Cole / Nicole LeFavour

Notes From the Floor

Former Idaho Senator Cole / Nicole Legislative Blog

TOP TEN Reasons Idaho Does Not Need a Religious Freedom Exemption to Add the Words

TOP TEN REASONS Idaho does not need to create a religious exemption in order to add the words and include gay and transgender people in our existing laws which protect people’s liberty to hold a job, rent housing, receive an education and be served by the businesses and organizations in their communities:

10. Idaho already has robust religious freedom exemptions in its constitution and in the idaho Human Rights Act itself which specifically protects people from discrimination based on their religion.

9. Idaho’s Constitution does place limits on religious liberty saying that a person can not use religion or religious liberty as a reason to justify “pernicious practices” or do harm to others.

8. Idaho’s Human Rights Act is Idaho’s law which bans discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age and disability. To ban discrimination against gay and transgender people Idaho lawmakers simply need to add four words “sexual orientation, gender identity” to this existing law.

7. For decades, Idaho’s human rights act has balanced civil rights with religious liberty. It requires the Human Rights Commission to investigate and mediate in order to protect both individuals and businesses in cases of alleged discrimination.

6. Even today some Americans hold religious beliefs based on the Bible’s ideas about slavery and interracial marriage. Yet when race was included in Idaho’s human rights act, religious freedom exemptions were not created to allow people who held these religious beliefs to continue to discriminate by depriving black Americans of their freedoms or by refusing to provide wedding-related services to interracial couples.

5. Many religions deny women the right to own property, marry freely, or exercise other basic civil liberties. Yet when sex was included in Idaho’s civil rights and human rights laws, religious exemptions were not created to allow people to continue to deprive women of their basic freedoms or prohibit them from accessing goods, services or other public accommodations.

4. The first sentence of the Idaho Constitution addresses pubic accommodation and lists acquiring property among our inalienable rights as individuals. A religious exemption permitting people to refuse to provide gay people with wedding related goods and services would violate Idaho’s constitution.

3. If Idaho created an exemption allowing religious people to continue to discriminate against gay and transgender people this would unconstitutionally prioritize in law one religious belief over the beliefs of other religions — those which instead place priority on the golden rule and believe that gay people are made in the image of god and are deserving of full liberties and inclusion under existing law.

2. To only party include gay and transgender people in Idaho’s human rights act sends the message that gay and transgender people are not fully human or not worthy of neighborly love, respect, dignity or service by businesses in their own communities. It sets gay people and religious people apart, creating a distinction which could perpetuate acts of violence as well as continued despair and suicide by gay and transgender youth.

1. If you are Christian, ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?” Would Jesus say you should refuse to bake the wedding cake for your neighbors? Where do we define what celebrating or participation in a wedding is? Is that just making a wedding bouquet and taking photographs or is it renting the wedding gown, the tuxedo or the hall? Selling the paper napkins? Growing the flowers for the bouquets? Fixing the newlywed’s broken car? Renting them their hotel room on their honeymoon? Renting an apartment to their family? Schooling their children? Serving them an anniversary dinner? Allowing them to live in your retirement community? Accommodating the funeral when one of them passes away?

Don’t Give Up

Sen Hill: No bill to add the words

(An Open letter to Idaho’s Senate President ProTem on the day you say there will be no bill to ADD the WORDS.)

 
Senator Hill,

Please do not give up

As you said, “True believers on all sides condemn intolerance and discrimination.” You acknowledge that harm is being done and that legislators know that it is. Idaho families know there is harm.
I understand that it is hard to accept gay marriage within the context of scripture. There is no place for same sex unions in your theology. But I have to hope you understand and agree that no ones’ theology, not mine, not yours, can be placed in law.
 
The first sentence of Idaho’s own Constitution addresses public accommodation as it lists acquiring property among our inalienable rights as Idahoans and individuals.
 
The third section of Idaho’s Constitution guarantees religious liberty. There we promise specifically “the free exercise and enjoyment of faith and worship.”
 
There is however in our constitution no mention of free exercise of “religious convictions.” If there were I feel sure that women would never have been included in Idaho’s Human Rights Act because many hold with the Bible’s tenant still that a woman belongs to her husband and has little or no right to education or to purchase or own property. So would you agree with them it is a violation of conscience to sell a woman a car or tailor her a pair of pants in the same way it is a violation in your mind to bake my wife and I a wedding cake?
 
As hard as it is to stomach other people’s choices and rights as they relate to your religious beliefs, the two in law, according to our constitution, must be separate.
 
Our founders limit the free exercise of religion clearly by continuing the first sentence of our constitution’s right to religious liberty with “the liberty of conscience hereby secured shall not be construed to dispense with oaths or affirmations … or justify… pernicious practices inconsistent with morality or the peace or safety of the state.” Morality is not synonymous with religious faith or belief and, under our U.S. constitution, simply can not be. It is more as you yourself have stated that, “True believers on all sides condemn intolerance and discrimination” for those are pernicious acts.
 
Please do not give up. Our human rights act has safeguarded religious liberty justly for decades. It will continue to do so, even if gay and transgender people are fully included.
 
Please know that with your leadership, in the Idaho legislature, anything is possible.
 
Sincerely and with respect,
…nicole lefavour

 

I’m still here

It's true, I'm no longer sitting in that seat on the floor of the Idaho Senate or House. I'm not rising to speak when something needs to be said, but my voice is still out here and in the Capitol each year, and though I'm often invisible, I will be in the big marble building gathering others and working quietly until gay and transgender people are finally safe here, our jobs and livelihoods and families are no longer at risk –whether we are exercising our constitutional right to marry or just simply trying to shop at a store or eat dinner in a restaurant. It is 2016. We should be safe and not have to fear that our state by its silence endorses violence against us. We should not have to fear being turned away from businesses.

In my heart I know our state is better than the policy it allows to be printed in its books of code.

I'm going nowhere until the laws change and good people are included in our state anti-discrimination statutes. I am going nowhere until hard working neighbors and friends are afforded the dignity of having recourse when they face discrimination, violence and acts of cruelty. For Idaho, it will get better. To the young I say remember the love of all of us out here and know that people can be better and braver and kinder than our laws.

It's 2016. Be brave. Let's make it so Idaho. 

…nicole

Former Idaho Senator Nicole LeFavour

I write a column every other week called From the Far Margin. I write on many topics. You might like: Three Red Lights, In Favor of Pitchforks, Walls of Ice, The Beauty of Dream

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Nicole’s Open Letter to Former Colleagues

Friends, Former Colleagues,

I no longer serve with you, but I’d like to say a few words. You, of the
Idaho House and Senate, I think you know in your hearts, you still have
work to do.

I never was allowed the privilege of bringing a
bill to “add the words” to the floor of the house or senate. I’d like
to you to hear what I would have said had i been granted that dignity. I
can not do justice to all the lives affected. There is so much you will
hear when you finally listen to the stories of gay people, your sons
and daughters, nieces, nephews, neighbors, and silent friends.

First,
despair takes far too many of young people. It never should. Please
consider the loneliness of a young person who has been rejected by their
parents, then their church, even their friends. Too many stand over
sinks with razors or knives alone, because no one stood to protect them
when the world grew cruel.

You may feel this matter is not
a place for policy but for church or family. But what of when one or
both fail good people? Should any one of God’s beautiful young creations
feel they are unworthy of life? What if this were your child?

There
is sometimes folly in religions when they need to find demons from
among us. Every century, every decade has had them. And politics takes
them up because what church preaches is powerful. It motivates action
and votes. But at the expense of lives? So people we love live in fear
of meeting a baseball bat in a parking lot or alley?

I
know none of you wish harm on anyone. Tragically though, this
legislature’s failure to act is the same as an endorsement of the
violence, a nod to the unworthiness people feel when they live in fear
and no one will stand for them. In the far, most rural parts of Idaho it
can be the hardest. What if this were your child? Your sister or
brother?

Politics and political parties are not your
highest obligation as law makers or as citizens of this beautiful state.
Your highest obligation is to protect lives, to ensure freedom, liberty
and life.

Please. This is so simple. Idaho already has laws that decry
cruelty on the basis of chosen religion, race, disability, national
origin, age over 40 and gender. Every business in Idaho operates within
these laws and has for decades. The laws mediate and protect businesses
and as much as alleged victims. They allow penalization
only for blatant, intentional, systematic acts of cruelty; the kind
trampling of a person’s liberty that we all feel civilized societies can
not function with or tolerate. It is very simple to include gay and
transgender people, my people, me, within these existing public safety
statutes.

Please, understand lives will be lost quietly each year, each month, you do not to act, each day that more of us despair.

Thank you for reading this. Please put conscience before politics. With respect.

…nicole

 

Former Senator Nicole LeFavour
Box 775 Boise, Idaho 83701
208 724-0468 • nicole@4idaho.org

 

P.S. This
bill is so simple. Just insert four words “sexual orientation, gender
identity” within the Idaho Human Rights Act which is the state’s
existing fair employment, housing and education law.

The Speaker or Pro Tem could request a hearing on the bill and it would, as you all well know, with your help, still have time to pass this year. Please.

Nicole-COMPOSITE-2

Add the Words 3rd VIDEO: Only Stronger

On February 10 the bill to Add the Words to include gay and transgender people in Idaho’s Human Rights Act was killed without a word of public testimony. For six years the Idaho legislature has refused to allow a single public hearing on the legislation to ban discrimination in employment, housing and education. Tell your Idaho law makers it is finally time to stand up and say discrimination is wrong. http://addthewords.org

Send your message now respectfully asking the Senators to reconsider the bill and Add the Words.

Sen. McKenzie: CMckenzie@senate.idaho.gov (208) 367-9400
Sen. McGee: JMcgee@senate.idaho.gov (208) 455-3950
Sen. Lodge: PALodge@senate.idaho.gov
Sen. Winder: CWinder@senate.idaho.gov (208) 343-2300
Sen. Fulcher: Rfulcher@senate.idaho.gov (208) 332-1340
Sen Davis: BMDavis@senate.idaho.gov (208) 522-8100
Sen. Hill: BHill@senate.idaho.gov (208) 356-3677

Letters to the Editor Idaho Statesman: https://forms.idahostatesman.com/lettertoeditor/

Idaho Press Tribune: You may mail, fax or e-mail your letter to the editor, but letters must include your full name (no initials), home address and daytime and evening telephone numbers for verification. If you have questions regarding your letter, please call (208) 465-8115 or e-mail:
op-ed@idahopress.com

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Add the Words Idaho is an all volunteer organization of people all across Idaho working to demonstrate the level of public support for inclusion of gay and transgender Idahoans in the state’s laws banning discrimination in employment, housing education and public accommodation. Add the Words has gathered over 2000 messages to Idaho legislators written on sticky notes from people in more than 60 Idaho towns. http://addthewords.org

Thanks to Lucy Juarez for video footage, and to Jim Huggins and Stacy Ericson for still photos. Thanks to Lisa Perry and all those organizing or participating in positive silent protests across the state.
Thanks to Dave at Rail Tees on Overland for the Add the Words T-shirt design and printing.

Live in Boise? Find out how you can post your sticky note in the statehouse any time, day or night.

http://addthewords.org