I believe our Constitution is being attacked and very few are
coming to its defense.
The state of Indiana recently passed a law, Senate Bill 101
of the 2015 General Assembly (AKA The Religious Freedom Restoration Act), for the purpose of “prohibit[ing] a governmental entity from
substantially burdening a person's exercise of religion.” To pass this law and
to achieve its objectives the Indiana legislative body substantially altered
the definition of “persons”, which I believe if allowed to stand could severely
erode everyone’s freedoms.
Sadly, only those in the LGBT community are being defended
and understandably so. This community was arguably targeted with the passage
of this law. As such, this community of people should be defended, not as a group, but as a part of America, which is why I believe the national discourse misses the mark.
Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) states in
Section 7 that a “"person" includes … a partnership, a limited
liability company, a corporation, a company, a firm, a society, a joint-stock
company, an unincorporated association, or another entity.”
Our Constitution mentions “person” 22 times. I believe our founders intended
“person” to mean a human being.
Once we start defining person other than with that simple definition, a
human being starts to lose his or her freedoms, which can be very damaging to
our country and may lead us “to dissolve the political bands which have
connected [us] with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the
separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God
entitle [us], a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that [we]
should declare the causes which impel [us] to the separation.
“[As such] We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such
form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
What we need is
not more laws, but fewer and that is the mark for which we should strive.
