According to an article from last Thursday’s edition of “The New York Times,” “state legislatures across the country are taking up bills that would make it easier for businesses and individuals to opt out of serving gay couples on religious grounds,” due to the rising possibility that the Supreme Court will “establish a nationwide right to same-sex marriage later this year.”

This is unsettling.

I’m a believer in giving individuals and humanity the benefit of the doubt. People are basically good, in my eyes. However, a huge chunk of any hope for humanity I have has become tainted with antipathy at the disturbing report that American people in today’s society would consider it their right to be allowed to turn someone away — to straight-up discriminate against them — because they’re different.

As much as I’d like to say that this is a shocker, it’s not. I may be a bit of an idealist, but I’m a practical one. My idealism has not reduced me to naivety; I know there are people who discriminate based on superficial differences, and that this is just the way of the world, unfortunately. But In our diverse country, one would think — or like to believe, I suppose — that we’d be at a point where we could get past all of that.

It’s completely ludicrous to consider having, or to even to propose laws that would allow business owners to refuse service to gay or lesbian couples, even on account of religious beliefs.

True, America has all kinds of policies regarding the protection of free exercise of any religion, but how does serving or the general existence of a gay or lesbian couple have a negative effect on anyone else? Of course, any religion may have its own reasons for not accepting every sexuality, but just because you don’t believe something is acceptable doesn’t grant the right to use your freedoms to infringe upon their freedoms. That’s against everything America is supposed to stand for. Plus, it’s hypocritical. What if someone wanted to refuse to serve someone because of his or her religion? That wouldn’t be right. Just like refusing service to a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender individual wouldn’t be right. The laws of our country don’t stand for the rights of religions to be imposed upon, so they shouldn’t stand for the rights of sexual orientations — or races or sexes — to be imposed upon, either.

A person or people, by being gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender or straight or whatever sexual orientation, cannot likely affect you directly anyway, no matter what your faith is, so there’s no reason to discriminate. Besides, who’s to decide who to not provide a service to when there may not even be proof of someone’s sexual orientation? Who’s to say who’s who, who walks into a store or restaurant? The suggestion in these possible bills is far too open-ended to be ethical or fair, beside the fact that it’s just cruel and unjust.

“The New York Times’” article stated that “some of the new bills are already experiencing pushback from businesses and prominent conservatives who are concerned that they might lead to boycotts or harm their states’ reputations.”

States that consider taking these discriminatory bills to any form of a higher level SHOULD be concerned because these bills WILL lead to forms of protest or civil disobedience if they are passed and put into effect. They will lead to the decay of the states’ reputations, and that would just be just desserts, wouldn’t it? Although one cannot assume that every single person in one state is discriminatory, it would certainly be fair that those who were discriminatory and supported this bill or imposed this law on people if it were to be passed to gain a bad reputation.