismatch of what a "person" is, now, anyone and anything can be called a person.  The point of this expansion being, that religious groups are not the only entities allowed to "exercise" their religion.  And that should scare the hell out of you, because it means that companies can now freely ban Muslims, Jews, Buddhists or anyone else they find offensive to their religion, from their business establishment, meetings, concerts, etc.  They can conceivably kick out atheists and agnostics, too.

The burden of proof is now on the discriminated

Thirdly, whereas the current law allows the government to step in, if it feels compelled by a self interest, and block discrimination stemming from the "exercise of religion", this bill now places the onus on the discriminated party to prove that it's in the government's best interest to do so.

I don't even know how any individual would go about gathering information to prove to a disinterested government that it should step in, let alone have the money to do so.  So let's take a parallel here:  What would you say, if the government told you that it was now your onus to prove that you were raped before it did anything.  What would you do?  What would you think?

The expansion of civil lawsuits

Fourthly, the law previously encouraged people who felt that their "exercise of religion" was being burdened by state and local government, to sue or defend itself against government.  This bill gives these folks the right to sue or use "exercise of religion" as a defense against anyone.  In other words, an expansion of tort and civil lawsuits.

You read that right: People who discriminate based on loosely religious beliefs, can now sue the very people they're discriminating against, or defend themselves against charges of discrimination, by proclaiming that they're simply observing the sort of discrimination that was described in the Bible, some 2000+ years ago.  Slavery is coming back into fashion, it seems, in the South.

So there you have it.  A relatively quick read on the state of affairs in Arizona, or as I like to call it: Dumb and Dumber.  But hey, as I wrote in my 10 thoughts post, this is all entertainment from my standpoint.  Republicans, it seems, cannot help but step on their own toes.

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Oh, and a postscript note: Eventually, I do expect some journalists to catch up, but really, woe is the media and the news once again, for dropping the ball on explaining what's actually going on, here.