Update 5/18/15 - New Survey Finds Two-Thirds of Louisianans Support Marriage and Conscience Act
(Original post) - From Family Research Council, May 11, 2015: (Emphases are mine)
There are plenty of Americans out there who don't understand why Louisiana is pushing the Marriage and Conscience Act. I have two words for them: Donald Verrilli. Late last month, the President's Solicitor General should have had every state scrambling to do what my home state is attempting: preventing on a small scale what the Obama administration wants to do on a national one. During the oral arguments at the Supreme Court, Verrilli admitted that one of the side effects of redefining marriage may be to punish the entities that believe otherwise -- even if they're religious!
The easiest way for the government to put the squeeze on these institutions is by stripping their tax exempt status -- which is just one of the things that Louisiana's Marriage and Conscience Acts would outlaw. "The central thrust of the bill guarantees that the state of Louisiana will not make tax determinations based on a person or organization's beliefs about marriage," Austin Nimocks explains.
"In other words, if a church believes that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, the Marriage and Conscience Act simply ensures that the government cannot functionally defund and eliminate that church's existence by withdrawing its nonprofit status."
Governor Bobby Jindal (R-La.) has been a staunch defender of the measure -- and the religious liberty it defends -- and spoke over the weekend about the bill's importance. Asked why he was focusing on this bill and not economic growth, Jindal fired back that the two issues aren't "mutually exclusive." "In Louisiana, we don't believe in discrimination against anybody. In terms of economics, look, our economy has grown twice as fast as the national economy. Our job creation three times as fast as the national economy. We actually right now have more people working than ever before, our highest ever per capita income ranking... So I think that we can have religious liberty and economic growth..."
The bill, he explained, simply says "the state of Louisiana cannot discriminate against those families, individuals or businesses that have a traditional view of marriage. To me, this is common sense. A business owner shouldn't have to choose between their sincerely held religious beliefs and being able to operate their businesses. They shouldn't have to lose their licenses, pay thousands of dollars in fines. The religious freedom act had a strong, bipartisan majority. I'm hopeful this bill will as well. We can have religious liberty and tolerance."