Mammon Shows How It Gets Served in Georgia

The Atlanta Chamber of Commerce Worships

Mammon is mad at Georgia, and is not going to take it anymore. Georgia's Legislature recently passed HB 757, a bill to protect Georgians' religious freedom from those bent on forcing social recognition and material support of homosexuality and same-sex marriages on America. The bill would allow faith-based organizations to deny services or employment to those who violate their “sincerely held religious belief.” It is a watered down version of a previous bill, which couldn't be stomached by the banana-backbones of the bought-and-sold Republican establishment.

"Republican" Governor Nathan Deal threatened to veto the previous bill because it would allow "discrimination in our state in order to protect people of faith." Forcing people to violate their consciences apparently is better than "discrimination," meaning such monstrosities as allowing Christian charities to decide whether they will facilitate homosexual adoption, Christian schools to decide on the ethics of those who will teach children, etc. Deal's veto threat came after warnings from the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and corporations like Unilever, Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and Virgin. (The Republican Establishment, which managed to provide tax cuts for these companies and to do nothing to discontinue funding for the baby-killing, organ-harvesting death mills of Planned Parenthood, wonders why they have lost the trust of their base, who are probably just fascist, racists and bigots anyway.)

Concerned that Deal might not veto the new bill, Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin called on media companies to boycott Georgia if it becomes law. "[I]t’s un-American. It’s an affront on all the values Hollywood prides itself on.” (Seriously, he said that: Hollywood and values in the same sentence.) While the House Committee on Unamerican Activities has not taken up his calls for investigation of Georgia, Disney, Marvel, AMC and Viacom have all agreed to withdraw productions from Georgia if religious freedom is protected. The NFL has indicated that it would affect decisions on where to locate the Super Bowl.

So, let's review. They want it to be illegal for a religious group not to rent out their hall for a same-sex wedding because that's discriminatory refusal of service. But it's okay to organize a cartel of the most powerful businesses in America not to do any business with all the people of Georgia because they support religious freedom for faith-based organizations. You can discriminate against all Georgians for their collective position on religious freedom but not follow your conscience in a faith-based organization.

Republicans have not provided any response to these threats, but the current Speaker of the House did find time recently to bemoan incivility in the Presidential campaign, Americans' lack of trust in our leaders and to hold up the vision of bold new corporate tax reductions. Meanwhile, the former Republican Speaker of the House agreed to co-accept a medal from Notre Dame University with Vice-President Biden, whose insulting intransigence against Judge Bork gave us Justice Kennedy and Obergefell and introduced a new level of politicization to the Supreme Court. While lamenting that "public confidence in government is at historic lows and cynicism is high," the President of Notre Dame praised the former speaker for his willingness to "compromise." Indeed, in this regard, he has been a model of Republican leadership; it's too bad Democrats and big business won't follow his example.