Greenwood’s Anita Batman and Jim Palmer mean well. So does the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association.
Batman and Palmer, by starting a social media page of Mississippi businesses that say they serve everyone, are sending a message of righteous opposition to House Bill 1523, the so-called “religious freedom” law that seems to condone discrimination against homosexuals.
The Hospitality and Restaurant Association, which is encouraging Mississippi businesses to put up an “Everyone’s Welcome Here” sticker, is trying to counter the mounting public relations disaster of this misguided law.
They’ve got it backward, though.
The businesses that need to put up stickers or get on lists are those few that might discriminate against potential customers. It’s like John Mayo, a former state lawmaker from Clarksdale and the father of a married gay daughter, said: House Bill 1523 should have a companion measure that requires businesses that discriminate to put up a sign at their front doors announcing such. “I would wager they would not be in business long,” Mayo said in an op-ed piece appearing in today’s Jackson Clarion-Ledger.
Most businesses are open to all comers, no matter the customers’ sexual orientation, marital status, sexual practices or gender identity — the areas with which the backers of House Bill 1523 were obviously preoccupied. We don’t know of many businesses that try to look into a person’s private life or the condition of their soul before selling them a good or service. Money is the great leveler, and no one who wants to stay in business can arbitrarily pick and choose whose money they will take and whose they won’t.
To act as if a normal business practice — to welcome all customers — is somehow exceptional gives more credence to House Bill 1523 than it deserves. Even if the law survives the present uproar and the lawsuits that are likely to follow, very few businesses will invoke its supposed protections.
For one, the part of the law that deals with commerce tries to give cover only to companies that are in wedding-related businesses — caterers, florists, bakers, jewelers, venue owners. That’s a tiny sliver of the economy. Even among those businesses to which the law applies, most will simply ignore it, either because they disagree with its judgmental undertones or because they want all the customers they can get.
House Bill 1523 is a law of symbolism, not of substance. It is unnecessary, redundant of religious protections that already exist in federal or state law, and designed to distract the people of this state from more pressing issues. To treat it as more than it is only serves this ulterior motive.
