The Bilerico Project | Daily experiments in LGBTQ

In the latest dispatch from America's creeping theocracy, the Arizona House has just passed HB 2153 -- a Republican-sponsored bill creating a special "right" to discriminate against LGBT people on the basis of religion. Essentially, as I've written before, it makes "Because Jesus" a valid excuse for denying services and public accommodations to queers in the Grand Canyon State.

The vote was 33-27. All but three House Republicans voted in favor of the bill.

Debate over HB 2153 was intense, with Democratic Minority Leader Chad Campbell repeatedly excoriating his Republican colleagues for pushing the measure through. "This is a direct attack on [the LGBT] community," he said.

Noting the GOP's apparent zeal to protect religion-based anti-LGBT bigotry, Campbell reminded lawmakers of another form of oppression that was once justified by religion: slavery. And like slavery and other forms of prejudice, Campbell said, our society will one day discard anti-LGBT bigotry and be ashamed it was ever written into law.

"Someday this [bill] will be irrelevant," he said. "In the future we are going to look back on this bill and people are going to laugh... they're going to be disgusted by what we endorsed today."

Pointing out that LGBT people are not protected under Arizona's current nondiscrimination law, Rep. Campbell said that both the HB 2153's intent and its effect are crystal clear: "The bottom line is, this is an attack on the gay community of this state," he said. "This is a direct attack on the LGBT community... [and] the result of this bill is discrimination. Period."

Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, said that as a result of the bill, LGBT servicemembers and veterans living on Arizona's seven military bases would lose important rights and protections as soon as they went off-base and stepped onto Arizona soil. Rep. Demion Clinco, the only out gay member of the Arizona House, revealed that he knows the pain of homophobic hatred firsthand: he was assaulted in high school for being gay. Clinco said he was "disgusted" by this legislation.

And Democratic Rep. Victoria Steele read anti-Nazi theologian Martin Niemöller's famous poem "First they came..."

But as David Badash reports at The New Civil Rights Movement, supporters of the discriminatory measure claimed that they -- not the LGBT people who are targeted by this bill -- are the ones being persecuted:

[Those] opposed, like Rep. John Kavanagh, falsely claimed that "people are using the cloak of discrimination to persecute religious people."

"I'm sick and tired of the majority being trampled on by the minority," Rep. Steve Smith said. "I won't stand for it. We're the bad people. Why? Because I dare to wear my religion on my sleeve?"

More details, and the bill's next steps, after the jump.

The bill passed by the Arizona House today is identical to SB 1062, the GOP-sponsored "right to discriminate" bill that passed the state Senate yesterday in a party-line vote. Steve Yarbrough, the Republican sponsor of that measure, made it perfectly clear that the specific purpose of both bills are to legitimize discrimination against the LGBT community. The Sierra Vista Herald reports:

"Sen. Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, said the measure is aimed specifically at preventing what happened in New Mexico where courts there said a gay couple could sue a wedding photographer who turned away their request to take pictures at their nuptials. He said that should not be allowed to happen here.

"But Yarbrough said his legislation could also be interpreted broader than that, allowing motel operators with vacant rooms to refuse to rent to gays."

There you have it, folks, in black and white: Arizona Republicans want to literally legalize anti-gay segregation.

Because HB 2153 and SB 1062 are identical, the measure is now fast-tracked to Jan Brewer, Arizona's Tea Party Republican governor, for her signature.

Brewer vetoed a similar measure last year, but not because she objected to the bill's contents. Instead, it was an act of political retribution -- she wanted to get back at lawmakers for not passing a budget and refusing to consider her Medicaid expansion proposal.

Governor Brewer's office has a longstanding policy of not weighing in on bills before they reach her desk, but the chances of her signing HB 2153/SB 1062 into law are reportedly quite good. She has five days to decide whether to sign or veto the measure, or let it become law without her signature.

The fate of legalized anti-LGBT segregation in the state of Arizona quite literally now rests in her hands.