"Nightly Show" host Larry Wilmore last night discussed a newly introduced Missouri bill that would allow businesses to deny service to gay customers if it conflicted with the business's religious leaning.
"If there's a state that knows anything about depriving people of their liberties, it's Missouri #Ferguson," Wilmore said.
The bill "prohibits the state from imposing a penalty on a religious organization who acts in accordance with a sincere religious belief concerning same sex marriage," Wilmore explained. "This language is so vague that Hetero-Donuts can not only refuse to bake doughnuts for gay weddings, it also means Hetero-Donuts can fire its gay baker because he just got engaged to the gay baker at Homo-Donuts."
"Now as a black man ... I can tell you that these laws that purport to protect the majority at the expense of a group that has just won its freedoms is nothing new," Wilmore said. "There was a series of laws imposed on newly freed blacks after emancipation -- now known as Jim Crow laws."
Wilmore cited a Salon article in quoting Missouri state Senator Bob Onder, who defended the bill, saying, "No one should be compelled to make a work with their own hands that’s offensive to their beliefs."
"If no one made things with their hands that was offensive to their beliefs," Wilmore responded, "Quiznos would cease to exist."
Watch the full segment, complete with exclusive interview with Jesus Christ, below:
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