TALLAHASSEE, Florida, November 9, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Florida Rep. Julio Gonzalez says that it's “a heavy lift,” but he is going to fight to make sure religious liberty is protected in his state.
Speaking to LifeSiteNews by phone, Gonzalez said his bill is intended to “solve a problem.”
“The problem, as I see it, [is] particularly in regards to imposing someone's will on somebody else – our society has become highly litigious,” explained Gonzalez. “There are a bunch of other things, but the crux of the issue is that here in Florida, all of a sudden, the relationship between individuals with regards to marriage, and marital status, and types of marriage, has changed radically.”
“It became obvious” when the implementation of marriage redefinition came to Florida “that this is a good time to discuss how far we want to allow our courts, and by extension our government, to intrude into our religious convictions and our religious liberties against our will.”
“On the other hand, I don't want to give the individual the ability to rampantly discriminate against other groups,” said Gonzalez, “and using the religious argument, in my opinion falsely, to bolster their position. So I think it's a very difficult question to answer.”
Gonzalez said his bill addresses concerns similar to those in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that LGBT activists successfully fought in Indiana. However, “I remember reading the Indiana legislation, and I remember concluding that it was too broad, that it allowed for too much, in my opinion.”
“I don't agree with a lot of the articles that have been written about my bill … when it is called 'excessively broad.' In my opinion, and in my best effort, I wanted to make it as narrowly focused on solving the issue without allowing an excess amount of opportunity for misuse.”
If signed into law by Florida Governor Rick Scott, Gonzalez's bill will allow adoption agencies liberty to decide who is best to adopt children, and businesses with five owners or fewer the liberty to decide with whom they wish to do business.
Health care agencies would be allowed to refuse to “administer, recommend or deliver a medical treatment” unless a patient's life or health is in serious danger.
While many people frame the religious liberty battles as business owner rights of refusal versus customer rights of service, Gonzalez told LifeSiteNews he sees things differently, even as he admits he's ''parsing hairs.''
“I don't see it [as] the problem as denying services, even though operationally that's maybe what happens. But that's not what the person is saying. The person is not saying, 'Look, I refuse to give you these services.' That manner of thinking is very easily provable to be discriminatory.”
“The statement that a vendor is saying is, 'I refuse to engage in that activity because it goes against my religious convictions.” There should be room, says Gonzalez, for the government not to coerce people in these circumstances.
“It is not a right of one's power to force a businessperson to take him or her on as a client – it is not a constitutionally protected right.”
However, it is also not “constitutionally protected for somebody to negate services or products for a client based on his race, ethnicity – those have been appropriately litigated and legislated over the past 50-plus years, and fortunately we are now in a situation where we don't allow that kind of discrimination to take place, thank God.”
“The question is, 'Do I have the right – merely because I'm operating as a business, or whatever – to say, 'I appreciate you wanting to use me as a business; I refuse to do that because it goes against my convictions'?”
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“My answer to that question is absolutely. The fact of the matter is, that right cannot be completely unlimited. You can't just say 'no' to just about everything to a certain segment of the population and just rid of them of access to services. But there are certain characteristics we can carve out, and say, 'When you get to that point, we the people feel it is inappropriate for the government to coerce you into performing that activity, which you have decided you don't want to give for sound religious reasons.”
Gonzalez admits that his bill “is a heavy lift” because “it requires a lot of education – not just of the public in general, but also of my fellow legislators about this distinction between discrimination and religious convictions.”
“I have to demonstrate and show others why this is not discriminatory behavior, and why it is such an incredibly important right to protect. I also have to demonstrate that, in crafting the legislation, it is not going to place an undue burden on that part of the community that would otherwise be eligible for public services.
“For example,” he explained, “if 90 percent of the vendors are going to refuse to participate in a same-sex wedding, I think I would have to rethink this. At that point, the rights of same-sex couples to obtain those services will be infringed. But if we're talking one, two, three, four percent of vendors that are going to have these religious convictions, then my answer is let them go in peace – let the rest of us do business with vendors as we see fit.
“The importance of protecting the religious freedoms of those who are trying to live their lives in a manner consistent with their beliefs of rightness and wrongness, and upholding their views of morality, is far too important to infringe upon it unless it causes a significant impact on others.
“We're talking about a minuscule number of people that would be refusing these types of services because of their religious convictions. I believe that is not a significant enough [number] to warrant coercing them into compliance.”