When Holly Cochran first heard about Mississippi House Bill 1523, the bill had just passed through the House and was on its way to the State Senate.
“I thought, ‘There’s got to be some good senators in Mississippi that will shut this down,'” she said.
But the bill made it through the Senate and Gov. Phil Bryant signed it into law on Tuesday, April 5. The law allows government employees, religious organizations and businesses to refuse to provide services to members of the LGBT community due to religious or moral beliefs that oppose same-sex marriage, transgender people or extramarital sex.
Cochran is a twenty-year-old junior at Mississippi University for Women who knows what it is like to be gay in Mississippi, where she has lived her whole life. She says the bill is an attempt to protect discrimination.
Ralph Null and Fred Kinder, a Columbus couple, called the bill “mind-boggling” and said it was hypocritical of state legislators to support discrimination in the name of religion.
“It just really makes you angry in a deeply personal way,” Null said.
“It’s just wrong,” Kinder added.
Null and Kinder have been together nearly 45 years and were married in North Carolina last September. Over the years they have seen attitudes toward gay and transgender individuals change in the community. Most people they know are against this bill, they said. They have a 90-year-old friend who went on an angry rant when she heard the bill had been signed into law.
“And I just had to smile,” Null said.
Cochran said she too has known conservatives who years ago may have opposed gay rights who are no longer opposed. She thinks most Mississippians don’t approve of or agree with the law.
“I think (people) should know that not everyone in Mississippi is as terrible as Phil Bryant is making it look like we are,” she said.
Even though she doesn’t think many or even most businesses in Columbus will discriminate against gay or transgender individuals, she is going to more cautious about where she goes now.
Null and Kinder were also upset at the prospect of facing people who won’t do business with them.
“Do I need to wear a scarlet letter so that I can let every Christian business owner know that they might sin by (doing business with me)?” Null said.
He and Kinder have not had much overt prejudice directed toward them in the many years they’ve been together. Part of that is because they’re very involved in the community and know people, they said. Kinder was recently acknowledged for his forty years of volunteering service in March with the Columbus Exchange Club’s Andy Morris Book of Golden Deeds Award. The couple also tends to avoid places and people who they think may be less accepting of them. But about 30 years ago they used to frequent a particular restaurant with another gay couple and another friend. One day the friend jumped out of the car before the others so she could run in and use the bathroom. While in the restaurant, she overheard the owner talking about “the four queers in the parking lot.” The group stopped going after that.
They’ve had friends who have suffered worse. One friend who had been with his partner for 55 years was kicked out of the home where he’d been living for over a decade by his partner’s nephew after his partner died, Null said. The nephew told him not to take anything that he didn’t have proof he had paid for.
Cochran hasn’t faced much overt discrimination either, though she thinks this may be because she doesn’t “look gay.”
“Quote, unquote,” she said.
She also said discrimination is more overt in smaller towns around the state. In particular, she said cities with universities, like Columbus, are more accepting.
Still, she has memories of family members going on anti-gay rants in her presence without knowing that she is gay. She’s also seen people in public give her and her partner strange looks. She doesn’t always feel she can quite be herself in Mississippi. She said she feels as if she’s constantly having to censor herself.
“And that’s not a good feeling,” she said.
She talked about how she and her girlfriend went to Chicago over spring break where they both felt much more comfortable.
“It was a different feeling,” she said. “Feeling like we didn’t have to hide there.”
For Hays Burchfield, an attorney in Eupora, HB 1523 puts forward the worst possible image of Mississippi.
“When you talk about stereotypes, there’s always a little bit of truth,” he said. “I think this is the worst of Mississippi and this law is bringing it to the forefront for everyone to see. I do not think it represents a majority of this state.”
Burchfield, 34, married his husband, Josh Whitlocke, in March at the University of Mississippi’s Paris-Yates Chapel. He said they were the first male couple to marry in the chapel.
Their wedding was a success. Burchfield said everyone — from the circuit clerk in their hometown of Eupora, to the baker, florist and photographer — was supportive. He said so many people attended the wedding that some had to stand along the chapel’s walls.
Burchfield, who helped found OUTlaw, a gay-straight alliance at the University of Mississippi School of Law, said his experience as a gay man in Mississippi, where he was born and raised, has been positive. Even so, he said he has LGBT clients, and he’s well aware of the discrimination they’ve faced. He said several clients have contacted him with concerns about the law.
HB 1523 is harmful for the state’s image, and doesn’t represent how caring and hospitable Mississippians can be, he said.
“We went to Australia and New Zealand on our honeymoon,” Burchfield said. “While we were there, if people knew where Mississippi was, they were surprised to meet a gay couple from Mississippi. Mississippi’s reputation is not the best. When other people from other states or countries think of Mississippians, a law like this definitely hurts our reputation.”
Burchfield also questioned the law’s ultimate effectiveness.
“It goes into effect July 1,” he said. “I don’t think it will be long before there’s a federal lawsuit. The state will end up spending a lot of money defending it in court and it will lose before every judge they go before. It’s a lot of money the state could be spending on something better, like roads and education.”
Null, Kinder and Cochran also think the bill will likely be done away with. They think the state has progressed, in part because of the sacrifices made by gay and transgender individuals in the past. Cochran said she is grateful to the older generation for “changing the atmosphere.” Still there’s more to be done, she said. She, Null and Kinder all think transgender individuals face far more prejudice than they do.
And repealing the law won’t necessarily erase the damage done, Null said.
“The hurt and the damage … will linger now long after this law is struck down,” he said.
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