RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA — Republican legislators in North Carolina were admittedly feeling tense and nervous. “We just couldn’t wait to get hold this vote,” Rep. Billy Mack (R) told reporters later. The vote Mack was referring to was held in the state’s senate chamber, and it overrode Gov. Pat McCrory’s veto of Senate Bill 2, which now gives state officials — people paid with public, taxpayer funds — to deny marriage services to same-sex couple based on the state employee’s religious beliefs. Legal experts see this law as a potential stepping stone for private sector workers and business owners who want a legal avenue by which they can discriminate against homosexuals.
Gov. McCrory had vetoed the bill earlier this year, citing his beliefs that no state employee had the right to deny a citizen any service, no matter the reasoning. But throughout the country, nervous social conservatives have been scrambling to enact “religious freedom” laws that are written ostensibly to protect every person’s religious beliefs, but are being nakedly fronted by right-wing politicians as an out clause for the sweeping spate of Federal court judgments that have been striking down same-sex marriage bans in several states.
Mack told the media that he and his fellow Republicans were “excited to prove to the rest of the country that we’re just as stubbornly resistant to reality here as they are in Texas or Mississippi” and that they had “seen all these other states passing these thinly veiled attempts to keep the LGBT community segregated and less than equal, and we’re tired of the other states having all the homophobic fun,” so they decided to override McCrory’s veto and give state employees another chance to stick their tongue out and blow raspberries at adults who just want to marry other adults.
“You see,” Mack said, “Republican voters get off on us being assholes to people they don’t like or at least don’t feel are worthy of having a real, actual voice in how our country is run.” Mack said that “women, gays, immigrants, and other non-normals” are the “perfect targets for our political assholery” because “when your movement is made up primarily of white men who feel threatened by the mere suggestion that they have it easier than other people by virtue of their birth status” it’s “ridiculously easy to convince them everyone else is out to get them except us.”
Mack said that he and his fellow Republicans “love being assholes when it means we get campaign contributions” and that “votes are cool too, but those sweet checks from religious zealots are where the real money gets made.” When reporters asked how he and his colleagues could pass this law onto the books and still claim to be small government, Mack said, “Because we don’t believe in Cultural Marxism, that’s why.” When Mack was pushed by reporters for an answer that didn’t include meaningless made-up political conspiracy theories, Mack said, “Because we believe in small government and that means government small enough to slip under your bedroom door and see if you’re fucking someone of your same gender.”
One reporter from the St. Glen Tribune asked Mack if he and the other Republicans had considered the fact that now in his state Muslim state employees could deny a marriage license to two heterosexual people if they were against non-Muslims getting married and their belief was “sincerely held.” Mack blinked for twenty straight seconds then said, “No. We um, hadn’t thought of that. Shit. Bee-Arr-Bee.” Mack rushed off to the capital building, and came back ten minutes later.
“Okay, we just tacked on an amendment that says this law only applies to Christian beliefs.” That’s when reporters asked how the law would then square with the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America that expressly forbids any government in the country from making laws that promote one religion over another. “Goddamnit,” Mack exclaimed. He paused for several moments, grabbed his cell phone, and made a quick, hushed call. He then returned to the podium and said with calm reassurance, “That First Amendment thingy is in the Federal government’s Constitution. We Republicans believe that the Constitution isn’t supreme, even with its Supremacy Clause, so we’re going to just go ahead and nullify that shit right here and now.”
When reporters asked Mack if he’d ever read anything about past attempts by conservative states to nullify progressive laws and how well that has gone. “Shut up, hippie,” snapped Mack. “This is different. We’re doing God’s work here.” That’s when a female reporter from The Houston Sparkler pointed out that segregationists and even proponents of slavery claimed to be doing the work of God. “Yes, well,” Mack sputtered. “You see…CULTURAL MARXISM!”
Mack quickly turned and ran away, leaving all the reporters in attendance behind.
