Arkansas law allows doctors to turn away LGBTQ people -- or anyone "objectionable"

The fascistic direction Christian nationalists are headed with "religious liberty" exemptions.

If you’ve enjoyed the ad-free Signorile Report since it launched, or began reading recently, please think about becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent opinion journalism, for roughly the cost of a cup of coffee at $5 per month. Thanks!

If you are gay, lesbian or bisexual in Arkansas, come the end of the summer, when a new law goes into effect, your doctor may decide you have to find another doctor if maintaining your sexual health is a priority of yours — even if the next doctor is 60 miles away.

If you’re transgender and getting hormone therapy or any other medically necessary procedure, a hospital, clinic or doctor’s office staff can decide they’re not going to administer it to you.

This past Friday Governor Asa Hutchinson signed into law a sweeping bill allowing medical workers, including doctors, nurses, hospital staff and others, to refuse “non-emergency” treatment to anyone based on moral, ethical or religious grounds.

This flies in the face of the oath medical professionals take, and it’s a brutal assault not only on LGBTQ people but on women, religious minorities and anyone who might be disapproved of by evangelicals, the Catholic right and other religious zealots who pushed hard for this law as part of their Christian nationalist agenda.

Hutchinson signed the bill a day after he became the second governor in the nation to sign a cruel bill into law banning transgender girls from participation in school team sports, one of dozens of anti-trans bills being pushed by Republicans across the country. This is a concerted effort by the desperate GOP to use culture war issues, and it’s a methodical plan by the religious right, which became emboldened and more politically powerful under Donald Trump, who bowed to them as he followed through on promises of dismantling LGBTQ rights.

The fascistic contours of this Arkansas law regarding medical professionals and religious exemptions will be repeated by Republicans in other states, and is another reason why we need federal protections for LGBTQ people:

Opponents have said types of health care that could be cut off include maintaining hormone treatments for transgender patients needing in-patient care for an infection, or grief counseling for a same-sex couple. They’ve also said it could also be used to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control, or by physicians assistants to override patient directives on end of life care.

“Religious liberty is a fundamental right, but it is not an excuse to discriminate against people or deny them health care,” Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas.

And the law indeed could affect many groups beyond LGBTQ people, even as Republicans and Hutchinson tried to get around both state and federal laws by making it about specific medical procedures or services. Hutchinson, in a smarmy statement, claimed:

I support this right of conscience so long as emergency care is exempted and conscience objection cannot be used to deny general health service to any class of people, Most importantly, the federal laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, gender, and national origin continue to apply to the delivery of health care services.

So, according to Hutchinson, if you’re a medical professional and you have a “conscience objection” or find a service “objectionable” — like treating a gay man, or anyone, for HIV, or treating a woman regarding birth control — it’s not the people involved that you’re targeting, it’s the behavior that put them in the position of needing this medical care that you’re condemning.

That is appalling. And it’s complete bullshit, as this is absolutely a direct assault on entire classes of individuals.

Hutchinson tries to claim that existing civil rights law protects classes of people from discrimination regarding routine care so his law is fine. But the courts have in the past seen such attacks as blatantly targeting groups, including under the Americans with Disabilities Act. What Hutchinson is probably hoping for, however, is that new Trump-appointed federal judges and the newly-reconfigure far-right Supreme Court will see it differently. He pretty much said that in signing a draconian anti-abortion bill last week — banning virtually all abortions, with no exceptions for rape or incest — telling CNN it’s meant as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade for the new Supreme Court to take up.

More so, while the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects racial and religious minorities from this kind of discrimination in medical care, there is no federal anti-discrimination statute protecting LGBTQ people — as the Equality Act would do if signed into law.

The Arkansas anti-LGBTQ law is similar to rules the Trump administration moved to put in place at the federal level and one it finalized in June of 2020, with anti-LGBTQ extremist Roger Severino as head of the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Civil Rights:

The Trump administration overhaul, which had been years in the making, came against warnings from health care groups that the rollback could make it easier for hospitals and health care workers to discriminate against patients based on their gender or sexual orientation.

Thankfully, the Biden administration, with people like Dr. Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender person confirmed by the Senate last week as assistant secretary of HHS, will undo those efforts, though it will not be easy or fast in many cases because of the nature of the government rule-making process.

The Trump government agencies was both a laboratory and a staging area for the religious nationalists to enact their goals into policy. Anti-LGBTQ groups are now working with Republicans in states across the country to pass these laws and put the Christian nationalist agenda into place.

The most powerful way to stop laws like this and the march of Christian nationalists right now is by passing the Equality Act, which passed the House last month and is right now in the Democratic-controlled Senate waiting for a vote. And Joe Biden is ready to sign it.

But it will not pass without the filibuster being reformed or abolished. In almost every area — from voting rights and immigration to the minimum wage and LGBTQ rights — the GOP’s anti-democratic moves can’t be stopped without getting rid of the 60 vote rule.

And that means demanding that Democratic senators like Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who as a member of the LGBTQ community claims to defend our rights, end her opposition to this Jim Crow era relic and stand up for equality now. Millions of Americans, their rights in the balance, have no time to lose.