Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant has signed a bill into
law that protects religious organizations which refuse to officiate LGBT
weddings and business owners who refuse to sell wedding-related products and
services to LGBT customers.
The bill has drawn criticism from LGBT groups and
Starwood Hotels & Resorts, which published an open letter to the
Mississippi governor criticizing the bill.
Starwood General Counsel Kenneth Siegel wrote that the
bill "effectively legalizes discrimination based on sexual orientation and
gender identity, is antithetical to Starwood’s core values of diversity and
inclusiveness, and will have significant adverse effects on Starwood’s business
in the state of Mississippi.”
“We expect to open several hotels in Mississippi in
the near future, and believe this legislation will have a profound negative
financial impact on our business in Mississippi as tourists, event planners and
even corporations will react hostilely to this discriminatory legislation and
will choose to take their business to locations outside of the state of
Mississippi.”
Bryant on his Twitter feed wrote Tuesday that he
signed the bill “to protect sincerely held religious beliefs and moral
convictions of individuals, organizations and private associations from
discriminatory action by state government or its political subdivisions."
Mississippi is among a number of states that have
proposed religious-freedom bills.
In March, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed his state's
religious-freedom bill, which said that the state government "shall not
take any adverse action against a person or faith-based organization wholly or
partially on the basis that such person or faith-based organization believes,
speaks, or acts in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief regarding
lawful marriage between two people, including the belief that marriage should
only be between a man and a woman or that sexual relations are properly
reserved to such a union."
The Georgia Hotel & Lodging Association, Hilton
Worldwide, Marriott International and Starwood Hotels & Resorts were among those
that opposed that bill and pressured Gov. Deal to reject it.
Meanwhile, North Carolina in late March passed a law that
requires people to use public bathrooms based on their sex and not their "gender
identity." That law also drew criticism from LGBT groups and spurred New
York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to ban all publicly funded “nonessential” travel to North
Carolina.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory responded by accusing
Cuomo of “demagoguery.”