IT IS MY SINCERE BELIEF...

...that Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson (R) belongs on the hot seat for introducing his bill that will allow businesses to refuse service to people who offend their sincere religious beliefs. It's not discrimination, says Johnson. Watch the video of the interview by a reporter from the Times-Picayune which you will understand only if you know the language of BS.

About the pushback, Johnson says, "In some sense, we're victims of the times", and his amendment makes it clear that businesses will be able to discriminate only against same sex couples and will not "open a Pandora's box" and allow businesses to discriminate, say, against interracial couples. Curb your discrimination!

Poor persecuted Christian victims. Give it up, Mike. The equality train left the station some time ago. We can but hope the bill will take its place in the graveyard of died-in-committee bills. Louisiana is in deep financial difficulty already without pernicious legislation that will drive away businesses, conventions, and tourists, but with the Louisiana Legislature, one can never be certain they will do the right thing for the citizens of the state.

NOT GOOD AT ALL, NOPD

New Orleans — “Ann” said she was walking to a friend’s house on Tulane Avenue in September when a New Orleans police officer stopped her for no real reason and asked for her identification. By the end of their interaction, she was in handcuffs, booked with crimes against nature and verbally abused by a local judge. “Ann” said her only crime was being a young, black transgender girl.

Like others, she was too afraid to tell her story in public or use her real name. Instead, a friend read her testimony before the City Council’s Criminal Justice Committee on Wednesday. Her presentation was one of several the committee heard — directly or indirectly — from members of the local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning community.

If this is how the NOPD officers spend (waste) their time in the murder capital of the country, then their priorities are in serious disarray.  No wonder the department will be under a years-long consent decree order by the US Department of Justice due to "a history of discriminatory policing on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual status."

New Orleans has always been a city of great diversity, and it is unconscionable that the department is guilty of discriminatory behavior in its approach to policing in a city in so great need of a well-functioning police department that treats all citizens fairly.  And for heaven's sake, the police should concentrate their efforts on finding the murderers and perpetrators of violence who make living in certain areas of the city like living in a war zone.

Kudos to Wes Ware, director of BreakOut, "an organization that seeks to end what it calls the criminalization of LGBTQ youth in New Orleans" and the members of the organization and to the Justice Department for their efforts to bring about fair and equal treatment by NOPD of all the citizens of New Orleans.