The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which was passed in Indiana on April 25th, allows businesses to use their religious affiliations as an excuse to refuse service to certain customers. While some say that the act provides further protection to the first amendment freedom of religion, others believe that the act legally supports discrimination, particularly against members of the L.G.B.T. community. As one can imagine, this act has become a hot button issue on a national level.
The wording of the act itself is interesting. It explains that the government may not "substantially burden" a person's freedom of religion, defining the word burden as an action that "constrains, inhibits, curtails or denies" the exercise of religion by a person. All of those words could potentially encompass a great deal of actions. The act is protecting the expression of a right with far too much wiggle room. By that I mean that religion is something that is constantly up for interpretation. As history has blatantly revealed, there will never be a consensus on what religion to believe in, or even what a certain line of belief specifically means. Christianity alone has dozens of subsets each with their own values and beliefs. The problem with that is that nobody is regulating religious beliefs and therefore nobody is controlling what is protected by the RFRA. Anybody could claim that a certain person is constraining, inhibiting or curtailing there religious freedom if there is no set definition for religious beliefs. Laws cannot be based upon such subjective grounds.
Religion is something that must be constantly revised and reinterpreted as well. Back in the pre-Civil War era United States, the Bible was used to support slavery. Also, the Bible is extremely sexist, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent" (1 Timothy 2:12). Should the RFRA really be legally justifying these beliefs, allowing people to discriminate in business and service?
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